Tuesday, 27 January 2026

Tuesday, 27 January 2026

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Start of Sitting Day

Karakia/Prayers

SPEAKER (14:00): 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.

Resignations

Rt Hon Adrian Rurawhe—New Zealand Labour

Resignation of Member

SPEAKER (14:00): Members, I wish to advise the House that I have received a letter from the Rt Hon Adrian Rurawhe resigning his list seat in the House, effective 11.59 p.m. on Friday, 6 February 2026.

Obituaries

Dr William David Sutton

SPEAKER (14:01): I regret to inform the House of the death on 6 December 2025 of Dr William David Sutton, who represented the electorate of Hawke’s Bay from 1984 to 1990. During his membership of this House, he chaired the Commerce and Marketing Committee and was a member of the Local Bills Committee, the Road Safety Committee, and the Committee on the Maori Fisheries Bill.

I desire, on behalf of this House, to express our sense of loss and sympathy with the relatives of the late former member. I now ask members to stand with me and observe a period of silence as a mark of respect for his memory.

Members stood as a mark of respect.

Motions

Mount Maunganui—Landslide

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister) (14:02): I seek leave to move a motion without notice relating to the landslide at Mount Maunganui and other major weather events of the past week.

SPEAKER: Is there any objection that course of action? There appears to be none.

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I move, That this House express its deepest condolences to all of those who have lost loved ones in the landslides at Mount Maunganui and Welcome Bay, and in the flooded Mahurangi River.

Just before 9.30 a.m. on Thursday, a large landslide came down from Mauao, at Mount Maunganui, following a sustained period of heavy rain. The landslide slipped down into the Mount Maunganui Beachside Holiday Park and, shortly after, it became apparent that several people were unaccounted for. Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ), police, and ambulance teams immediately got to work on the rescue operation to save the people who were missing in the landslide.

For three long days, everyone in the country was longing for a miracle—none more so than the families of the missing people, who endured the agony of knowing where their family member was and yet being unable to reach them.

On Saturday, we were devastated to receive the news we that we had all been dreading, and police confirmed that the six missing people could not have survived and that the rescue operation would therefore move to a recovery.

Sharon, Max, Lisa, Jacqualine, Susan, and Måns were people just like us: grandmothers, mothers, daughters, sons, sisters, and brothers.

This is a tragedy for the families, and for the communities of Mount Maunganui and the wider Bay of Plenty.

Mount Maunganui is a place where many people have made happy memories. Every summer, it attracts visitors from across New Zealand and from overseas. It’s not hard to see why, with the beautiful beach, the friendly locals, and of course Mauao. Mauao welcomes hundreds of people every day who want to experience nature and the fresh air, watch the sunrise, connect with their friends, process and gain perspective on the daily challenges of life, and take in the spectacular views from the top. It was described over and over to me by locals as a place of great joy and wellbeing that grounds them.

The beachside holiday park at the base of Mauao has to be one of the best spots in the country to spend your summer. It is a particular cruelty of this awful event that families have gone from the happiness of a summer holiday in this Kiwi campground to facing the unimaginable grief of so suddenly and unexpectedly losing a loved family member.

Some of those who we lost were far from home, and I thank locals and police who have given everything to support the families over these long and painful days since the landslide occurred.

I want to acknowledge and thank everyone involved in the recovery operation, including our incredible FENZ, police disaster victim identification, and contractor teams, who have worked tirelessly on what is a very confronting and challenging scene.

I also want to thank our first responders and the brave local heroes who put themselves into harm’s way to help others in the initial aftermath of the landslide.

To those on the front line and supporting in the background—the emergency services, medical staff, iwi, community leaders, and volunteers—thank you for your professionalism, your care, and your strength. Maximum efforts are ongoing to recover all six people and to return them to their families so that they can begin the sad task of preparing to farewell them appropriately.

Sadly, two other families have lost their loved ones through these recent weather events. Another family is still waiting for news, after a man went missing in a river near Ōpōtiki. To the family who lost their beloved boy and his grandmother in the landslide at Welcome Bay, and to the family of the man who was lost in the flooded Mahurangi River and the family of the man who remains missing near Ōpōtiki, our hearts and our thought are with you all too.

My thoughts are also with those who have lost their homes, their farms, their livelihoods, and their possessions in floods and landslides. Five regions declared states of emergency last week: Whangārei, Thames-Coromandel, Hauraki, Bay of Plenty, and Tairāwhiti. Response and recovery operations are now under way in each region, and I want to commend everyone involved. I have seen the huge efforts going into the response from central and local government, from iwi and community organisations, and I’ve also seen and heard stories about Kiwis helping their neighbours, marae opening their doors to the community, and people delivering food to emergency service personnel who are working 24 hours.

It is an unfortunate reality that we continue to have these extreme weather events, but each time our response gets better and better, and each time we see the very best of New Zealanders. There is much more work to be done over the coming days and weeks, with the immediate focus being on supporting those families and individuals who have been displaced. Our Government is committed to doing what is needed, working with councils and communities on the recovery and the rebuild.

I want to end by acknowledging again the nine lives lost in these recent weather events and the heartbreak that their whānau and loved ones are carrying. Though I know it does not ease your pain or your sorrow, to the families who have lost loved ones in this tragedy, I want you to know this: the whole country is with you. Every New Zealander is grieving with you, and while we cannot take away your pain, we can carry some of its weight alongside you.

As Scripture says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” That comfort comes through community, through presence, through aroha, and through looking after one another in the days ahead.Kia kaha, kia māia, kia manawanui. Be strong, be brave, be steadfast. Thank you.

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

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the Opposition) (14:07): Mr Speaker, thank you. I lend the Labour Party’s support to the motion and also extend our deepest sympathies and our aroha to all those who have been affected by the recent severe weather events in the North Island. To those in Tauranga and Pāpāmoa, in particular those who have lost their lives, those who have lost people who they love, we extend all of our love and support.

To the families who are living with uncertainty now, we also extend our support to you. We acknowledge those who have been injured, those who have displaced, people dealing with flooded homes, with slips, with closed roads across the wider region—all those who have been affected.

We extend our support to all those who are helping. To our emergency first responders, Fire and Emergency, the police, urban search and rescue teams, civil defence, paramedics, council staff, iwi, contractors, and volunteers working in extremely difficult and dangerous conditions, we say a very, very sincere thankyou. In Mount Maunganui, the situation has remained high risk and very changeable, and it’s correct that decisions have been made with the safety of rescuers in mind as well.

I want to acknowledge all those in the community who are being asked to respond to too many of these sorts of events. For the vigils, for the support for families, for showing up for strangers, thank you. To our marae up and down the country, a very warm thankyou. When we are tested by these severe events, we see the very best of New Zealand.

Our marae perform such a valuable role in our communities. In times of tragedy, they open their doors and they open their hearts, not just to Māori but to all New Zealanders, and to those from around the world who find themselves in these difficult situations. We extend a very warm thankyou to them.

To those who are doing the unsung work behind the scenes, the little things like keeping those involved in the rescue operations fed and cared for, themselves—a very sincere thankyou to all of them.

Last week’s landslide in Mount Maunganui has led to the tragic loss of six lives. Families are facing unimaginable loss as that recovery work continues to return their loved ones to them.

The Tauranga City Council has announced a full and independent review into the events leading up to the landslide. It is important for the families and for all of New Zealand that that review is conducted transparently and that there is public confidence in it. I want to indicate to the Government that we extend our full support, as the Opposition, to any support the Government can extend to that inquiry. I would encourage the Government to give it the full powers of a Government inquiry so that it can have public support and public credibility. Following events like this, I believe that is the least we should be offering to the victims. I understand that WorkSafe has also indicated it will be conducting its own investigations, as I’m sure the coroner will be.

Nearby, in Pāpāmoa, a separate slip took the lives of a grandmother and a grandchild—a terrible reminder that these events aren’t isolated. They are becoming all too common.

It is important in moment like this that we don’t leap to conclusions and that we allow time for all of the evidence and all of the facts to become known, but the House does have some responsibilities here. We must support the families and the affected communities immediately. We must ensure that the independent review can run its course properly, transparently, publicly, and without people rushing to judgment. We must ensure that all of our agencies have the support that they need to keep people safe.

In 2023, only three years ago, we saw flooding in Auckland, followed by the cyclone across the East Coast. Many of the communities that were affected by those events find themselves being affected by the most recent events over the last few weeks, as well. Many are tired and they’re stressed. They’ve had enough, and I want to particularly acknowledge that some of our most vulnerable communities—those who have the least—find themselves sacrificing the most in these events, but the burden of these events falls on all of us as New Zealanders. We must all share that burden. We must all extend our support to those who have been affected, and so, once again, on behalf of the Opposition, I extend our deepest sympathies to those who have lost their loved ones and all those who have been affected.

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green) (14:13): Tēnā koe e te Māngai. Auē te mamae—auē te mamae e. E hotuhotu ana taku ngākau ki a koutou kua tāhaetia e te parawhenuamea. Haere atu rā e ngā mokopuna, ngā tamariki, ngā mātua, ngā kaumātua. Haere ki te pō uriuri, ki te pō tangotango ki te pō e au ai te moe. Hoki atu ki te poho o ō tātou tūpuna, kia okioki tonu koutou i roto i ō rātou aroha mō ake tonu atu. Takoto mai, takoto mai, takoto mai rā. Waihoki e pari ana te aroha ki ngā poutiriao o Mauao tiamana, ngā iwi o Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāti Pūkenga me Waitaha me ō rātou hapū. E ngā mokopuna o Mauao, e pākatokato ana ki te kite i te pāmamae o ō koutou tūpuna. Kei konei mātou hei pokohiwi ki ō koutou taumaha. Ko Mauao te maunga i kūmea e te patupaiarehe, ko Mauao te whakaahuatanga o te aroha, e papaki kau ana ngā tai ki Mauao. Kia kaha tonu koutou.

[Greetings, Mr Speaker. Oh the pain—oh the pain. My heart cries to you all who were taken by the floods. Go well, grandchildren, children, parents, and grandparents. Go to the deep darkness, the profound darkness, the darkness where you will rest soundly. Return to the bosom of our ancestors, so that you may rest in their love forever more. Rest peacefully. Our sympathies extend to the guardians of Mauao, the chairperson, the tribes of Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāti Pūkenga, and Waitaha and their respective subtribes. To the grandchildren of Mauao, our hearts ache to see your grandparent’s pain. We are here to shoulder your burden. Mauao is the mountain that was dragged by the fairy people, Mauao is the embodiment of love, as the tides crash against it. Remain strong everyone.]

This past week has been marked by unimaginable tragedy for whānau across Aotearoa. The loss of life on Mauao at Mount Maunganui, at the Mahurangi River, and in Pāpāmoa has been a bitter reminder of the fragility of life. Young people at the beginnings of their lives; families seeking a peaceful break over summer; a nan just caring for her mokopuna at home; a man just on his way to mahi—they were husbands, mums, sons, friends, wives, nephews, teammates, and so much more, all of them deeply loved and all taken suddenly and far too soon. At a time when whānau and friends were coming together, like many of us, to rest and enjoy time together specifically, such loss becomes even more harsh.

On behalf of the Green Party, I want to send our deepest thanks to the emergency responders also working on the ground, trying to get answers for whānau in pain. I also want to send our gratitude to local community members who have opened their arms, their homes, and their hearts to support their neighbours in this time of immense grief and struggle. These are the expressions of our values of care and compassion in crisis that should make us proud to be New Zealanders.

These events are powerful reminders for all of us in this House of the responsibility that we hold for the systems that care for people when there’s an emergency, that keep them safe when disaster occurs, and that reduce the chance of these disasters happening. We absolutely, at all times, and especially when there is loss, need to look at ourselves honestly and ask: are we sure that the compassion and care that the people on the ground doing the mahi are demonstrating is matched by the wisdom, the foresight, the planning, and the care that we here in the House—are we showing likewise?

We know that these are not one-off events. We know that we are going to have to be honest with ourselves the more and more that we know this stuff is going to come. Are we planning to the best of our ability? Are we utilising all of the resources that our communities and people deserve us to resource them with to prevent these occurrences, to ensure that communities are getting the help they deserve when we are in crisis, to make sure that we are putting the resource in the right places, and to understand exactly what is happening with the geographical nature of our land and our maunga and the way that our land is moving? Are we on top of all of that so that we are not just standing to express sympathy for when we continually lose life and livelihood but that we’re actually shifting our entire culture to be ready to face up to the fact that this is not unprecedented and this is not unplanned? We know that it is going to come more and more and more, and we have every opportunity to put our minds together, to collaborate together. I know we all want to protect our communities—every single one of us in here. Are we being honest about the challenges that we are facing?

I finish by going back to the whānau feeling pain. We all have been seeing the names and the faces of people whose lives have been lost and of their loved ones expressing that pain publicly, and it is for us to bear witness and share as much as we possibly can and shoulder some of the pain that they are experiencing right now.

As a māmā and as a nanny, I couldn’t help but particularly take the advice of Max Furse’s mum, who was one of the young people lost under the maunga. She said to us and she implored to all of us: hug your babies, as life can change in a moment. I felt that one particularly deeply. But I acknowledge every single human and person lost was loved and will be missed by many people across our communities.

So, Mr Speaker, thank you for this opportunity to express our aroha, to share the pain, and to call for us to be honest and brave in our outlook for today and for the future. Kia ora.

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (14:20): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take the ACT Party’s call and speak to speak to this anniversary day in Mount Maunganui, which was like no other before. This year we have been a mournful place. From the main beach to Maketū, everybody has been glancing to our maunga—the mountain caught by the morning light. This place—Mauao—the hot pools, and its campground have been a holiday site for generations: a place of recreation; our landmark from sea and land. It has always been a sacred place since Tākitimu and Tamatea. You souls whose lives have been taken: you are now a part of this place for ever. Pāpāmoa and the Mount are a long, thin coastal strip connected by the same unbroken beach, and we all look to the citadel of the area where this life has been taken.

On Wednesday last week, the rain we experienced was intense. The wind forced it into every exposed crack; it flooded our streets and saturated our soil. Something was going to happen that night, but hopefully nothing more than a power cut, my wife and I said to each other before bed as we thought of those moving stock and managing the horticultural blocks. But the next morning, though, even when the rain had stopped, it was clear that something much worse had happened. As the eighth and 10^th and 12^th emergency vehicle went past, sirens ablaze, we all—up and down the coast—knew something very serious was happening.

To the first responders who made their way through to Mauao, the bystanders who were first on the scene: New Zealand thanks you. The members of the public who performed gallant acts before and after, and the recovery teams there right now: we thank you. I believe I speak for many when I thank you, too, Christopher Luxon, our Prime Minister, and Mark Mitchell for your on-the-ground presence in Mount Maunganui this week.

As with the tragic weather events of Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland anniversary floods of 2023, we in Mount Maunganui and Pāpāmoa now see, too, the raw earth and broken lives that these isles have faced and will continue to face. On the corner of Leinster Ave, in the mall at Pilot Bay—as close to the cordons as it will be allowed—the site is a site of flowers and remembrance; it’s acting as a gathering place. Many people have visited this site because this tragedy is also a national one. It is a place full of bouquets and messages. There is also a Swedish flag there. Being there feels sombre. There is grieving all throughout as people are looking to the north-west, to our citadel, where this life has been taken. How does one begin to speak to the loss of a loved one or of a child in such tragedies? We can but mourn with you.

Slips have affected this land since it rose from the sea—bush-clad hills as well as pasture. Without a doubt, trees, their deep roots stabilising the earth, hold back geological change, but with many old slip sites around the hills paying homage to our past events.What has been deeply disappointing is how quick some voices have politicised this tragedy and hijacked it for their own agenda. We must understand these events and what has preceded them, but remember that New Zealand has always had extreme weather. We have always had slips—no law, no slogan, and no protest can stop rain from falling and hills from moving.

What can save lives is practical action, sound land management, proper hazard identification, robust safety practices, and effective emergency response. Those are the questions that matter if we want fewer families grieving in the future. None of them involved trying to change the weather. What happened in the Mount was a tragedy. People lost their lives. Families are grieving and that must come first. If we are serious about honouring those who died, we will focus on evidence, engineering, and preparedness—accountability, not ideology. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) (14:24): On behalf of New Zealand First, we offer our heartfelt condolences and prayers for those who have died in the weather-related incidents at Mount Maunganui and Pāpāmoa. We also feel for the families left behind, who have lost their loved ones in such tragic circumstances. New Zealand First also applauds and thanks our brave first responders, who have been working tirelessly, not only at the Mount but in the other affected areas in Gisborne, Thames-Coromandel, Bay of Plenty, Northland, and East Cape. The response of ordinary New Zealanders coming together and supporting those impacted in these communities has been most heartening. The outpouring of care and attention is evidence that Kiwis have a deep-seated quality to look out for each other in times of adversity.

While the hard work to help those areas to recover and heal has only just begun, as outlined by the Prime Minister, Cabinet has today signed off on the funding to get the help to where it’s needed as soon as practicable. The recent events are a timely reminder that New Zealand remains deficient in resilience in coping with extreme weather events. While progress has been made in local and central government planning, forecasting, and resourcing, more needs to be done. Progress has been made: in October last year, regional infrastructure Minister Shane Jones announced Government investment of close to $97 million into 32 flood resilience projects across New Zealand, helping to protect more than 30,000 homes and around 350,000 hectares of land. That brought the total number of flood resilience projects supported by the Regional Infrastructure Fund to 74, with nearly $200 million committed since August 2024 to protecting regional communities from the impacts of flooding.

As we’ve said, more needs to be done. The measures required to help improve the resilience of our communities require cool heads, calm analysis, and working with the facts. That can be frustrating for some who want to jump to immediate solutions and who are quick to apportion blame. There has been an alarming degree of so-called experts, commentators, and, dare we say, some of those in the media who are guilty of being Monday morning quarterbacks. It’s appalling that, with the bodies of victims still to be recovered, some have rushed to be adjudicators based not on fact but on emotion and hot reckons. That approach will serve no one nor achieve sustainable long-term solutions to improve resilience against weather events. Let’s examine the facts, acknowledge the needs, apply the appropriate resource, and get on with it as fast as possible to try to ensure such tragic results of extreme weather events aren’t repeated in the future.

RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori) (14:27): Te ao o te parera e rere poupou ana ki runga o Mauao. Pounga hoe mai nōhou Tamawera hinga rawa Tūtaekaniwha. Takina te pō, takina te ao. Papā te whatitiri, hikohiko te uira ki runga Tauranga e. Kōrukōru kō ana rari e kore rarī. Kōrukōru kō ana rari e kore rarī.

Tangi tākotokoto ana ki ngā huānga, ki ngā tāngata kua riro atu ki te pō. Koutou kua ngaro i ngā mahi whakaruke a Tāwhirimātea i roto i ngā rā, i roto i ngā wiki. Hoatu rā koutou, hoatu rā koutou i runga i te ara kōrero kua parangia e te tini, e te mano. Koutou kua haere ki tua o reitū ki tua o reiao, ki te huinga o te kahurangi, ki te kāhui o Matariki, haere, haere, whakangaro atu rā.

[The north-western wind blows high above Mauao. Along the path that Tamawera followed to kill Tūtaekaniwha. Night comes, day comes. Thunder crashes and lightning flashes over Tauranga. Such abundance and beauty could never be paralleled.

I weep for the relatives, and all those who have departed—those who were lost in the destructive winds of Tāwhirimātea in the days and weeks that have passed. Go well on the path that has been laid down by the multitudes. All those who have passed over to the spiritual realm, to the gathering of ancestors, to the cluster of Pleiades: go, farewell.]

I also support the motion moved today. I want to mihi to the rohe impacted by the severe weather: Ikaroa Rāwhiti—kei te tangi; Te Tai Tokerau—kei te tangi; Hauraki-Waikato—kei te tangi; Tāmaki Makaurau—kei te tangi; Waiariki—kei te tangi [Ikaroa Rāwhiti—we weep; Te Tai Tokerau—we weep; Hauraki-Waikato—we weep; Tāmaki Makaurau—we weep; Waiariki—we weep].

These particular areas who have been hit severely hard by the weather events are having to ravel through that particular issue as we speak. As we buried my auntie yesterday, I know that many who came up from Te Araroa and from Wharekahika Hicks Bay had to climb over landslips to get there. Tamariki that were involved in the basketball competition in Tauranga maunga were stranded in Raukōkore and Whangaparāoa, looking for a way home. Whilst we had people flying in there to assess the damage and to see what was going on in there, people who actually lived there couldn’t return home.

In every crisis it is Māori—hapū, iwi, and marae—who respond first. When COVID hit this country, it was a similar issue for our small communities: who were the last to be seen, the last to receive any resource, and it is the same in these weather events. We are the first to get hit, we are the first to respond, and we are the last to receive any support.

So I, too, acknowledge the first responders. I, too, acknowledge those who have been working tirelessly day and night to recover those who are still lost under our tipuna maunga, Mauao.Kei te tangi ki a Mauao, kei te tangi ki a Pāpāmoa, kei te tangi ki a Whakatōhea ki tērā i mate ki roto i te awa o Waioweka. [We weep for Mauao, we weep for Pāpāmoa, we weep for the Whakatōhea region, and for the drowning in the Waioweka River.]

I agree with Marama Davidson, responding to these particular issues is becoming too often these days. Once upon a time, it was a once-in-a-hundred-year event—unprecedented. Now, we are here every year around the same time talking about the same issue. Yes, we’ve heard about resilience funds, but that is not what my communities are talking about; they haven’t seen any of that.

So when do those resilience funds hit those small communities who respond first? It’s their tractors; it’s their chainsaws. They have no water. They can’t even access the moana because of the slash—the sludge that comes down those rivers: no tuna, no kōura, no kina. When does the resilience fund hit those areas?

Why is it that we have to fly in there to have a look at things? Talk to those communities, send the funds straight to them, start building resilience in those communities, because it’s their urupā, because it’s their marae, because it’s their homes, it’s their whenua, it’s their moana.

And, yes, as human beings, we do have a responsibility. As human beings—and some of the capitalist ideas here in Aotearoa, the responsibility lies in this room. The slash that comes down those rivers—yes, we may have the job to cut those trees down, but who owns those trees? Who is responsible for taking the rubbish off our whenua? Who is responsible for ensuring that they leave that whenua the way they found it? The percentage is too high in regards to leaving that slash behind because it’s the communities today that are revelling from that particular mess.

So resilience: the funding and the resourcing must come from here, but the ideas and the resilience must be driven by those particular communities, our maraes, our urupā, and our whenua. There will be insurance issues—because there were insurance issues in the last weather event down at Te Tairāwhiti—that we must sort out because people will be left homeless. They are now jobless; schools are closed. This is the reality.

We don’t need any more people flying in and out; we need to make sure that people are home with their families, that people are supported, that there’s water being dropped in there, that there’s food being dropped in there, that kids are not stranded on the other side of those slips waiting to get home. The priority must be those communities. Kei te tangi ki te hunga kua riro atu ki te pō, kei te tangi ki ngā rohe. [We weep for those that have passed and for those regions.]

But let’s get our minds together, let’s work with those communities, and the resilience of those communities must be driven by those communities. Empty the pocket; empty the bank.Tukuna atu ki a rātou ngā rawa kia tarea anō hoki e rātou ki te whai i te oranga e whai nei e rātou. Kia ora tātou. [Give them the resources they need to pursue the solutions they seek.]

Hon Member: Mr Speaker?

SPEAKER (14:35): It’s only party leaders who speak to these motions. So the question is that the motion be agreed to.

Motion agreed to.

SPEAKER: I’ll ask members to stand with me for a moment as a mark of respect for those who have lost their lives. Thank you.

Members stood as a mark of respect.

Government Business

Prime Minister’s Statement

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister) (14:36): Mr Speaker, I present the Prime Minister’s statement.

SPEAKER: That paper is published under the authority of the House and copies are available at the Table.

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I move, That this House express its confidence in the Government and commend its programme for 2026 as set out in the Prime Minister’s Statement.

To every farm worker, plumber, and police officer; to every teacher, builder, and cricket coach; to every office worker, hairdresser, truck driver, and student; to every mum and dad getting the kids ready for the start of the school year; to every New Zealander from Kaitāia to Invercargill, and New Plymouth to Akaroa: welcome to 2026.

Parliament is back, the Government is back, and National is back, fixing the basics and building the future now. We knew it would be a big job to turn New Zealand around after a very tough period of time. Inflation climbed to 7 percent; mortgage rates skyrocketed; the nation’s debt tripled; unemployment began to rise as businesses buckled under the impact of high interest rates, choking regulation, and a real loss of confidence. Fewer than half of our young people were attending school regularly, educational achievement was in decline, ram raids were rampant, violent crime was on the rise, gang activity flooded into public places like Ōpōtiki and highways across the country. Fixing that track record, fixing the basics, has been two years of incredible hard work in Government, from businesses large and small, and from every single New Zealander.

I feel more confident than ever that the recovery has now arrived and that Kiwis can look forward to a year that is brighter than the last few have been, because we have reined in wasteful spending, keeping inflation down, although we’d like to see it fall even further. Interest rates have dropped considerably, with families saving hundreds of dollars a week as they refix onto lower rates and now, after last year’s two-speed recovery, we’re seeing real momentum, real momentum. Business confidence is at a 12-year high. Growth in manufacturing is higher than at any time since 2014. Tourism continues to soar, with expenditure up 29 percent in the last two years, and now the construction industry, which was thrashed by years of high inflation and high interest rates, is getting back to work. Building consents are up 20 percent, job ads are up 43 percent, and—thanks to farmers and growers and manufacturers and tourism operators up and down New Zealand—exports keep going from strength to strength, rising by $12 billion in just the last year alone.

Don’t just take my word for it: two weeks ago, Doug Steel from BNZ called recent manufacturing data a “ripsnorter” and that growth was coming through with gusto. Three days earlier, Christina Leung from NZ Institute of Economic Research said the recovery was gaining traction. The same day, Miles Workman from ANZ said, “Economic activity is on the up, and that’s translating into business investment and hiring.” Earlier that week, Chris Sinclair, chair of the master builders in Christchurch, said everyone’s pretty positive: “All the professionals … the designers and the engineers are busy.”

There is still a long way to go but I want to see more Kiwis seeing and feeling the impact of the recovery in their communities, with more job opportunities and a chance of a promotion or a pay rise. For the first time in a long time, there is real momentum in the New Zealand economy, and our team is working hard to keep things moving.

It’s not just the economy, because when it comes to education, this Government is also fixing the basics. As Prime Minister, I am determined to give the best possible shot in life to every child growing up in New Zealand today. When we entered office, our kids were falling behind. Eighty percent of our 13-year-olds were not where they needed to be at in maths. Half of them were not where they needed to be at in reading. Now, in just two short years, we have achieved a huge amount. We’ve banned mobile phones; we’ve insisted on an hour of reading, writing, and maths every single day; and we’ve introduced a raft of changes to get back to teaching the basics brilliantly, with whole new curriculums for maths and English in primary schools. The results—the starting results—have been phenomenal, because already, the number of new entrants achieving where they should be in phonics has gone from 36 percent to 58 percent. The number of students exceeding expectations has doubled. There is always more to do, but we are fixing the basics in education.

If I take law and order, between 2017 and 2023, violent crime rose 30 percent, gang membership went up 50 percent, retail crime doubled, and ram raids quadrupled. Kiwis were absolutely sick of it, so we embarked on a programme of major reform to keep Kiwis safe in their home, at their work, and in their community. We have cracked down on gangs and banned their patches in public. We have delivered tougher sentencing laws so that offenders do real time. We have given more powers to police and put more of them out on the beat. Yes, there’s more to do, but the overall results have been exceptional: 38,000 fewer victims of violent crime, youth offending down by 16 percent, and ram raids down by 85 percent. When it comes to violent crime and retail crime, this is a Government that is fixing the basics.

After two years, we are seeing real progress in our efforts to fix the basics of the economy, of education, and of law and order. Now, we are focused on building the future, because if we want to leave a legacy of prosperity, of ambition, of hope and opportunity for our children and our grandchildren, we now need to push for more to build the future. Whether you’re driving trucks or making coffee, herding cattle or getting ready to take on the world, I want to unleash the extraordinary potential of this country so that everyone can get ahead—so that kids growing up in Christchurch, like me, can see a real future for themselves here in New Zealand, raising a family, building a career, or starting a business. A more volatile and a more uncertain world underscores the importance of controlling what we can. The more we are building the economy at home, the more we are ensuring a future for every single New Zealander here at home; and the more we are developing and diversifying those relationships abroad, the stronger New Zealand gets.

Growing our share of trade and investment offshore is critical to that plan to build the future. As everyone saw in the days just before Christmas, we concluded an historic and comprehensive free-trade agreement with India, the largest country in the world—the largest country in the world, and a vibrant part of the global economy. It’s a deal that eliminates and reduce tariffs on 95 percent of New Zealand’s exports, with almost 57 percent duty-free on day one. That’s a deal that works for agriculture; it works for horticulture; it works for viticulture, forestry, manufacturing services, and a raft of other industries. It’s a deal that puts our exporters back on a level playing field with Australia, and it’s a deal that will support this Government to build the future through higher exports, stronger businesses, more jobs, and higher incomes.

If we’re serious about building the future, we also need to increase our level of ambition on retirement savings, supporting greater levels of financial security for all New Zealanders. Later this year will mark the first of what I hope will be a series of increases in default KiwiSaver contribution rates from 3 percent to 3.5 percent. Over time, I hope those KiwiSaver contribution rates will keep rising to 4 percent in 2028 and then higher again to 6 percent once National is re-elected. It’s not just about ideology or politics; it’s just plain common sense. Why? First, to support New Zealanders’ financial security against the backdrop of an ageing society; second, to establish a spine of national capital available to invest in our businesses and our infrastructure here at home—and we’ll need to get richer to build the future; and third, because when Kiwis go to work, they deserve to get ahead. By closing the gap with Australia on superannuation contributions, New Zealand will become a more attractive place to stay, work, and to raise a family.

Now, the good news is that employers and employees have plenty of time to prepare. But over time, higher contribution rates will mean much larger KiwiSaver balances, and I think everyone in this House can agree that that’s a very, very good thing. It’s a big change, and, of course, it’s critical to our plan to build the future.

Now, as I spoke about earlier, this Government is already fixing the basics in primary and intermediate schools so that every child gets the very best possible start in life. But when those students get to high school, the qualification they ultimately receive should be just as brilliant as the education they received when they were just starting out. In August last year, we announced our plans to do exactly that and replace NCEA. The changes are fundamental—instead of getting a word, students are going to get a grade out of 100 for the subjects that you study. They’ll have stronger vocational pathways and higher standards for literacy and numeracy. It’s a big change, but it’s a big part of our plan to build the future.

Why are we doing it? We’re doing it because, on this side of the House, we know that a world-leading education system is the only way—the only way—we get to unlock the potential of every young person growing up in New Zealand today. It’s the only way that we’ll attract critical investments in digitalisation and technology in the coming years—improving the performance of our hospitals, our infrastructure, and our justice system. It’s the only way that we’ll access higher paying jobs and make sure Kiwis get the same shot at life that young people today in Australia or Singapore or Ireland get. It’s the only way that Kiwi businesses will access the talent they need to compete with the rest of the world, lifting exports, growing faster, and raising incomes for every single New Zealander. When it comes to education, this Government is fixing the basics, and now we’re also building the future.

Now, finally, housing and infrastructure: for two years, this Government has been fixing the basics. We’ve been fixing pot holes and repairing roads so that Kiwis get to work faster and safer. We’ve cleared away a jungle of red tape in the Resource Management Act (RMA) already, enabling greater development of housing, renewable energy, aquaculture, and mining. Fast track is now consenting real projects—housing developments in Drury and Milldale and Nelson and Riverhead, and the port expansion in Auckland—enabling more cruise ships and more tourism expenditure in our largest city. We’ve expanded gold mining at Waihī; and new quarries in Auckland—supporting new roads and new development. While there is always more to do, the results, so far, are encouraging because work has been pumping out on critical new roads like Ōtaki to north of Levin, the Melling Interchange, and, of course, the Hawke’s Bay Expressway. The good news is housing is more affordable and home ownership is growing, with first-home buyers now 29 percent of the market—the largest share we’ve seen in 20 years—giving Kiwis more opportunities to be able to get ahead. We ended the war on landlords from the last Government, and we cancelled the taxes and the red tape that, actually, punished tenants and sent rents skyrocketing by $180 per week. Now, rents are stable, with no growth in the last two years, helping Kiwis to be able to get ahead.

Importantly, a wave of renewable project generation is under construction, creating jobs and providing the energy that we need to keep growing and keep power prices as low as possible for every family. In short, when it comes to housing and infrastructure, in just the two years we’ve had, we’ve been able to fix the basics, and, now, as I say, we are building the future. We are replacing the RMA with two new bills designed to unshackle growth and development by abolishing around half of all resource consents, promoting growth and creating jobs—how wonderful is that going to be? That is going to be fantastic. We’re building Roads of National Significance in a town near you, supporting businesses to grow and making it faster for Kiwis to get to and from work. We’re signing long-term city and regional deals that build real partnerships between local and central government—promoting growth, creating jobs, and lifting incomes for the long term.

It’s a wonderful statement, and I encourage everybody to read it, of course, but in conclusion, let me sum it up for you: we are on a mission to fix the basics and build the future. We have made tremendous progress so far: ending the era of wasteful spending, supporting lower inflation and lower interest rates; increasing visible policing and a taking a tougher stance on law and order—driving down violent crime, retail crime, ram raids, and youth offending; strengthening achievement in our classrooms, whether students are just starting school or needing an opportunity to catch up; and, now, as I say, we are building the future. We are growing the economy to create more jobs and more opportunities for Kiwis, with rising exports, investment, and productivity. We are spending taxpayers’ money carefully so that we don’t burden our grandchildren with more debt. We are upgrading the schools, the roads, the hospitals that you rely on, and we are delivering resource management reform that makes it so much easier for businesses to get to construction sooner. We are supporting New Zealanders’ financial security for the long term with greater levels of savings and investment. There’s more hope, more opportunity, more ambition, and, ultimately, greater prosperity so that Kiwis can get ahead. Thank you very much.

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

Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the Opposition) (14:50): I move, That all the words after “That” be deleted and replaced with “This House has no confidence in this Government, who have failed to deliver on their promises, are out of touch with New Zealanders, have continued to promise a recovery that never arrives, have choked off economic growth, forced thousands of Kiwis out of their jobs, forced up the cost of living for New Zealand families, and created the conditions that have seen record numbers of New Zealanders lose hope and leave the country for good.”

For a moment there, I thought I had stepped out of the House and into the local laundromat, such was the level of spin and dirty laundry being stuffed into the corner. When New Zealanders were looking for vision, when they were looking for hope, when they were looking for something to give them an idea that the Government knew anything about what it was doing, they would have seen nothing from that contribution.

It’s interesting that the National Party front bench has woken up after the Prime Minister finished speaking. They didn’t seem to have much life in them while he was actually talking. In fact, I was worried we were going to have to break open some of those CPR machines in the lobby to make sure there was still a pulse on the other side of the House, because there was no evidence of it while the Prime Minister was delivering his address. If the National Party backbench can’t get enthusiastic about the Prime Minister’s address, what hope do they have that New Zealanders will be the slightest bit interested?

This is a Government that is out of touch, it is out of ideas, and it is fast running out of time. New Zealanders are hurting and the Government seems completely oblivious to that. The cost of living, far from getting better, has continued to get worse for Kiwi families. They promised it was all going to be simple; it was all going to be fixed really quickly. Everything was going to be better because they were just going to be better at everything. They couldn’t really tell people how it was going to be better, but it was just going to be better.

Let’s judge their track record. In fact, I’ve got a few numbers which really highlight their performance. The thing is, numbers tell us quite a story, so let’s go back to September 2023 when the New Zealand Treasury released their economic forecasts and let’s compare how that’s worked in practice.

Before the election, the New Zealand Treasury was forecasting that our economy would grow 1.7 percent in 2024. After Nicola Willis got hold of it, what happened? The economy shrank by half a percent. They were forecasting the economy would grow by 2.3 percent in 2025. After Nicola Willis and Christopher Luxon got their hands on it, it shrank by a further 0.6 percent. In fact, the economy today is at least a percent smaller than it was before they decided to fix it—smaller than it was before they decided to fix it.

Remember their talk about Government debt? Government debt was out of control. Government debt was forecast to be 40 percent of GDP this year. So after they fixed it, what did it turn out to be? It turned out to be 43 percent of GDP this year. So having fixed it, we’ve now got more debt than we were going to have.

Unemployment—they were going to fix unemployment. How has that turned out? Unemployment is forecast to stay higher for longer.

Then they said they were going to fix inflation, so let’s compare the forecasts into the future now compared to what they were before the election. By 2025, inflation was forecast to be 2.5 percent. That was last year—forecast to be 2.5 percent by last year. After they fixed it, 2.7 percent—higher than what had been forecast before.

By this year, 2026, inflation was forecast to be 2.1 percent. After they fixed it, it’s now forecast to be 2.4 percent, but, in fact, those forecasts were before the most recent numbers, which show it’s now over 3 percent again—outside of the target band once again. It’s interesting to note, of course, what is making up that inflation: that inflation is being driven up by Government—Government fees, levies, and charges forcing up inflation.

I noticed the Prime Minister was boasting about rents coming down because of their tax cuts for landlords. Why is it one of the major factors contributing to high levels outside the target band in just the last quarter? If rents are coming down, how can they be contributing to inflation? It simply doesn’t add up. It’s another one of those promises. I remember this time last year being in the debating chamber when Christopher Luxon and Nicola Willis and the National Party Cabinet confidently promised that we had turned a corner—unemployment had peaked and things were going to get better—and then the economy shrank again and more people lost their jobs, and businesses went into liquidation and things got worse for New Zealanders.

Wages are stretched because they’re not keeping up with increasing costs. Power bills continue to go up, basic groceries cost more every week, and Kiwis’ hard-earned money is evaporating faster than you can say, “Tax cuts for tobacco companies”, because this Government has its priorities all wrong, and businesses and Kiwis are facing an even more uncertain future than they had been before.

We heard nothing from the Prime Minister today about how they’re actually going to turn that around; it was all more “Let’s do nothing and hope things get better.” That seems to have been their prescription: let’s not do anything and just say that things are getting better, and if things aren’t actually getting better, just hope that people believe they’re getting better because we’re saying they’re getting better—even when all the evidence is saying exactly the opposite.

That was a speech all designed to lower New Zealanders’ expectations. I have to say, when it comes to this Government, their expectations are already very, very low. They’re not really expecting very much from this Government, and even then the Government is still managing to disappoint them—a Government running away from its own track record, a Government that is not focused on the things that actually matter to New Zealand families, a Government that simply wants to find other people to blame for the problems that it has created.

For those who have lost their jobs, what’s their message? Well, David Seymour says, “Just put a smile on it. It’ll be OK.” Nicola Willis says, “Well, don’t take it personally.” It is pretty damned personal when people have lost their jobs. It has a pretty major impact on their families, and they have every right to feel disappointed by this Government, which has seen more New Zealanders losing their jobs because of the decisions that it has taken.

What about the promised action on the cost of living? Not only have they failed on their targets around inflation, and bearing in mind that one of their key measures of success is interest rates coming down for mortgage holders—interest rates are going back up for mortgage holders now—but how many families actually received the $250 a fortnight that the National Party promised them at the last election?

A quick question for Nicola Willis or Chris Bishop—any of them over there: have you found one? Is there a single family that they have located that has received the $250 a fortnight that the National Party promised them? Is there a single family? There is not one single family that has got the $250 a fortnight that the National Party promised them at the last election.

Let’s talk about prices: inflation outside the target band again—3.1 percent. That really understates it. If you’re a family in the supermarket buying a loaf of bread, bread is up nearly 60 percent under this Government; power bills, 12.5 percent. Council rates are going up 8.8 percent. Only the people on the other side of the Chamber seem to be surprised that, when central government takes money away from local councils, they increase the rates to compensate for that. It’s basic economics, but they seem to have been caught by surprise by it.

Even things like milk is up 15 percent; beef has jumped nearly over 20 percent, and the Government’s surplus? Remember, Nicola Willis—I remember this well—said on the campaign trail that, “Getting back into surplus by 2027 simply was not good enough” and that she was going to get there sooner. So after she fixed it, how has it turned out? Not one surplus in sight in the forecasts. Not one surplus ever projected by the Treasury under Nicola Willis’ leadership. The only way she gets there is by inventing her own new maths formula. The new maths of Nicola Willis says, “We can get into surplus if we just take these other, inconvenient calculations out of the equation and put them over there with the dirty laundry in the laundromat, in the spin machine. Let’s pretend those don’t exist, and then we’ll get into this magical mystery surplus at some future point.” Actually, based on the measures that every Government for the last 30 years has been measured against, Nicola Willis does not have a surplus in sight, and debt is continuing to grow under this Government’s leadership, despite all of their rhetoric.

One of the votes Kiwis get to exercise before we even get to the general election is to vote with their feet. Last year, record numbers of them did just that. That’s our future talent that we need; it is our future workforce. New Zealand can do better than simply training people for other countries. We can give them reason to stay here in New Zealand, but this Government isn’t willing to do that, and it isn’t willing to tackle the big challenges that really face the country. Haven’t we seen that even evident here today? The continual denial that our economy actually relies on our environment; an absolute denial that we rely on the world around us to earn our living. This Government are in total denial of that. They don’t seem to get that if you run down the environment we rely on to earn our living, there are consequences of doing so. Their track record on issues like climate change is absolutely abysmal. Their weak and contradictory positions on the issues facing the world at the moment are simply embarrassing for New Zealand.

When we destroy and degrade our environment, when we stretch the ecosystems that we all rely on beyond their natural limits, we simply expose the country to more risks: economic risks, natural risks, more floods, fire, more heatwaves, more food insecurity, more economic instability. These are the consequences of ignoring the major challenges facing our planet. But when we protect and restore the environment that we rely on, the opposite happens. We create good jobs, we create more security, we create more opportunity—and this Government have slammed the door shut on all of that.

On the world stage, New Zealand has had a reputation as a principled and independent voice in international issues. That is being sorely tested by this Government. Having a Minister of Foreign Affairs and a Prime Minister constantly contradicting themselves on the world stage is an embarrassment for New Zealand. Other leaders around the world will be looking at New Zealand and saying, “What is their position? Do they support the World Health Organization, as the Prime Minister says, or not, as the Minister of Foreign Affairs says?” This is a Government that cannot come up with a clear and coherent position.

To those who call themselves patriots: true patriots don’t stand idly by while other people run down the contribution of New Zealand’s military forces in conflicts around the world. They don’t stand by and let other people say disgraceful and insulting things about New Zealanders who have lost their lives in international conflicts and say nothing about it. They stand up for New Zealanders. They don’t put New Zealand last, unlike some in this debating chamber. They stand up for New Zealanders; they stand up for our proud independent reputation around the world. They stand up for the rule of law internationally; they speak out against the abuse of human rights, not just in the countries that they don’t like but, actually, in any countries that are violating the principles of international law and the principles of human rights. They don’t pick and choose; they remain principled; they remain independent. New Zealand deserves better than what they are getting from this Government.

I believe in a country where our wages grow; where affordability is actually tackled; where Kiwis have an opportunity to build a life for themselves here in New Zealand; where our future generations don’t have to choose between staying in the country that they love with their friends and their family and having access to the opportunities that they deserve. Far too many are having to make those choices at the moment, and we can do better as a country. I want New Zealand to be a country where families don’t have to struggle week by week to figure out whether they’re actually going to pay the bills; where those who are creating jobs are actually backed to do that, and they don’t get called “C-listers” and talked down to by a Government that should know better. A pro-business Government does not describe aspiring New Zealand business leaders as “C-listers”; they get behind them, because that is the future of our country—that is our future potential that this Government are simply running down.

We need to grow the economy to benefit everybody, not just the lucky few. We need to back New Zealanders. We need to ensure that Kiwis get access to basics like three free visits to the doctor so that they can stay healthy every year. This Government simply hates the idea—hates the idea—that someone else might have a few ideas about how to make life easier for New Zealanders, because they have completely failed to do so. Kiwis will be able to go and see their doctor when they need to under a Labour Government. Under a National Government, they’re lucky if they can even find a doctor to go and visit, because the doctors are walking off the job because of this Government.

We will back Kiwi business to create good, well-paying jobs. We will end National’s fire sale of New Zealand’s assets, because we have seen how that works out. Remember when they said that if they sold off the power companies, we would get cheaper power? How’s that worked out for New Zealand families as power bills continue to go through the roof because the power companies have prioritised making huge dividends for their shareholders rather than investing in new power generation that might actually help New Zealanders. It’s not just householders: businesses across the country are going to the wall so that big electricity generators can make record profits. It is not good enough.

This is a Government that’s simply not willing to tackle the big challenges facing New Zealand. It’s time we had a change of Government so that we can actually fix those basic fundamentals that Christopher Luxon seems to think just putting slogans around actually fixes. Jobs, health, homes, cost of living—those are the things that New Zealanders care about—

Hon Nicola Willis: Not a single policy idea—not one!

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: —Oh my goodness me, Nicola Willis has woken up now! It’s interesting it took her this long. She had nothing to say—I thought that she had passed out while Christopher Luxon was speaking—but now, suddenly, she’s roared back into life. Welcome back to Parliament, the Minister of Finance. My goodness me, we’re going to have some fun critiquing her track record in the House this year—and boy, oh boy, there is plenty of material there. No amount of overriding confidence can make up for the total lack of competence that we have seen from the Minister of Finance over the last three years. I’ll say to Nicola Willis: when I go and visit business leaders in Auckland, and I talk to them about the relationship between Labour and business, and they say to me that “The best thing we could have from a Labour Government would be for Barbara Edmonds to be the Minister of Finance”, I take a huge amount of confidence in that, because they’re sick of being abused by the Minister of Finance. One would expect a business audience to be all lining up behind the National Party, but they have a had a gutsful of being told how bad they are by this Government. This is a Government that doesn’t back anyone but themselves. They simply look for people to blame for the problems that they have created.

It is well and truly time to put this Government out of its misery. The good news is the clock is now ticking and they will be out of their misery by this time next year, when a new Government will be in place in New Zealand, one that will give New Zealanders hope, one that will create opportunity for New Zealanders, and one that will deliver on the promise of Aotearoa New Zealand.

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

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green) (15:10): We’ve just heard from the Prime Minister that the plan is working, the deliverables are being delivered, and the synergies are being vertically integrated, and I am here today to say listen to them. Day by day, law by law, and deal by deal, we are becoming the country that National, ACT, and New Zealand First want us to be, and that is a tragedy because that is a country where communities are flooded while the Government prepares to subsidise fossil fuel corporations with a $200 million taxpayer handout.

It is a country where homes are swept away by torrents of water and mud while mining projects are waved through by fast-track processes that rewrite the law for corporate donors. It is a country where communities are evacuated, where bridges and roads are swept away, where whānau are sleeping in schools and community halls because their homes have been red-stickered, and where towns and cities and marae where people have lived for years, decades, and centuries, are no longer safe.

For many people living in Christopher Luxon’s New Zealand, the power is out, the water doesn’t run, the roads are closed, the hospital is overwhelmed, and the jobs are gone because the mills and the factories have been shut down during a vicious recession driven by this Government’s so-called year of growth. The bedrooms are cold and damp because the heaters and dehumidifiers are off because people cannot afford their energy bills, their rates, their insurance, or their groceries. Two hundred New Zealanders leave the country every day in search of a better life.

This is the country that the Government wants. We are living in it, and the future that they are promising us is more of the same. So when they tell us their plan, we need to listen to them. When Christopher Luxon tells us that we need to work harder, longer hours and to take shorter holidays, I want New Zealanders to listen. When David Seymour says that he wants to gut our founding constitutional document, listen to him. When Shane Jones tells us that our oceans and our forests and our national parks and our conservation estates need to be opened up for mining, listen to him. When Brooke van Velden tells us that she thinks that the workers have got too many protections and too much security, listen. When Louise Upston tells us that she’ll punish the young people who won’t work the jobs that don’t actually exist, listen. When Paul Goldsmith promises to criminalise homelessness for people who the Government has ensured cannot actually get into housing in the first place, listen.

Elections these days feel, often, for a lot of people, like they’re just about marketing, advertising, brands, slogans, focus groups, and politicians saying that they care about you and that they have a vision for the country, a hope for the future. But the reality is that we are living in the future that this Government promised us two years ago. Take a long, hard look at it and listen to the people who have governed this country for the last two years, because they have told us and they have shown us who they really are.

Yesterday, I was at Whakapaumahara Marae in Whananaki. They had had a month’s worth of rain in a day. Everybody mucked in and cleaned up. Climate scientists have warned us for decades that burning more fossil fuels and ramping up intensive agriculture means a warmer atmosphere, warmer oceans, and more intense and frequent storms, and their warnings are now our reality.

I am not going to pretend that the future is going to be a sunlit utopia. There will be more storms and there will be more floods, but we can be a country—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: There always has been, for goodness’ sake!

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: —that prepares for the storms that we know are coming. We can build real resilience—Winston Peters—instead of mining and extracting and destroying it.

Much of the world is actually already into this clean, green energy transition to solar, to wind, and to distributed grids because it is cheaper, it is cleaner, and it is more resilient, and yet this Government is locking us into an energy system that is brittle, fragile, and yet hugely expensive for the regular person and far more profitable for shareholders. They aim to make us more dependent on fossil fuels—

Hon Shane Jones: Fairy tales.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: —and, at the same time, more vulnerable to their effects. But we can choose to keep the lights on and the hospitals open during the climate emergencies that we know are coming, and we can lower power bills and create warmer homes at the same time. “Green fantasy.”, Shane Jones will say, but it’s just what competent Governments in other countries are already doing, because why wouldn’t you?

We should be very sceptical of any politician who tells us that what the rest of the world is actually already doing is madness and that it is somehow impossible, when the proof is unfolding before our very eyes. We should ask why they have taken such a crazy economically and environmentally destructive position, and we should ask whose interests they are really serving.

We know that the country is fed up with politicians just bickering back and forward with each other while the world burns and life gets harder for regular people. That is why the Greens have spent the last two years putting forward sensible, fully costed policies to our challenges for real responses to the crises that we are facing: for taking on corporate greed to create an energy sector that works for the public interest, instead of lining the pockets of shareholders; for expanding community energy projects to help New Zealanders cut bills and emissions; for warm, dry homes for everyone; for creating tens of thousands of good, green jobs that will rebuild infrastructure, plant trees to protect from erosion, and restore the ecosystem to reduce flooding; and for sustainable manufacturing to revitalise our regions and communities with meaningful, well-paid work, making the things that Aotearoa and the world need. When members of this Government tell us that that sounds insane to them, that is because they like their plan.

There is this ancient story about an emperor. He is obsessed with clothes. He spends a lot of money on these fancy garments and is one day visited by men who promise him the most magnificent clothes that are supposedly invisible to those who are either incompetent or stupid, and he commissions them to start work. Numerous officials go in and check on these invisible clothes being produced that don’t actually exist, and each affirm that all is going well because none of them wants to be thought of as stupid or incompetent. When the con men finish their work, the emperor arranges for a parade in front of all of the town. None of the townspeople wants to be thought of as stupid or incompetent, and so nobody mentions that he is naked, but, eventually, a child calls out the truth and the spell is broken. The emperor has no clothes; all he’s got is stories and power built on those stories.

That emperor is Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and every politician in here who believes that they can suck the life out of nature and blow it in to an economy. It would be more admirable to believe in the tooth fairy than in the Prime Minister’s neo-liberal economic playbook, because at the tooth fairy has never hurt anybody. The climate and inequality and biodiversity crisis superpowered by corporate greed, knowingly made worse by Christopher Luxon and every single member of this Government, is hurting people.

Nature doesn’t care about the ruling economic orthodoxy or the opinions of those who profit off of upholding this story. Nature doesn’t ask for permission. Nature isn’t made-up—like the rules in this place are. Rivers swell with a storm. The sea eats away at roads. The trains are cancelled because the sun has warped the tracks. No amount of PR or focus-group slogans can convince nature that Christopher Luxon has managed to fudge the numbers and, you know, “Don’t worry about it, we’ll hit our targets”.

Every single year for the last 10 years, New Zealanders have experienced a severe climate change - charged weather event, and in just the last seven years, this has cost the insurance industry alone $6 billion in payouts for damage. This is increasing insurance premiums for regular New Zealanders, and it sits behind increasing rates for local government.

Climate change is a tragedy. It is loss and devastation. It makes daily life harder and more expensive, and the Government has knowingly and intentionally made climate change worse, and they’ve also gutted funding to deal with its impacts. Just like the emperor walking naked at his parade, the only thing that is keeping Christopher Luxon in his job is our country’s willingness to believe his story, the story that growth is coming, that it will trickle down, that the worst rates of unemployment projected since I was born are just all part of the price of recovery. The power of this Parliament, the power of the Prime Minister, and the power of his very, very rich friends exists only in our willingness to believe their fairy tales. “We can’t afford it”, they’ll say about housing the homeless while handing out $3 billion to landlords. “There is no alternative”, they’ll say as they gut pay equity for hundreds of thousands of our lowest-paid working women.

If New Zealanders have one incredible skill, it is knowing when somebody is absolutely full of it. New Zealanders know, despite what Government politicians are telling them, that this story that this Government is selling is not true, because they can feel it. When they’re sitting on the bus, getting a jump scare as the Prime Minister pops up in their news feed, talking about economic recovery. As they drive past more makeshift mattresses, as people sleep rough outside of storefronts. When they get the news of more friends moving to Australia for a lower cost of living and a better quality of life. When the brochure in their letter box shows smiling real estate agents trumpeting the return of house price growth, but them and their flatmates have started naming the slugs in their bathroom.

That feeling of one’s experiences not gelling with the stories that we tell ourselves is called cognitive dissonance. It results in quite a profound sense of discomfort. And that discomfort is deeply personal because we have been told for our entire lives, by the people in this place and those who spend a lot of money to put some of us here, that not winning at this game—which, by design, most people cannot and will not—is somehow a personal failure. I need New Zealanders who are listening right now to know that this is not their personal failing to be losing at a game that is actively rigged against them.

Over the last nine years, the least wealthy households in this country have seen their debt rise by $6.3 billion. In that same period, the wealthiest have seen an increase in their wealth of $455 billion, or half a trillion. People will rightfully point out that this period includes when Labour was leading the Government. It does, and we took that fight, at that time, to Labour on their decisions to continue to entrench a tax system that they know—that they know—sees our firefighters and our nurses and our teachers and everyday hard-working New Zealanders pay double the effective tax rate of the wealthiest in this country.

This is why I’m in the Green Party—because we know the things that we say are not immediately popular or sexy or retail. We are not in politics to be in power at all costs. We are in politics because we actually want to do something. We know that doing something in politics—well, it’s really, really hard. There’s some really, really powerful people out there who are pouring a lot of money into ensuring that people believe that there is no alternative. They have spent decades building up institutions and thinktanks to make it easier for people to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

New Zealanders need to ensure that they do not believe this story, because we know and we have seen the real Aotearoa. When we don’t find leadership in this place, we find plenty of examples across this beautiful country. Our firefighters and our first responders risking everything to save lives. Nurses going overtime on already stretched hours to check in on their patients. Teachers looking out for the kids who turn up without books or without lunch. The bus driver welcoming passengers onto their commute with unbridled cheer. The millions of hard-working New Zealanders who just look out for each other and do their little bits to pay it forward. We are a country of people who make things and who make things work. That is who we are.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Not the Greens—they don’t. They don’t work.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: We have enough. Our country is filled with talent, creativity, and hard work—Mr Winston Peters—but, for most of our entire lifetimes, we have been told that the thing that we call the economy will deliver us salvation. People have worked harder and harder and harder, for longer and longer and longer, and they’ve got less and less and less in return. The rules of this economy are killing us and the climate necessary for life on Earth as we know it. That’s not hyperbole. Our soil is poisoned. Our air is poisoned. Our politics is becoming twisted and toxic and poisoned. The economy that this Government champions is just a set of rules that privilege immense greed at the expense of everything and everyone that we love.

We can afford to fix our infrastructure and our hospitals and our schools, and build a climate-safe future. We cannot afford to allow the super wealthy to siphon off the hard work of everyone else, where just 119 households now sit atop a treasure pile worth more than everything owned by 2 million New Zealanders; where billionaires can afford lawyers to fight community and conservationists to try and get another helicopter pad, while kids are going hungry. Instead, imagine an Aotearoa where people don’t have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet; where there is time for family and the things that we all love; where we understand that without nature, there is no economy; where catching up with a friend in a different city or town doesn’t mean selling an arm and a leg to get on a plane, but an adventure on a train network that our country prides itself in; where, regardless of where you are born in this country, you get the best possible start in life through the highest-quality early childhood education because we made a decision to fund it just like we do our public schools; where we decided that everyone’s basic need for a doctor or a dentist is actually a non-negotiable because no one deserves to be in pain and all of us deserve the ability to get well and to contribute to our communities.

It’s not rocket science. Plenty of other countries have made these kinds of decisions. Once upon a time, before it was infected by sad fairy tales of greed at all costs, this place used to make those kinds of decisions too. That is how you build a country—by realising that we all need each other; that we’re not 5 million random, isolated individuals all running around in competition with each other, but that we can work together to create things that no one person can ever do alone.

Democracy doesn’t work when it’s just fancy people in here, arguing back and forward amongst each other. This year, more than ever, we want New Zealanders to recognise that every conversation that they get to have with their fellow New Zealanders is an opportunity to start creating the kind of country that we all deserve, to find the things that we have in common, and to start building our world from that basis. My message to those New Zealanders is that you don’t need to know everything, you don’t need to be perfect, but no one is coming to save us. This is so much bigger than just one election. This is about the stories that we are willing to believe and the country that we build on those foundations.

So believe this Government when it tells you that it is focused on profit at all costs, and believe me when I say that if I can achieve just one thing in my time in this place, it is for regular New Zealanders to understand their power, to believe in themselves and in the Aotearoa that we can create if—and only if—we dare to believe in each other.

This Government, like the emperor, is naked. They have nothing but their trickle-down fairy tales that they are begging New Zealanders to believe. We can instead believe in upholding the dignity of everyone and the health of our planet. From that place, we can act. Bring on 7 November.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT) (15:30): My favourite part of that speech—and let’s be honest, there wasn’t a lot, but the last bit, “we can act”, I thought was quite good. Actually, the ACT Party caucus was having a bit of a sweepstake: was that speech written in business class or on ChatGPT? I can’t tell you the odds, but someone made a bit of money.

Mr Speaker, I want to welcome you and my parliamentary colleagues, Nicola Willis, and fellow leaders in the coalition Government, back to Parliament, and, of course, my ACT colleagues. We have an enormous amount of work to do. There are those who will promise that if they’re in power, everything is perfect, and yet if they’re out of power, only months later New Zealand turns into some sort of existential hellhole. I think New Zealanders are smart enough to know that it’s not quite like that. What you actually have is a group of people implementing policies to make this a better place for all of us, and we should be judged on the progress that we’re making in doing it. I want to spend a bit of time in this speech talking about why I’m proud to lead a political party, ACT, that is part of this Government that is taking on the real challenges and making good progress in doing it.

I want to start with a set of values. A lot of people will have stories from their summer holidays, and I remember one from many summers ago where I did something I hope every New Zealander will do at some point. I stood at Cape Reinga and looked out at 10,000 kilometres of Pacific Ocean. There’s something about that moment that tells you something about being a Kiwi, because you realise just how brave wave after wave of settlers had to be to choose New Zealand, to choose to come to this country.

I remember asking somebody once, “Do you think that your ancestors really wanted to be here?” This person told me a story. Her family tried to come from England to New Zealand, but they were shipwrecked on an island in the Indian Ocean. Only two family members survived. They found themselves eating birds and whatever they could scrounge together until they were rescued by people who were sort of on the edge of the piracy movement, shall we say. But they did eventually manage to get themselves back to England. Now, this conversation took place in Auckland, so you can probably guess what they did. They scrounged together a few pennies and they got on the next boat to New Zealand, and their descendants are Kiwis to this day.

Many New Zealanders have a story like that—admittedly, not every one quite as out there as that one. But if we wanted a story that united us—that we are each settlers or descendants of settlers who’ve taken a big risk to make our home in these islands and to give our children a better tomorrow—then it’s a pretty good one, and it comes from our geography. I saw it one summer standing at Cape Reinga looking at 10,000 kilometres of ocean.

It’s also a story that tells us something about ourselves: that we’re not people who just lie back and take it. We are pioneers. We are adventurous. We want to make tomorrow better than today through our own efforts. I heard from people like that all through this summer: a five-year-old girl, just got her uniform, excited about starting school for the first time—I’m not sure that excitement will continue for the whole 13 years, based on my experience, but right now she’s absolutely pumped; somebody who’s just started a new business, and it’s going so well that their goal for the first quarter is to take on their third employee; or a tradie who was supposed to be coming to fix someone’s roof, and they said, “Look, mate, I’m snowed, but I can have a look at it in May.”

All of these stories remind me of something about New Zealand: that the spirit that brought us to these islands is still there. All through our lives, we strive to make tomorrow better than today. That’s the New Zealand that I think we can be proud of. Remember, I haven’t mentioned when your ancestors got here or which wave of settlers. We all have it. It unites us, and it unites us in having the ability and the power to act.

What is the thing that sometimes holds us back? It’s that zero-sum thinking. It’s that tall-poppy culture. It’s that thought that if only we could pull down someone else, our problems would go away. We heard this in Chlöe Swarbrick’s speech. There’s two kinds of people: there’s people who, when they find slugs in their bathroom, they clean their bathroom, Chlöe, and then there’s people, as she said, who start giving names to the slugs in their bathroom. At least there are no slugs in the bathrooms on business class, are there, Chlöe?

We face a choice in this country. Are we to be a positive-sum society where we—

Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Oh, here we go.

Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Just that the member was not—

SPEAKER: Just a moment. I haven’t called the member.

Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Point of order, I’m sorry.

SPEAKER: Point of order, the Hon Deborah Russell.

Hon Dr Deborah Russell: It’s just that the honourable member was not referring to this honourable member by her full name, as is required in this House.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Mr Speaker, I would like to refer to Chlöe Swarbrick by her full name, and Deborah Russell, I think it is, who is taking on the big issues. I mean, you can imagine the disappointment of Chris Hipkins back in his office thinking, “Oh man, I’m trying to climb Mount Everest, and this is my Tenzing.” It can’t be too encouraging, can it? The only good thing I can say is that the tax students at Massey are much better taught these days. That’s the one big improvement that we can point to with Deborah Russell.

Back to this Government and our efforts to improve this society, drawing on the values and the qualities that have made this country what it is. One of the things that we have to do is save money and deliver public services more efficiently. I’m proud to work with our finance Minister, Nicola Willis, because we have saved literally tens of billions of dollars in two Budgets, and we’ve got another one coming this May that I’m quite sure will save even more.

Why does that matter? For the simple reason that when the Government sucks up money, it is really sucking up resources. When the Government borrows money, it’s competing for the funds that people are borrowing to invest in their business and to buy their first home. When the Government wastes less, very simply, the people eat more. So to be part of a Government that is wrestling down record deficits, that is wrestling down enormous interest payments—nearly $10 billion a year, just paying the interest on the debt those guys borrowed—I know that we are ensuring that the poor will eat more because the Government is wasting less.

It’s little things, like making sure that we can deliver the school lunch programme with the same return rate as Labour’s programme but at half the price. I see there are members indignant about this. Ask the children not what they think but what they do, and they send them back no more than they did under Labour’s programme, but we’re spending half as much money. Now, if every MP on the Opposition side saved as much money as I saved with that one initiative, we would very nearly be back in surplus. The problem is we’re in deficit because they have the opposite effect when in power, and that’s why we must keep them right there.

We’ve done the sums as an ACT Party, and we calculate that if you gave your party vote to ACT in 2023, then the savings of ACT Ministers and policies on your behalf is $57,000 per voter. Now, that’s a pretty powerful party vote for ACT, saving $57,000 from the taxpayer. If you really care about that five-year-old starting school and the wider young generation in this country, then you will stop borrowing on their account, which is what “irresponsible spending” means. That’s the point I make to New Zealanders under 40 in this country: you will be paying far more debt off than those over 40, so if you care about the future of this country, you’ll balance the books and make a careful use of taxpayer funding. I’m proud to say that our party and this Government is making an enormous contribution to saving for the next generation.

If we want to make life more affordable, then we’ve got to reduce the amount of time tied up in red tape. I see here Chris Bishop, and I see Simon Court; these guys are heroes. If they can halve the number of resource consents applied for in this country and add $3 billion a year to GDP simply by saying, “Look, if you want to get activity on your own property and it doesn’t harm anyone else, you don’t need a consent anymore, because it’s not anyone else’s business.”—if we could just put that simple, common-sense principle into law, then we can really get cooking with gas in this country. That is how you save money and ensure that our society becomes wealthier.

That is an enormous bit of progress, and I’m proud to say that resource management reform based on property rights is a change the ACT can proudly claim to have driven. But you see it in anti-money laundering, the bane of the existence not so much of drug dealers and criminals—I understand they don’t like it—but ordinary people just trying to go about organising their affairs. Nicole McKee is fixing that, just as Brooke van Velden fixes the Holidays Act so that people can get paid the right amount.

Isn’t it interesting—the Labour Party, how often do they get in behind Brooke van Velden ensuring that workers will get paid the right amount? Do you hear any praise? Do you hear any positivity? Of course you don’t, but Brooke van Velden is doing it. She’s fixing employment law so that if, for example, you sexually harass someone in the workplace and you get fired, you can’t then take a claim against your employer on a technicality. That’s been the disgraceful reality of unbalanced employment law that Brooke van Velden is fixing so that businesses can get on with actually producing.

Then we talk about those rental ones. If they’re Green voters, they’re busy naming their slugs, we’ve just heard from the Green Party. We have ensured that rents are down in real terms. And how have we done that? Well, first of all, we’ve applied the most—

Chlöe Swarbrick: People are leaving the country!

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Well, Chlöe Swarbrick says people are leaving the country. If she thinks that’s the answer, she should join them. That’ll be the most popular thing she’s ever done.

What we have done, in actual fact, is applied the same principles of tax law to rental property as any other business: interest is an expense and you can deduct it from your income for tax purposes. There’s no magic, and it’s not a tax cut for landlords, any more than putting tax on cigarettes is a tax on dairy owners. Most taxes, in the end, fall on the end user, and in the case of taxing rental property, the tax was falling on the people trying to rent homes in an inelastic market. That’s why getting rid of that tax has ensured that rents have fallen in real terms.

So has reforming the Residential Tenancies Act: reforming the Residential Tenancies Act as though landlords might actually be the property owner, meaning that they can actually get rid of someone troublesome—well, that’s actually ensured that people are more willing to enter the market, and, ironically, tenants have more choice. This is how a real market works in a society where people are trying to make a difference in their own lives and asking, “How can we make tomorrow better than today?”, rather than asking the Government to solve every problem.

We’ve also ensured that actually producing a buck is easier, too, because that’s the other side of being able to afford things. Yes, we’ve dealt with taxes and red tape and regulation, making it easier to build homes and rent it out, making it easier to build supermarkets so that people can have a more affordable life in this country—that’s all true. We have done all of that, but we’ve also made it easier to deduct your tax when you buy a new plant and equipment in your business.

We’re also systematically dismantling the red tape and the regulation, such as the significant natural areas. We’ve got rid of the climate policy that would have driven sheep and beef farmers out of business so production could happen overseas, to the benefit of foreign farmers who emit more than hard-working and efficient New Zealand ones. We’ve also ensured that people are going to be able to work as contractors and have clarity about how that contract works—again, Brooke van Velden, making it easier to do business. These are just some of the things that this Government is doing, in the spirit of our founding and our origin story as a country, to make it easier for people to provide for themselves and spend less time paying taxes that the Government waste and complying with rules that don’t actually make the boat go faster.

There’s no point being able to afford your groceries if someone nicks them on the way home. In this country, we, for too long, tried an experiment that was almost too stupid to be true. But remember who was in power at the time. They decided that, if only we were kinder to criminals and we waited long enough, eventually they would be kind back. See, the others have kind of moved on, but Te Pāti Māori, they are still continuing on in this vein. I saw the other day—I thought this must be artificial intelligence, they must be using the same apps as Chlöe Swarbrick writes her speeches with—they had something on their Facebook that said, “Te Pāti Māori will get rid of prisons.” I thought to myself, (1) why would they do that when Māori are the biggest victims of crime? And (2) are they going to get rid of the prisons for everyone? Would they release the Christchurch terrorist? I’d love to hear the Māori Party member get up and answer that question. Would they let a white supremacist murderer out of prison as part of their policy, or are there some standards? And if there are, why don’t they use them to protect everybody else who is a victim of sexual and violent crime in this society?

What this Government’s done—and Nicole McKee’s here—is we’ve reintroduced three strikes. She’s also ensured a 20 percent drop in the time taken to get through the criminal courts, because justice delayed is justice denied. There’s far more coming where that was. We’ve seen a 16 percent drop in youth crime. Karen Chhour has shown it is possible to run an Oranga Tamariki (OT) facility without KFC. That’s right, OT without KFC is what this Government is delivering with our Minister for Children, Karen Chhour. Incidents and assaults in those facilities have gone down because she set some basic rules, and because she cares. Karen Chhour has been to all 58, I believe—or very close, already—Oranga Tamariki facilities, because, for once, we have somebody who embodies that story of suffering at the bottom of the system and rising to the top to fix it for all the others. That, for me, is a true New Zealand hero in Karen Chhour.

We can now evict people from Kāinga Ora (KO) if they are harassing their neighbours. Imagine those basic values that, if the State gives someone a house at a significant discount, they actually have to be kind to the rest of the community, because they’re benefiting from this community spirit. It may seem normal and commonsensical to many people, but it was not the norm—where, as an electorate MP, I’d hear people abused to within an inch of their life; people doing unmentionable things that could get me kicked out of Parliament if I told you what they were, Mr Speaker. Now, if they do it, they get kicked out, because guess what? There’s other people waiting in the queue, and that queue is shrinking because KO is finally being managed competently.

All of these policies—and I’ve just been giving you a small selection; really, just the ones that have come into mind as I’ve been speaking to you—are all grounded in the most basic set of values. That set of values outlines the difference between this side of the House and that side of the House. On this side of the House, we believe in that origin story: that if we hadn’t made a brave journey and we, our ancestors, hadn’t settled here, we wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t be Kiwis. Therefore, what it means to be a Kiwi is to have ambition, to be adventurous, to be a pioneer, to believe that life isn’t like bad weather; we can change it through our actions and our choices; to believe that we can choose a brighter future; we can fix the things that matter and find ourselves in the greatest little country on earth.

It’s all going to depend on asking who has acted with integrity, who is being consistent on the policies, not just in the last year, in many cases for the last 10 years. When others may have taken one or two or more positions on the same issue in the same period, the ACT Party has advanced these values: that each Kiwi has the right and the obligation to make a difference in their own life. Year after year, speech after speech, debate after debate, and, quietly, as I stand here today, after two years in Government, I’m reminded of another great Kiwi saying or song, and it’s this: I feel as we go into 2026 “Now we’re getting somewhere”. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) (15:51): This marks the first address in the House for this year, being election year, and after two years of us in Government trying to turn the mess around that we were left with by the previous Government. We then watched the Labour and Green party leaders rise to their feet and there we were thinking to ourselves, this will be a time for focus, for imagination, for visionary experiences that evince confidence when the public hears it, where the public thinks to themselves, “These people know what they’re talking about because they’ve actually been there before. They understand how business works and how society works.” It’s a moment for great inspiration where you stand back and you say to yourself, “Thank heavens we’re in politics.” So this is inspiring in the extreme.

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen today. In fact, depressing—extraordinarily depressing today. It reminded me, particularly when they both finished their speeches, of a singing group called Status Quo who had a song that went like this: “Whatever you want, whatever you like, you pay your money, you make your choice, whatever you need.” And over and over again, that’s what they said. No explanation of their appalling management of the economy when they were all by themselves. The fact that they ran the second most rigid COVID response all by themselves, and we’re still recovering from it. A large part of our institutions in this country are still recovering from the second most rigid application of the COVID rules of any country on earth. They think they can walk away and say, “Because we left you with these massive debts, that somehow in the next 24 months you should have turned it all around.” That’s how numb they are of the facts. There are few people there that know how to run the school tuck shop. It shows in the way they speak. If you deny that, put your hand up and tell me who you are. What’s your record of making money—private money—when you put it all on the line yourself? Hands up. Come on, tell me, what’s your experience? Not a murmur, not a mutter, not a syllable, not a sound. Out there, you people who are voting, when you’re watching, ask yourself this: “Well, if that’s their record, how will they handle my money?” That’s the critical thinking we have to be concerned about.

New Zealand First has played an integral part in this Government. It’s not been easy because there have been massively serious, inherited problems in so many areas, and we did it on the back of a huge pandemic that we had to get on top of, having paid the price for rash decisions and lockdowns that didn’t work. That’s the record analysis of the rest of the world. So why aren’t we saying it at our time in history right now?

There have been a number of major achievements, though, that we’ve made over the past two years and there are many more to come over the next 12 months. Can I just mention some things that we are dealing with as a political party. We’ve got, for example, Shane Jones and his portfolios where he’s got a marvellous record, second to none in being a “can do” Minister. That is, not talking, getting out there and do things over and over and over again. And all of a sudden in the debate today, we realise we’ve heard of some climatic disasters and they’re starting to look back and say, “Well, who spent what, where, and when?” Oh, they’re not saying that the Provincial Growth Fund was a waste of money anymore, are they? All of a sudden they’re saying that that might have been a brilliant idea. In fact, “It’s a brilliant idea, can you help us going forward?”

Well, we’d like to say, “Well, if you had three times the money, we’d do three times as much.” But that’s for after the next election.

Hon Judith Collins: I need my defence—defence. Don’t take my defence money.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well, we’re very proud, Minister, of defence and our support for defence because we understand the need, when we’re out in the real world, to walk amongst people who don’t look over our shoulder and think we’re all bull dust—who look over our shoulder and say, “You’re worth listening to because you’re part of the solution; you’re not part of the problem.” That’s the difference. I’m having this marvellous moment now—that you’ve given me the deviation at the moment—to have some poor Ministers of foreign affairs and others banging on about what we should have said with respect, for example, Afghanistan.

Afghanistan was a case where we were there, we may have been associated with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) but we weren’t part of NATO. If we were to respond, then the Minister of Defence, the Hon Judith Collins, was the right one to respond. That’s what a methodical, organised Government looks like. And she did. Why she did so much that it was in yesterday’s Herald editorial on the very day that he was opening his mouth and letting the wind blowing his tongue around—right? On the very day you’re saying, this was in The New Zealand Herald. But out there in the mainstream media, would they say, Mr Goff, excuse me, don’t you not know that? Do you not know you’ve got a Minister of Defence?”

That was her job to do the job, as the Prime Minister recognised, and as I recognised, and there he is, banging away, Mr Goff. And my question to Mr Goff is: “How do you think Hipkins feels?” He’s meant to be the leader of the Labour Party. We know he’s not, of course, but how do you think he feels? Or if you’re the foreign affairs spokesperson, how do you feel when he’s banging on about those issues? Or if you’re like Ayesha Verrall, spokesperson for health, how does she feel? My question to the mainstream media is: why don’t you get off your broad half acre and ask them how they feel, because that’s what real politics is about?

But back to the other achievements.

Hon Shane Jones: More, more!

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well, sometimes you’ve got to be thinking, you know, here we are in 2026, you’d think we surely have made progress in politics because we’ve got all these new utilities, we’ve even got artificial intelligence now. But no, the game’s got worse. The polls are unreadable; they’re unimaginable. They’re all over the place. There’re gaps of 14 percent sometimes in the polls and no one’s saying to each other that this is not good for a first world democracy. Let’s sort things out.

The point really is: we’ve taken serious portfolios and my colleagues have done a great job, portfolio after portfolio and spokesperson after spokesperson. The reality is that New Zealanders out there are beginning to understand that. But in just one year, we sorted out the previous Government’s $4.2 billion farce when it came to the Cook Strait ferries. They were charged with going out and spending $401 million and buying two ferries. Now the man from Palmerston North over there, Tangi Utikere, who’s now looking away in shame, he’s been the spokesperson taking me on, and I’m here to give him an answer today. They were charged by me in May of 2020 to buy two ferries for $401 million—that’s what I inherited. They were buying two ferries all right, but the cost of the ferries was less than 20 percent of the total cost because they went and bought two massive, big ferries and they had no infrastructure. So 80 percent of the cost was going to be blown on the infrastructure which would have taken five or six years to build for ferries that size. That’s what I inherited. And now my question to the mainstream media and half the darn unionists in this country is: can’t you understand economic facts? We’re going to save you $2.3 billion at least.

Tangi Utikere: Really?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh, really. You know, maybe more, actually—maybe more. I’ve got some good news for you. I’ve been to China, to the shipyard, and their enthusiasm knows no bounds. I think we’re going to be early with the arrival of these ships, and our job is to get the infrastructure ready. We’re going to surprise you, and guess why? Because this party’s backed by people of experience. This is not our first shipbuilding exercise.

In fact, as Judith Collins will tell you, we’re out there buying ships, buying planes, ordering these things, unlike these amateur-hour people who’d come to step up to do the job and no one says to themselves, “How will they go when they pace all these civil servants who’ve been around 10, 20, 30 years; will they be walked all over? Well, of course they get walked all over. That’s why they make these dramatic, terrible mistakes. You’ve got a man called Renney coming into Parliament. He’s going to be your new superstar. He was Grant Robertson’s economic adviser. He had a code word which was “B and H”. It’s not “B” for what you think it might be—but it should have been—it was “Borrow and Hope”. That’s all he had to offer. I know; I was there. I was staggered by things when I saw the economic plans being laid out, because they had no idea where it was all going and what, in time, it would all cost. Worse still, they had no idea that expenditure these days has got to be something that will last 30, 40, or 50 years; whether it’s infrastructure or whether it’s people.

We educate young people to be great citizens and productive earners for the country, and we make sure our health system understands that, so that they can be productive for the country. We make sure people get a fair go and live longer and work longer, because they have been great for the country. We have a system of understanding on this side of the House, and it’s based on realpolitik, not dreaming theory out of Massey University. We don’t want sociological claptrap running our country. Most of those people can’t even turn the toast around in the toaster properly.

While rail was woefully mismanaged, things are back on track. We’ve even ensured that rail made a serious profit last year. The railways are back on track, heaving logs, dairy, grains, cement, and, yes, Shane Jones, coal. Ever heard of GDP? Ever heard of jobs? Well, that’s what we’re about. You’re looking at a party of realpolitik.

Hon Shane Jones: Hear, hear!

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: You like that?

Hon Shane Jones: Hear, hear! Hear, hear! Hear, hear! Reality—reality!

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Not “Light-rail Labour”, “Tradies-on-push-bikes Greens” and the hīkoi, “car-koi” show ponies in the Māori Party. No, we’re talking about real transport, and, this year, you’ll see major advances after years of hard work. The Auckland City Rail Link—hallelujah everybody—is going to open before the general election. Years of work to ready our largest population centre for a better public transport system will finally pay off. On Thursday, the line reopens after—that’s this Thursday—the last many weeks long closure because we’ve been out rebuilding the best part of the network from the ground up. Sixty-six new freight locomotives—I’m going to say this really slowly; 66 new freight locomotives—will arrive from Spain, replacing the entire South Island fleet of almost 50-year-old locos—that’s locomotives, not Labour Party supporters—and some of the poor performing locomotives in the North Island. Freight keeping on schedule is everything, and reliable assets like this will boost KiwiRail’s performance.

We don’t dream up utopia in puffs of smoke; we talk to the workers, the unions, the freighters, the commuters and get the infrastructure built. What we’re building will be around in 50 to 100 years from now. We’re taking up where Bogle left off with the same sense of inspiration. He built more in 10 years than the next 130 years, and he did it with horse and carts. Now, we’ve gotten more advanced than that, but we’re getting back to make sure that we’ve got great alternative transport in this country, because as the Mainfreight head said to me one day, “Winston, rebuilding railways is a no-brainer—it’s important.” Last year, the Auckland electric network was extended to Pukekohe, and the third main line was built at the busiest junction of the whole network. These are just two of the projects we started in 2020. Others talked about it, but we did it. I mentioned the two ferries, so I won’t mention that again, because we’ve got to move on. We’ll spend no more than $1.7 billion on the ferries and port infrastructure. That is $2.3 billion less than the Labour project had got to.

I want to make sure you understand this as well: our thanks go to the Interislander’s crew for their dedication. Over Christmas—it was the other freight company that failed—they had a staggering success rate, over that period, at 100 percent reliability. When did you ever hear us, anywhere in railways and the ferries, getting that sort of performance? That was their performance over Christmas, and I salute them. We need them to do that. They moved 52,000 passengers and 17,000 vehicles. What’s more; we’re proud of the engineering heritage that goes behind that too. By the way, we’ve saved the Matarua Railway Station. It’s a long way from Wellington, I know, in the deep South, but it’s an icon that needed to be saved with a little bit of money and a bit of inspiration and an understanding that, long term, it’ll be great for the Southland economy as well.

Now, on foreign affairs, well, we’ve repeatedly said over the last two years that we are in the most difficult, complex, and challenging times of the last 80 years, and being careful matters. I know there are those out there who want to protest and shout and scream and virtue signal and say things, and at the end of the day, the next question is: how will they change anything or advance anybody’s cause anywhere in the world? The answer is they have not. We have been very careful. Of course we believe in multilateralism, of course we believe in the rule of law, but I want to remind some people who have been spouting on about the rule of law that for the rule of the law to operate properly and it be of any sense and value to the world, historically and today, then it has to be enforced. That’s axiomatic. Don’t people understand that? If you want to defend a terrorist called Maduro fromVenezuela—in the economy that was the number one in South America and is now being run broke by a terrorist—who had $15 million placed on his head by Joe Biden when he was the president of the United States, and in the closing two weeks before he left, he put another $10 million on top of his head, so it was $25 million. When Joe Biden did that, none of these people said a word—not a mutter, not a murmur, not a syllable, not a sound—until somebody else did it. You see their kind of politics? Their politics are hypocritical in the extreme. It’s not consistent. Would I support Maduro not having that happen to him? Of course not. He is a terrorist and appalling for his own people.

In the end, our job as a country—way out here in the South Pacific, just north of the penguins, but one of only nine democracies since 1854 with a proud record—is to watch ourselves, be careful, and ensure every decision and everything we do and everything we say advances the collective interests of the New Zealand people and, in doing so, the collective interests of our front yard, almost one-third of the Pacific, the blue continent, our Pacific neighbours. We’re out there, ladies and gentlemen, going as hard as we possibly can. We’ve been to every Pacific Islands Forum country now. It hasn’t been easy. We’re only one short, and we would have been to all of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations—we’ve only got Brunei to go. Our point is that New Zealand was always a country whose destiny relied upon our success internationally as a trading nation, and we’re doing our best in foreign affairs to back other Ministers to advance this country’s cause.

Back to the point about today’s debate: that was staggering. There have been times when Mr Brownlee—oh, sorry, I can’t bring the Speaker into this, but I know he will understand what I’m saying—there are some times when the Opposition rises and you think “Actually, I don’t like our chances come the next election.” Well, this wasn’t one of those occasions. I thought our chances just went that way after that performance because if that’s the best they can do, I can see why some of them are retiring. A lot more are going to retire before the next election. Now, if I can speak to them about a job in the future and that might help with their retirement, then feel free to give me a call. We’ve got lots of jobs we still might need people with experience to have. But nothing’s more miserable in this game than to come into Parliament knowing that if you’ve got this leadership, the team, the management, and the plan that you can win and have to say to yourselves, “I’ll be going all the way till 7 November 2026, and the day after, things will look all the same”. Alas and alack, that’s what you’re facing if you’re in the Opposition, but over this side of the House, our job is to recognise that we’re the only group of parties that can do better for this country and get on and do that.

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (16:09): Mr Speaker, Parliamentary colleagues: happy New Year. 2026 is going to be a very busy year for this Parliament because, as representatives of the New Zealand people, we have a lot of work to do to make their lives better, to fix the very basics in their life—ensuring that we have inflation under control, that interest rates are manageable, ensuring that our police have the powers they need to arrest those creating crime, ensuring our education system is educating people. But more than that, we also need to build a future for this country that addresses longstanding problems that too many in this Parliament have lamented and too few have dug deep to address. We do so against the backdrop of a world that is more volatile, certainly, than it has been in my time in Parliament.

As we embark on this task, and as the Prime Minister’s statement sets out, we have an extremely busy work agenda. I caution colleagues on the other side of the House not to take New Zealanders for fools, to credit them with the intelligence to know the difference between, on the one hand, beautifully describing a problem—which is what “hapless Hipkins” is an expert in—and, on the other side, actually coming up with solutions and actions that address those problems.

I will tell you what I heard from our Opposition colleague: what he said was “I want every New Zealander not to worry about the bills.” Well, guess what, mate? We all do. “I want foreign leaders not to say things I disagree with.” Well, precious son, welcome back to the Auckland University debating club. “I want our country to be better.” Well, I’ll tell you what, Mr Hipkins, Kiwis are smarter than that. They look to the people in this House not to simply say, “You know what, we want more people in jobs.”, but to say how they’re going to do that. They want to hear more than, “Oh, and some people don’t have savings.” Well, how are you going to increase their savings? They want to not hear absolute contradictions within the same speech. Did you hear it? He discovered numbers over the break and he went and he read a few Budget documents and here’s what he said: “Turns out we’ve got to do something about the debt.”

Well, welcome to my world, Chris Hipkins. This is the same leader who spent the past two years opposing every single savings initiative put forward by this side of the House. “Oh no, just spend the money.”, he said. He’s also discovered, over the break, this thing called inflation. Well, you know what, colleagues, this is where we’ve got to take New Zealanders seriously because what Mr Hipkins has illustrated is that he has not learnt his lesson. Because New Zealanders well remember the generational high of inflation that occurred on his watch: 7.3 percent, colleagues; more than double what it is today. Colleagues well remember that wasn’t a blip. Oh no, that wasn’t one quarter; that was sustained—those out of target inflation rates, price increases—for three years.

Now, what Mr Hipkins wants you to believe is, “Oh, no, no, no, I’ll be better next time.” I put this to you, colleagues: how can he be better next time when he’s offering the same prescription? And what’s the prescription, colleagues? It’s pretty simple. What you do is you spend more, you borrow it more, and then you tax more. That is literally the full description of the Labour Party policy agenda so far. No plan from “hapless Hipkins”, simply platitudes that, frankly, would be better in a Hallmark card. Next he’ll be saying I want to wipe every tear from every eye.

We need to do better than that. Let’s talk about actual reform and what it looks like. It looks like the fast-track legislation which is creating jobs across the country as we speak. Well, he opposed that. It looks like the tax relief that is still going into New Zealanders’ bank accounts today, that he opposes while also saying he wishes they had more money. It looks like the Investment Boost tax policy which encourages firms to invest in the growth of their own businesses. Just watch my words. That one will be on the scrapheap. Never saw tax relief he could agree with.

It looks like rates caps—so that New Zealanders who are being slaughtered by their rates bills actually can look to a future in which local government gets that under control. Well, guess what else he opposes? He doesn’t like that one either. You’ll be sensing a theme, Mr Speaker. I’ll tell you what else it looks like; it looks like replacing the red-tape nightmare that is the Resource Management Act and sorting that out. Well, we’ll see where they get to on that. It looks like setting tangible targets for our health system, saying to them: instead of on things like opposing a McDonald’s in Wānaka, we’d like you to do more hip operations. Well, guess what? Labour opposes health targets, too.

It looks like fixing our education system, ensuring that when my kids are at school, what they actually get now is a maths textbook and instruction on a clear curriculum of knowledge. Actually, he was the education Minister who oversaw a period in New Zealand where educational achievement declined. If he truly cares about those with the least privilege—those from the poorest homes—how does he look himself in the mirror knowing he robbed them of the basics of education, that should be a God-given right in this country?

Well, we’re not just looking around saying, “Oh, well, we’ll give boards of trustees some nebulous goals and we’ll do some more tikanga training.” We are ensuring that we are focused on educational achievement, structured literacy, structured numeracy, a clear curriculum, replacing NCEA, proper professional development for teachers. We are fixing the basics. And what have we heard? Oh, Willow-Jean Prime is the spokesperson, so we haven’t heard a thing.

This is what reform looks like. But I do want to give a bit of caution here, because over summer—and in fact colleagues will have done this and I’ve done it for two years—I talk to what I call my normal friends; you know, the ones who don’t really watch all the news alerts on Stuff, sometimes watch TV, and aren’t obsessed with politics. They’re good people, in fact, we should all hang out with them more often. What they said to me is: “Look, man, oh, man, the past few years just feel like it’s been really tough. First we had COVID and that felt like the worst thing that could ever happen, and then after COVID, we had that time where, like, prices were going up, house prices were exploding, we had that really, really high inflation, my mortgage bill was going up. It was crazy. And then, after that we found that the economy actually went into a downturn and it’s been really hard to dig ourselves out.”

They said to me, “You know what, I get it. I see what your Government’s doing. Basically, you’re saying there is no free lunch. We need to get the books in order, we do need to make tough choices, and ultimately this economy will grow, and we see it and we hear it, but gosh, we want you to know how hard it is. It really is hard.” So my message to New Zealanders is: we get it, we hear you, but do not let the wool be pulled over your eyes by politicians who only say, “I get it, I hear you, it’s tough, I’ll be nicer.”

They need to come up with ideas, plans, solutions, actions. On the other side, there are none. On this side, there is a burning ambition for reform because we believe in this country’s immense potential. In a world that is unstable, we are safe, we are secure. In a world that wants for natural resources, we feed 40 million people around the world. In a country this small we’ve created world-leading firms: Xero, Halter, Rocket Lab. We’ve got the smartest people. In a world that wants for critical minerals, we have plenty; we just tie them up in red tape. We have the goods to succeed, but we won’t get there by sitting back and lying in the mud of the problem, wallowing in it. Instead, we need to get on, make tough choices, make reforms, take action. That is what this Government is doing, and smart New Zealanders will vote for that.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour) (16:19): Mr Speaker, happy new political year. It’s good to see all of our colleagues back.

The opening debate of the political year is on the Prime Minister’s statement. It’s an opportunity for the Government to set out its programme for the year, to cheer itself on a bit. What did we hear from the Minister of Finance’s speech? Well, over half of it spent in attacks on the Opposition. There was no attempt to set out their own programme, no attempt to say what was good about their programme. Instead, it was just a series of, frankly, quite malicious attacks on the Opposition.

Hon Rachel Brooking: Unsurprising.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: So—and it’s unsurprising, because the Minister of Finance is failing in her job. She is not doing well. We can tell that by the way that ordinary New Zealanders are doing it tough. Now, let’s recall that Nicola Willis leading into the election in 2023 said that her plans would fix the economy, and, in fact, if her tax plan didn’t work she would resign.

Well, in the pre-election update in 2023, we were predicting that growth would be at 1.7 percent in 2024 and at 2.3 percent in 2025. Nicola Willis’ fix for that: 0.5 percent down in 2024 and 0.6 percent down in 2025. Has she resigned yet?

In the pre-election update in 2023, it was said that debt was about 40 percent of GDP. Now, that’s pretty reasonable by world standards. In fact, it’s the level that we can sustain in New Zealand. But Nicola Willis said that was too much and she was going to get debt down. What is it now? It’s at 43 percent. Has she resigned?

Nicola Willis told us that we would fix inflation. There’s been some interesting stuff happening with inflation too. Just in the last few days, we found out that inflation has gone up to 3.1 percent. It’s really interesting. Comparing September 2025 to September 2024, inflation was just at 3 percent, but if you dig into the figures, it was actually at 3.046 percent. They were saved by the rounding gods back then.

I dug into the December 2025 figures. Perhaps it was just something to do with the rounding. Perhaps inflation was only just over that 3.05 to round it up to 3.1 percent. No such luck. Between December 2024 and December 2025, inflation was 3.108 percent. Under Nicola Willis’ watch, in the last year, inflation has gone up. She promised—she promised. She said, “I will fix inflation.” She has not done so.

We need to think what that means for ordinary New Zealanders. Those are economists’ figures, and sitting in this House we debate them a lot, but what does it mean when we say that inflation has gone up like that? Well, underlying that is a food crisis. In the last year, a 2-litre bottle of milk has gone up 15.8 percent. It’s now nearly $5 to buy 2 litres of milk. In the last year, meat has gone up 8.2 percent. That means we’re paying more to eat some meat in our meals. We’re a meat-eating nation. That’s what we do. In the last year, bread has gone up 58.3 percent. Those are the Stats New Zealand figures that have come out just in the last week. That’s a huge increase in a basic, a staple that mums rely on when they go to the supermarket to get the bread for the school lunches.

For ordinary New Zealanders, the squeeze on their pockets is real and it’s fascinating to see how that has played out. There was some data out just a few days ago that came out from Stats New Zealand, and Retail New Zealand commented on it. What it showed was that despite a bit of a surge in November, in the black Friday sales, in December, retail spending was down year on year on December 2024. People are scared to spend money.

There’s a little bit more than that, too. The amount spent on credit cards went up. People are reaching into credit to pay for day-to-day expenses, and now retail sales seem to be declining. Our retailers were relying on a good December to get through, but it hasn’t happened. What does that mean? We’re going to see retailers closing. One that spoke a little bit to my heart, because I love crafts, was Minerva here in Wellington—can’t sustain it anymore. They’re closing. That was announced just in the last few days.

The problem is that when a retail business goes, it’s the owner’s income. It’s the people who work there—that’s their income too. That means more families relying on benefits. It means more families who do not have an income. It’s not just a business going out of business; it’s people losing their income, and that squeeze on the back pocket becomes even more real. That is the way that Nicola Willis says she has fixed this economy. She has made a series of choices about this economy and how it will be run. She has made a series of choices that actually have got us into trouble.

People say, “Why is it like this?” Over on that side of the House, they blame the last Government. Well, frankly, that’s wearing pretty thin. They have been in power for over two years now, and more to the point, they made big promises about fixing it. Have they done so? They have not.

They made a choice to stop building social housing. They carried on with the existing projects, but they stopped all the future ones. What are people working in that industry to do when their pipeline of work is disappearing? Well, they’ve packed up and left.

They made a choice to fire masses of public servants and that choice has flowed right through into the streets of every town. Particularly in Wellington, we’ve seen businesses closing down, but it happens elsewhere too, because people who do not have money in their back pockets do not spend it in the local shops.

They made a choice to under-fund the health system, so that people cannot get the treatment they need on a timely basis. Those are all choices that the Government has made and they’ve had the immediate impact on the people who’ve lost their jobs, on the operations that have not been performed, on the homes that have not been built. They’ve had a long-term impact on all of us, and that was their choice.

Here on this side of the House, our focus is on jobs, it is on health, it is on homes, it is on the cost of living. Those are the policies we will be working on this year to ensure that all New Zealanders, not just the rich few, have an opportunity, with a bit of hard work, with a bit of input into their communities, to get ahead, to thrive, to have a roof over their head and food on the table, and the capacity to go out and participate in our society, to enjoy all the great things that New Zealand has to offer.

We’re asking New Zealanders to consider this. We’ve got a big task ahead of us to build for the future, to make our country better again, but to do it not just for the few but for the many, to ensure that the Government in this country works for all of us. Whether we live in an isolated settlement in Northland; whether we live in Christchurch, which is flourishing at the moment; whether we live in Wellington or New Plymouth; whether we are a farmer or a builder, a teacher or a nurse, we want to make this country better for all of us.

STEVE ABEL (Green) (16:29): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It can be told what somebody values, not only by what they say but by what they choose not to say—not only by what they focus on but by what they ignore, deny, and remain silent on. There is a word glaringly absent from the Prime Minister’s statement and from his state of the nation speech a few days ago: that word is “environment”. The cradle of nature by which our existence is held doesn’t get a mention by this Government. Much of the Prime Minister’s obsession with economic growth contains, implicitly, his commitment to the destruction and sacrifice of the environment for the profits of the few. His Government may have ended the war on landlords, as he put it, but it has declared the war on nature.

The Prime Minister only talks of money—of growing the economy as the highest aim of his Government. He never mentions society, community, the good of the people, or the health of the people—and even in the shadow of another extreme weather event, he doesn’t mention the existential challenge of our generation, climate change. As if we live only in an economy, not in a country in a nation State, he never mentions the founding agreement, Te Tiriti o Waitangi. His ideology is money—the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few, while most people can’t afford to put food on the table.

I sought out the original definition of “oligarchy” from 2,400 years ago, by a gentleman called Plato. He describes the oligarchic character thus: “The further they go in the process of accumulating wealth, the more they value it and the less they value goodness … The oligarch is one in whom reason is forbidden to make any calculation or inquiry but how to make more money … Ambition is forbidden to admire or value anything but wealth and the wealthy or to compete for anything but cash or cash value … To the money-loving businessman, honour and admiration and office are reserved for the rich, and the poor are despised.” That defines the attitude of this Luxon Government.

Perhaps the most glaring example of this Government putting the value of private wealth over goodness is that the newly to be passed primary legislation designed to supposedly protect our environment will now be centred around the protection of private property rights. How glaring an example can you get of the sacrifice of the commons and the common good for private profit? The short-term sugar hit of Aussie mining is more important than the precious species that this Government jokes about sending to extinction. Whether on the Denniston Plateau, or in the beautiful native forests of Coromandel; on the spectacular landscapes of Otago or in the deep ocean of Taranaki or the precious crystal springs of Te Waikoropupū, they shall destroy what is irreplaceable and what is not theirs but is our common inheritance—and they will destroy it so that a mere few can have more money.

Luxon’s state of the nation speech spoke of making money by making rockets and milking cows—but if those rockets are supplying data for US invasions of sovereign States, and those cows are so overstocked that people can’t drink the water from their kitchen tap because of nitrate contamination, then all he’s done is sold our souls, our rivers, and our public health for the profits of the few. Chasing the miserly royalties of boom-and-bust mining and drilling that leave a toxic legacy of arsenic and cyanide tailings dams is no match for New Zealand - owned industries based on renewable resources like wood and wool and wine, and our creative and innovative wherewithal. That is the path that the Greens support—for nature and people, where communities are put first, not the profits of the few. That is the way to a fossil fuel - free future where we can have lasting livelihoods and a decent life.

When the oligarch speaks, he never mentions the common good and the public good. He never mentions the inheritance of beautiful nature that it is our duty, in this generation, to protect, preserve, and pass on to our descendants. He doesn’t mention them because he doesn’t care about those things—and so is manifest Plato’s simple and ancient truth: the higher the prestige of wealth, the lower that of goodness will be. That is already the Luxon Government legacy. Kia ora.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Tamatha Paul—and, I’m sorry, it’s two five-minute calls.

TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central) (16:35): Kia ora. Crazy how we wrote our speeches independently, but we’re basically saying the same thing but in different fonts! That is great to see.

In the Prime Minister’s statement, he said the word “grow” 56 times. “Grow” the economy; “grow” a business; “grow” export markets. But he’s not growing New Zealand—I think we all know that—because everyone is leaving, and he’s selling off the parts that remain of our precious country to the highest international bidders. But how can the Prime Minister lament about the need for growth and then, in the very same sitting here in the House, feign concern about the constant natural disasters that continue to happen year on year? I don’t know how much mental energy the Prime Minister actually gives to thinking about the environment, but I would assume, based on his statements today, that he and his Cabinet hold a philosophy that we are somehow separate from or superior to our environment. What we have seen this year and every year that a one-in-a-hundred-year event happens—which seems to be every single year—is that we are not separate from our environment, and that we are in fact an extremely vulnerable part of our environment. We are very much at the mercy of mother Nature every single second that we breath.

Over summer—I had a great summer, by the way; I hope you all had a great summer, too—I was out fishing on Whangārei Heads, and there was a thunderstorm. I remember just sitting there—the thunder was so loud, I was covering my ears; my dog was terrified; the ocean picked up—and I just thought, “We are so small.” Us human beings are so small in the context of the force that is nature. What it reminds me of, over and over again, is “māuiui whenua, māuiui moana, māuiui awa, māuiui tāngata”—if the land is sick, if our oceans are depleted, and if our rivers run dry, the people can be nothing but sick. Rather than tending to her—rather than tending to nature—one by one, we’re leaving. We’re abandoning that duty.

Even today, before question time, I said farewell to one of my really good friends, Sakura, who is leaving to Melbourne tomorrow. Over the weekend, I heard that my partner’s brother and his young family are leaving to Australia in just a few months. And who can blame them? Why would they stay? They have nothing. I have to say, and share a bit personally, that, even before I was a politician, I never wanted to leave Aotearoa, because, in my heart, I know that I want to raise my babies at the base of their mountain. I want my babies to learn how to swim in the Ōhiwa Harbour. I want my babies to have their only language as babies to be te reo Māori. I know that this is what my friends and my family want, too—even in their respective cultures—but they’re trading that off for survival. They’re choosing to go to a place that they know nothing about, where they have nothing—they have no support. That family I was talking about, they know nobody. I’m worried about them; they’ve got two kids under two years old, and they have nobody to support them there. But how can they stay in a place where they can’t survive? That’s the trade-off that young New Zealanders are making: do we stay here in the place that raised us, so that our whānau and generations to come might know exactly where they come from; or do we have to put first being able to feed them, being able to put shoes on their feet, making sure that they have everything that they need?

Whakapapa is important; I know some people in this House think it’s airy-fairy, but whakapapa is important. Not just Māori whakapapa, even Scottish whakapapa—I’m wearing my tartan from old Robbie Burns Day, which was recently. All whakapapa is important, and what I want Christopher Luxon to know is that if you just only value money, that money that you earn and accumulate at the expense of everybody else will never fill you up to not feel empty inside, because you don’t know who you are or where you come from.

Christopher Luxon’s New Zealand encourages us to be selfish and it encourages us to be greedy, but that is not who we are. I have been to almost every continent on this planet. There is nothing like the courage and the kindness of the people in Aotearoa, and I’ll never stop believing that.

Hon KAREN CHHOUR (Minister for Children) (16:40): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on the Government’s programme for the year ahead. Since day one, the focus of this Government, alongside rebuilding the economy and reducing the cost of living, has been restoring law and order.

In my role as Minister for Children, I have been focused on ensuring our system encourages and teaches young people that they can be more, they can dream big, and they can achieve so much in their lives. The front-line staff who work with these young people are some of the most inspiring and hard-working people you could meet. To the staff and the organisations and everybody up and down the country who works through the holidays and work with these young people, I want to thank you on behalf of a very grateful nation.

I’m proud of the results that have been achieved in reducing serious youth offending and I’m proud of the staff who have motivated these young people into a better way of living. Teaching through words, kindness, examples, and also through clarity that crime does affect and hurt others. Social workers and mentor teams and support teams not only support the people who commit the crimes but also the sibling groups. They support entire families to make sure that they’re engaging with our education system and seeking support for their health and wellbeing and other needs. We do not lock up and throw away the key. We support them to grow up to be credits to their communities; not to victimise their communities.

In my role as Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence, I’ve been focused on meeting with survivors and ensuring that their voices are heard. There is still work to be done and actions can be slow to bear fruit, but we are listening. We want perpetrators to learn from and hear the voices of survivors—the powerful voices that should inspire perpetrators of harm to never hurt anyone ever again. Sadly, not all perpetrators take this opportunity to better their lives. But this does not mean that we should not continue to try and we should not continue this work. It is hugely important but it does mean we must be realistic about the world that we live in.

What we keep hearing from the Opposition—Te Pāti Māori, in particular, most recently—is that being tough on crime is somehow being tough on Māori. That is both wrong and hurtful to all victims of crime. As Māori, we are among the most victimised people in New Zealand. We are more likely to be victims of crime than any other ethnic group. This Government is being tough on crime to protect Māori and all other New Zealanders that are victims of crime. They are trying to protect and care for those who are abused, exploited, assaulted, and often killed. We’ve seen the experience of a Government that believes punishment and consequences are a low priority. In the end, it was only the vulnerable who suffered.

When this Government started locking criminals up, that reality started to change, and long may that continue. Under Labour, 37 percent of Māori reported being victims of crime. Today, that figure has dropped to 33.5 percent. There are fewer Māori victims because there are consequences again. So what is the Opposition’s response to fewer Māori being harmed? Often it is to cry racism. For Te Pāti Māori, instead of holding offenders accountable, they want to abolish prisons altogether. Their message to criminals is clear: “Do the crime and you’ll not do the time.” The message to victims is also clear: “Don’t bother coming forward. Don’t bother speaking to what you’ve been through, because you don’t matter.”

So let’s be clear: being tough on crime is not being tough on Māori; it is being tough on the criminals who all too often ruin Māori lives. This Government will not apologise for that. I will not apologise for that. I hope and believe that everyone who comes to this place seeks to do good and to make our country better. We share that aspiration and we should never let our different views around how to achieve that take away from our common humanity. That humanity should be cherished, but we also must use our time here to protect the vulnerable and to elevate the voices of those who cannot be here. I’m here to share their words. For far too long, survivors have been erased from these conversations. Pretending prisons are the problem, while refusing to confront harm, only protects the perpetrator of that harm, not the victims. Ignoring violence does not heal our communities; it only encourages it. Accountability is not oppression.

The reality for our young serious offenders is that they are on a pathway to adult corrections and a lifetime in and out of incarceration, unless they are given a chance to turn their lives around and grab hold of those opportunities. But this isn’t about just giving them another chance; it’s an investment into keeping our communities safe. If we can intervene in their lives early, we can protect our communities from significant harm. It is not a form of kindness to just give up on our young people when they do wrong, when they hurt others, and when they are causing havoc in their communities. This is not care. This is not good parenting. This is apathy. This Government will never give up on these young people, nor will we let them continue towards a path straight to adult offending and continue a cycle of criminality and victimisation in our communities.

We know there is not a singular solution to young offending. This is why we are undertaking pilots like the military-style academies and making our youth justice residences safer and with better rehabilitation. In less than one term, we have achieved what seemed unachievable only three years ago. If we are entrusted by the public with another opportunity to continue this work, the results can only get better.

Sometimes, people ask me how I manage with the tragic and often heart-breaking stories I hear as both Minister for Children and Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence. My answer is, when appropriate, to have a laugh, because, if you don’t laugh, sometimes you might cry. With that in mind, here is my attempt at a joke. While Te Pāti Māori may be against any form of punishment for offenders, there are similarities between being one of their MPs and being incarcerated. Like being a Te Pāti Māori MP, a judge has the ability to sentence you to it. Like being a Māori Party MP, you might not always love your cellmates. Like being a Te Pāti Māori MP, being incarcerated provides an opportunity for individuals to question the poor choices in life they have made—one of which might have resulted in the most unfortunate but avoidable fate of being a Te Pāti Māori MP. They have almost served their term, and I’m sure this is one sentence that most New Zealanders won’t mind abolishing.

This year, we will be dominated by the election, but we in Government will continue to improve lives and make our communities safer. We are listening to the victimised, protecting the vulnerable, and, hopefully, turning around the lives of those who think they can hurt others without consequences. The past few years have spoken clearly: those days are over and long may that continue.

Hon PENNY SIMMONDS (Minister for the Environment) (16:49): It’s a privilege to rise in support of the Prime Minister’s statement. It’s also a privilege to be a member of this National-led Government that is fixing the basics and building the future. But, as I rise, I’d first like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the recent passing of New Zealand’s longest-serving mayor, Sir Tim Shadbolt. A mayor for Invercargill for 26 years, Sir Tim was unconventional, always unexpected, high risk, hilarious, and deeply loved. To Invercargill, he was a promoter, a public relations expert, a comedian, a communicator, and a compassionate mayor. He was a man of many dimensions. In Invercargill, we saw the very best of him, knowing how much he valued being loved and respected by southerners.

Sir Tim was a loyal and enthusiastic supporter of Invercargill’s local polytechnic, the Southern Institute of Technology. He was also a firm believer in locals knowing what is best for their communities and that, in order to fix the basics and build the future, equitable and local access to vocational education is foundational, both economically and socially, in the ripple effects for individuals, families, and the wider community. I think that speaks to some of the speeches that have been given today that say economics can’t go hand in hand with social good.

Creating more skilled jobs, higher incomes, and more affordable housing for Kiwi families will only be possible with a strong vocational education system throughout New Zealand that supports a strong economy. Under the overly centralised model of the previous Government, it has been very difficult for polytechnics to meet the real needs of their communities, to build the future for the people in those communities. Local employers, industries, and learners have told us clearly that centralisation for vocational education doesn’t work.

The vocational education sector has had some really tough years under the previous Government, but now, after two years of very careful management and remedial work, we are seeing a recovery taking place. With the foundations laid last year, vocational education and training will shift into full momentum in 2026. The system is now stronger, more responsive, and geared for growth, with regional polytechnic councils fully empowered, 10 polytechnics reestablished, and four more polytechnics under consideration. Active industry skills boards. Industry and employers are back at the heart of work-based learning, making decisions about what skills industries and employers need to build the future of this country.

Returning decision-making to the regions and to industries puts control in the hands of those closest to local labour markets: the people who best understand what skills are needed and how to deliver them. Regional polytechnics will once again be able to tailor training to the priorities of their communities, and they’ll do so in partnership with employers and industry leaders. This will help regional economies by equipping people with the skills that employers need. Restoring local governance means that these communities can now respond more directly to economic demand and growth opportunities, because locals know best. The focus is turning outward, towards opportunity, innovation, and the skills New Zealanders need to thrive. Apprentices and students will train in a practical and a purposeful way, whether on campus, online, or on the job, all connected to real work.

In a year when New Zealand is fixing the basics while building the future, vocational education is not on the sidelines; it is at the centre of New Zealand’s ambition. It supports the industries that are the engine room of our economy. Each year, it serves more than 250,000 learners. That’s a quarter of a million people building their future, their industries, and their communities through a pipeline of confident graduates ready to step into real employment opportunities. This is about more than education; it’s about regional jobs, stronger local economies, and ensuring industries have access to the skilled workforce that they need to grow.

Thinking back to Sir Tim, he and I travelled widely, recruiting students, with a lot of stories that wouldn’t be fit for this House, but he always, always personally assured families that Invercargill was safe and that their young person would be cared for, and he meant it. He attended countless orientations, prizegivings, graduations, and cultural events, staying connected with the students he had helped to recruit. Our job is to make sure that learners are connected, that learners are getting the right skills in the right place at the right time, preparing our regions to grow.

The Green Party talks about growth as if it is a bad thing. Our industries and our people must be able to compete to get ahead. That’s why this Government is rebuilding a vocational education system that delivers on its promise, equipping people with the basics that they need to support local businesses and local industries to back regional success and grow the economy. That’s the kind of system New Zealand deserves, and that’s what we are building.

We have gone past thinking that everything from the centre is the way to do it. We have gone to where we know the growth can occur: back to the regions, to the communities, to the industries that know what they want. They know what is needed to be able to grow our communities. We are fixing the basics and building the future, and we are putting the vocational education system at the very centre of this economy and this country to ensure that our people and our industries have the skills that they need to ensure the economic success of this country.

Once again, I acknowledge the recent death of New Zealand’s longest-serving mayor, Mr Tim Shadbolt, an extraordinary man who did extraordinary things in Southland. Once again, I reiterate that it is a privilege to be a member of this National-led Government, which is fixing the basics and building the future. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori) (16:57): Thank you. What kind of leader stands in front of a nation that is hurting worse than it has ever hurt before, that stands in front of te iwi Māori, who has pleaded with it to stop doing what it’s doing, to the point that we’ve had record submitters, record protests, unprecedented pleas? A Prime Minister that declares that recovery has arrived. Well, I don’t know who the heck this Prime Minister and this Government are talking to, but it’s not the people in our electorates. It is not the people on the ground. It is not those who are choosing between whether they can afford kai on their table or power in their houses.

What kind of Government celebrates $11 billion in savings when those savings have been at the expense of thousands of jobs, of people who just want to be able to live on their land with their whānau and be able to have a decent quality of life? What kind of Government says the recovery has arrived when record numbers of our citizens are going offshore to Australia, record numbers of rangatahi, and when we look at those, we’re looking at a Government that is saying, a Prime Minister who’s stating, “Recovery has arrived.”, yet Maori unemployment is at 12.7 percent, three times higher than for non-Māori. What is he listening to? Where is he going? This Prime Minister is clearly not talking to those in the construction industry, talking to those who are trying to go through school, talking to nursing graduates, talking to teachers, talking to those laid off at Kinleith, talking to those in polytechnics, not talking to anyone who actually lives in this nation, except the elite few.

This is not leadership. This statement is not that of a leader who deserves to be looking after this nation. It’s cruelty dressed up as economics, and we will not be silent while they continue to tell us that poverty is their progress.

We stand here in the shadow of Rātana, who was guided by the pou—by Te Tiriti and by the pou—of looking after our people, looking after the wellbeing, looking after mātauranga, and looking after justice.

“This recovery has arrived.” Four words. Over 72,000 citizens are leaving Aotearoa in this Government’s time. That means one person per every seven minutes is leaving Aotearoa. One person per every seven minutes from our homes, from our community, from our schools; graduates, those that are qualified apprentices, those who are experienced in businesses, those who are experienced in management and leadership—draining out of this place because there is no other way that they can see to get the quality of life that they are prepared to work extremely hard for. I’m hearing from nurses, teachers, builders, all of them—labourers—all ready to go out and leave their communities because they do not feel there is any other option.

This is the real story that this statement, completely, is devoid of. We’ve got a Prime Minister who promised more jobs. Where are they? We’ve got a Prime Minister who promised higher incomes. Where are they? Māori are overrepresented, and younger cohorts leaving. What that means for us is that this Prime Minister does not care, has never cared, and cannot see the Māori that he is affecting. This leaves w’ānau, community, a whole major generational gap—our marae. The whole cost of living is a reality check that this Prime Minister is trying to gloss over and state we should all pretend. This Prime Minister says, “Recovery has arrived.” Well, maybe in his elite world, because in my world where I live, the pain that I’m seeing on the ground, those that are losing hope would not be taking heart by the Prime Minister’s statements.

When we’ve got wages up 2.1 percent versus a 3.1 percent inflation, that equals real wage cuts. Costs are exceeding our wages. I’m just going to say that again, in case it’s not understood: the cost of living is exceeding our wages, making it really difficult for people who probably even would have voted for this Government once upon a time. We need this Prime Minister to get out there and see how minimum wages are increasing below the cost of goods means that poverty is deepening in Aotearoa. Poverty has now come into middle-class New Zealanders, and we’ve got a Government that sits there and says, “The recovery has arrived.” He needs to go to his local PAK’nSAVE and sit there at the counter when we’ve got people working out what they can afford to pay for in their trolleys and what they can’t. He needs to go out and see our kaumātua who think it’s a luxury now to eat protein, to eat meat—the very meat that is growing on their whenua. Where does this Government kick out? Because it’s certainly not in my community. He needs to go and see the families who are deciding whether they can afford to travel to the doctors or not because they can’t afford to put fuel in their car. The unemployment forecast is at 226,000 on jobseeker versus his predicted 195,000.

We have a Prime Minister that is absolutely selling the Resource Management Act, selling our environment, on the pretence that that’s what development should look like; on the pretence that infrastructure should be at the cost of our community, at the cost of enabling sea bed mining, enabling extraction, fast tracking beyond the approval not only of the Treaty but of those communities worst affected by this. We’ve got National Ministers writing new rules, greenlighting things I’ve never seen written before.

We’ve got a Government that takes pride in its law and order. And, absolutely, we would abolish prisons, because we have, as Māori, over 50 percent of the population in prison; 61 percent in there have drug and addiction habits; 70 percent can’t read; 80 percent have head injuries; 87 percent were unemployed before they got into prison. See the model of what poverty does to us? See how it immediately impacts us? We must stop this justice system that is about imprisoning our way through justice. We have to create opportunities for people to be able to address their drug and addiction habits; opportunities for those 18-year-olds that are in prison because they couldn’t afford to pay their traffic fine. We need to be able to end cycles that are making sure that families can continue to be well. But, no, let’s just lock them, throw the key. “I’ve locked them, put the key in, thrown them away forever.”

This is the thing that really astonishes me, because we’re a party under attack because we believe in transformation. We’re a party under attack because we highlight the issues that are plaguing us as Māori, and it makes this Government, this Prime Minister, extremely uncomfortable—a Prime Minister who’s happy to mihi to iwi when we arrive for crisis, but can’t see what iwi Māori, whānau, hapū do every day. Every day, we have solutions for our people. Every day, we look after our kaumātua. Every day, we sit there and address the fact that Māori have dementia, we have no beds, and Te Whatu Ora’s failing them. Every day, we live in a health system that’s failing worse than the previous Government before, and that was bad enough.

We’ve got no acknowledgment of Māori anywhere in this statement, because this Prime Minister only wants to see us when he’s comfortable with us. This Prime Minister only wants to see te iwi Māori when it’s economically opportunistic for him, and that’s an absolute sin. We’ve got a Government that’s got no commitment to te reo Māori, no commitment to the taiao, no commitment to housing, to health, to inequities. In fact, nothing worse puts this Government off than accepting and realising the damage of the inequities that they continue to put on our people and our communities. No relief of power, no community renewable energy solutions, nothing innovative—just “This is what I’m going to do; I’m stating to you the same thing I’ve done in the last couple of years.”

The trouble, and the absolute horrific part of all of this, is that there are communities out there, there are iwi running hauora entities that are taking the weight of the health system. There are iwi out there with massive educational opportunities that could sit there and show you this is a new, innovative way of being. There are iwi out there prepared to partner at scale—at scale, not at comfort—to be able to address the housing situation, to be able to invest more in papa kāinga, to be able to invest more in communities. But, no, this is a Government that believes that “Recovery has arrived.” I could never think of anything more bereft of the truth or the facts.

I think the real sad part about this is that we need to make sure that this Government is reminded every day of the magic that iwi Māori are doing out there. It’s not just something that happens when you couldn’t get there until days later, Prime Minister; it’s something that iwi innovatively do all the time: protect their taiao, protect their tamariki. They are prepared to work and help break cycles that were created and perpetuated by Governments way before you and will continue to do if we don’t talk about the fact that we need transformation in Aotearoa. We are too wealthy to be having the depth of poverty that we see and experience in Aotearoa. The saddest thing is that we have the opportunity to build a nation, but as long as we have leaders led by a Prime Minister who’s in total denial of the harm and he shirks at every headline that we say we want transformation and justice—and, yes, in prisons and education—shame on you, Prime Minister.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Resources) (17:07): New Zealanders, I’ll have you know, the matua has been engaged in high-level discussions to grow the economy in inverse proportions to the last contribution, because I don’t need to hear the words; I already know. There would have been some rank opposing the stairway to economic heaven, otherwise known as mining; otherwise known as using the resources, as she would say, of Tangaroa, the God of the sea. Well, let the “God of rhetoric” make a few observations.

This is a year of delivery. The small part of responsibility that I’ve had has been focused on consistent delivery. Now, as the co-leader of the Māori Party said earlier today, there is a great deal of woe, pain, and insecurity related to these weather events—and, sadly, as Parliament stood today and observed a period of silence for our fellow New Zealanders, visitors, who have perished. But, folks, this Government has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into flood mitigation, flood adaptation—

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: You call that climate adaptation?

Hon SHANE JONES: —because—oh, let me remind the other co-leader of the Māori Party, who unwisely observed that, somehow, her and the matua could be in the same waka and form a Government together. No, no, no. The matua’s waka sails to a rising sun, with a great deal of skilled navigation. The waka she represents is holed. It’s what we say in Ngāpuhi: it’s pakaru. The South Island is pakaru—it means it’s dented, bent out of shape. But that’s not just waka; that’s the political philosophy of that co-leader of the Māori Party.

As I said at Rātana Marae, 180 years ago there was a climatic event, bad weather on the shores of Lake Taupō. What I said to the young ariki from Tūwharetoa, I said, “E tama, the name of your tupuna is Horonuku, “horo” being to collapse; “nuku”, the land, Papatūānuku.” Inclement weather caused the side of a hill to collapse, 180 years ago, and the ariki was buried—180 years ago. So please don’t tell me that all of a sudden these weather events—as unfortunate and dangerous as they are, that New Zealand is not capable of adapting and learning.

Look no further than the man in front of you, who has delivered the money on behalf of the Government to boost stopbanks, rebuild roads, and improve the capacity of infrastructure. That’s the delivery, not all of these extraordinary, fairy tale - like accounts that somehow, if we tax cows, if we close down industry, if we destroy jobs in the South Island, that all of a sudden we’re going to have a better climate overnight. We will have a worse economic climate, and not only will that worse economic climate afflict families and communities in regional New Zealand, it’ll drive them out of existence.

This is why the fast-track legislation represents one of the best opportunities for the Taranaki region to develop the resources, to create the jobs, and I look forward to that far-sighted institution otherwise known as the fast-track legislation to provide a brilliant opportunity. Now, I know there’ll be some seagulls, some karoro flying around, of particularly strange colours, trying to undermine the process of the fast track, but fair-minded Kiwis realise that it is delivering. It can deliver for Taranaki, and in inverse proportions to the rhetoric we hear from certain members, but, fortunately, they’ll be gone at the end of the year.

I’m not talking about the colleague from the other side of the House over here. He’ll still be there. But I fear there’s a young man from Whanganui who has an even better tattoo on his face than the other co-leader of the Māori Party, and he is standing up to provide, apparently, to the Labour Party. I mean, he’s not my cup of tea. He could certainly do with a haircut, but I’ll overlook those imperfections in the context of a democratic contest.

However, let me come back to the vexed issue of fisheries.

Grant McCallum: Are you bait?

Hon SHANE JONES: I am not berley. We are not going to surrender the solvency, the viability of the New Zealand fishing industry for some weekend spear fisherman who may have seen some random fish out of the cod end of a particular boat’s trawling activity. For as long as I stand here with the privilege of representing our Government in inshore fishing, there will be no termination of trawling, there will be no termination of the inshore fishing industry to suit the misinformation, addled thinking of Greenpeace and their fellow travellers, otherwise known as the ringleaders of the recreational sector.

Now, no New Zealander has profited in terms of reputation development other than Matt Watson in fisheries. Now, that man has made an art form of stigmatising, tainting, and spreading great bursts of misinformation against the commercial fishing industry whilst himself maintaining a very tidy business. Well, sorry, Mr Watson, in the pursuit of facts, you’ve met your match with the matua.

Now, of course, the other thing that must not be overlooked amongst this group of people who want to terminate inshore fisheries is they are basically saying they want to unravel the full and final fisheries settlement, otherwise known as the Sealord settlement, entered into in the time of the Rt Hon Jim Bolger, Doug Graham, and Doug Kidd. On this side of the House, we are not going to feed ridiculous expectations that Treaty settlements can be renegotiated as first suggestions on the other side of the House at every generation. Neither are we going to give in to weekend Yamaha, Kawasaki, hīkoi experts who should have been on a boat rather than on the Harbour Bridge, give in to their desires, and then undo, unravel the full and final fisheries settlement just so they can enjoy better access on the weekend to inshore fisheries. This is a shared resource. It requires balance and it requires a quality of leadership that is both candid, informed, and doesn’t perpetuate this grievance mentality, this colonial guilt that riddles the Māori analysis, largely on that side of the House.

Now, why is that being fed? They are trying to feed a sense of permanent grievance with that cult of decolonisation. New Zealand cannot go ahead with that level of burden, that handicap, which is why, as a consequence of various speeches, I’ll be giving at least one or two a year all over the country. I suspect I’ll be giving about 52 speeches as we secure greater levels of electoral support.

Look, I won’t talk about the polls—that’s for my leader to say—but the trend is your friend and the trend is heading in the right direction because not only are we going to tolerate an end to unfettered immigration, to my friends from the right side of the House, there’s no way that we are going to allow the foundation culture of New Zealand to be surrendered by that tried but unfair and unhappy set of consequences of being too liberal with immigration.

At the same time, a good Government is a steward not only of unity but of national consciousness and national cohesiveness. That is why there’s only one party on matters Māori who focuses on cohesiveness, delivery—and, by the way, please tell me the name of the politician, the leader, and the party who has delivered consistently for Parihaka, Waitangi, the sites of Māori battle with the Crown, Rātana, and investing in a marae near Ōpōtiki necessary to ensure that the resilience and the community security is boosted. The name of that party is New Zealand First.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour) (17:18): Thank you, Mr Speaker. We’ve heard from members on the Government benches who have waxed lyrical today about this being—[Interruption] Keep going?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): I was just checking it was a split call.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: Oh, yes. We’ve heard from members on the Government benches who have talked about this being a Government that invests in the basics, that this is a year of delivery for this Government. Honestly, I haven’t heard from a bunch of members more delusional than that lot, because that is not what we are seeing. This is a Government that is incredibly out of touch with what New Zealanders are experiencing day in, day out, because what they’re feeling, what people across the length and breadth of Aotearoa New Zealand are feeling is not investment in the basics or delivery from this Government, and I’ve got a couple of proof points that I thought I’d touch on in my contribution in the House today.

We know that in September 2023, Treasury was forecasting the New Zealand economy to grow. What did we see instead under this lot? We’ve seen the economy shrink. We’ve seen inflation go up under the stewardship, apparently, of the finance Minister, Nicola Willis. We’ve seen growth, for sure, but in unemployment. We’ve seen growth in record numbers of New Zealanders leaving New Zealand for better futures.

Some people say to me that we’ve always had people leave New Zealand for other shores. That’s true. Firstly, we’ve never seen it in terms of the record numbers that we’re seeing now, and previously, people had a choice. Now, they’re leaving in droves because they don’t see a future for themselves in New Zealand, and that’s what needs to change, but it’s not changing under this Government.

We’ve seen KiwiSaver withdrawals for hardship increase significantly—by 10,000 in 2025 compared to 2024—with no sign of that getting better. It’s no surprise that people now have to tap into their retirement savings just to get by, because we’ve seen food prices soar as a result of decisions made by this Government. Milk, meat, and bread have increased by 60 percent under a Government that was elected to fix the cost of living, but has only made decisions that have made the cost of living worse for all New Zealanders.

I want to touch on what the disability community has been facing, because some have been doing it tougher than others. We’ve seen decisions made right from 18 March by Ministers opposite that have led to—and it’s laid out really well in a recent report called Whaikaha, Whaimana: Our Voices Count, by Disability Leadership Canterbury, who have outlined in great detail the increase in psychological harm and the severe economic strain that disabled people and carers have been put to because of decisions made by this National coalition Government. There is the increase in social isolation for disabled people across New Zealand, who now have reduced access to community activities and respite. There is the strain in relationships, the worsened health—I mean, it’s got so much harder for everyone to access doctors when they need it. The cost has increased, and that disproportionately impacts disabled people, as well. There is the erosion of human rights, the loss of autonomy, the loss of dignity, the narrowed life opportunities, and the undermining of the Enabling Good Lives approach, all as a direct consequence of decisions made by this Government.

I could go into housing. In Maungakiekie alone, where I live, we’ve seen this Government scrap 11 projects. That’s 510 homes that would have been built in the Maungakiekie electorate alone. They were part of the 3,500 homes scrapped by this Government that would have been built otherwise, and I could go on.

The incompetence of this Government, their lack of delivery, and the fact that they claim to be investing in the basics, and they think that by their saying it ad nauseam, New Zealanders will believe what they spout—it is incredible. That is coupled, of course, with the embarrassment of this Government on the global stage, given what we’re seeing with geopolitics currently.

This is a country that should work for everyone. New Zealanders deserve a Government that will ensure that all New Zealanders actually have a choice and that they have decent jobs that will pay decent wages, they have homes that they can afford and that will keep them safe, they have a Government that works towards the wellbeing of everyone, and, when they’re not well, they can actually access the healthcare when they need it in a way that they can afford. That is not this Government.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Labour) (17:23): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. First, can I offer condolences, as the House did today, to whānau who have lost loved ones during the tragic weather events over the past week. Kia tāpae ake [To add to those] that have been lost in recent days, I want to acknowledge some close whānau who have passed away in the past few weeks, with the first being Judy Cooper, the wife of Rob Cooper—for anybody who knows anything about Māori health or Whānau Ora, Whaea Judy was right by Rob Cooper’s side—and also the brother to Rob Cooper, Mr Gary Cooper. Anybody who knows Niue and the economy in Niue will be familiar with Mr Gary Cooper. He was a pioneer in the Niuean economy, who continued to serve not just Niue and, of course, Niueans here in New Zealand but also New Zealand.

Tāpae ake, tōku tuakana a Mātene [In addition, my brother Mātene], who, sadly, passed away in Te Arawa. I remember them all, and I want to mention them because when I think about them, I think about what it is we hope for for the future—what it is that those before us have done to make sure that can get the future that this country deserves.

Today, we heard from the Prime Minister his speech, while I’ve read the statement here that’s been tabled in the House. In his speech today, he spoke for 15 minutes and not once did he mention the word “Māori”, not once did he mention the people of the Māori world, not once did he mention a strong Māori economy, and not once did he mention Te Tiriti o Waitangi on the eve of the time when all politicians find themselves in Waitangi, speaking to the very people in this country who we should be reaching out to, who we should be thanking, and who we should be supporting to make sure that we have an economy and we have a country that continues to deliver for all.

The Prime Minister failed to even acknowledge them in his speech today, but I will read this from the statement that’s been tabled. It says here that “Māori and Government working together leads to better outcomes for everyone.” Well, they say one thing, but they do another, and what we’re not seeing from this Government—and when I say “this Government”, I mean all parties in this Government—is a true reflection of those words that acknowledge that when Māori do well, everyone does well.

All boats rise in a rising tide. We know that, this side of the House knows that, and when we support Māori to do well, this country does well. But, sadly, in the Prime Minister’s statement today, he did not mention Māori, he did not mention the Māori economy—

Hon Penny Simmonds: He did.

Hon PEENI HENARE: —he did not mention Māori businesses, and he did not mention Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Yes—and I see a bit of confusion in the House—it’s in the statement that’s been tabled here in the House, but it wasn’t in his speech today, and they’ll go and check the Hansard a bit later on and realise that I am right.

Also, sadly, what I hear from the Government members is this continual beat-down on Māori. The only reference they made to Māori was around victims of crime. The only reference those parties made to Māori was around matters of underachievement in spaces where we know we’ve got more work to do, and members on this side of the House have spoken about how the rising unemployment rate in this country is a blight on this country’s prospects for the future. Well, if the unemployment rate sits at just over 5 percent, the Māori unemployment rate—as my colleague Debbie Ngarewa-Packer on this side of the House pointed out—is a lot higher, and if you dig deeper into those numbers, you’d find that rangatahi Māori feature even more in those statistics where they are not in employment and they are not in training.

This Government doesn’t care about that, but we know that in order to have a prosperous future, a future that looks after everybody, and a future that enables New Zealand to be the world player we believe ourselves to be, we need to invest in those people. We need to invest in young people, we need to invest in Māori, and we need to support the aspirations of community where whānau right across the country can feel good about where this country is going.

Right now, the conversations around the barbecue tables around the country over summer weren’t very good for this Government, and this Government knows it. When the polls come out and the Government continues to see that many of their kaupapa—many of the policies that they’ve been trying to drive through—continue to slide in favourability, they will realise that it’s just too late to turn that tide, because as Chris Hipkins said here today in the House, the clock is ticking. The clock is ticking towards 7 November, when this country will have an opportunity to once again make a decision that will impact its future for the positive or for the negative. I’d put it to them that on this side of the House, in the Labour Party, we have a vision for the future, and we look forward to selling that vision to the country right up and down, from the North to the South.

Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Agriculture) (17:28): Mr Speaker, thank you. Can I join other colleagues in the House in passing on my condolences to all those affected or whose loved ones lost their lives during the significant weather events throughout the North Island. As a member of Parliament in the Bay of Plenty, we were particularly badly hit, and I want to recognise the sacrifice of a grandmother and her grandson in Welcome Bay, where their lives were lost as a result of the slip on their home, and then all of those who are affected by the slip at the campground in Tauranga. In particular, the two lovely women from Rotorua who were there camping, Jackie Wheeler and Susan Knowles, were very well-known to our community and gave a great amount to Rotorua. They will be dearly missed, and the people and the community of Rotorua is feeling their loss.

These are speeches where MPs get on their feet and they read out the lines, sometimes, that their research units have given them. I know that that’s the thing we have to do, but one of the most important things, I think, that this House offers us is an opportunity to talk about the big issues and it is a chance to have wonderful, warm debates. I know there are members here from many years ago where all they did was come to the House and debate, and they would go late into the night and early into the morning, and they would be ferocious in their approach to these sorts of things. But I think we owe it to the public to have genuine and open conversations about the reality of what’s happening and how every member of this House, generally, is doing their best to try and achieve this on behalf of New Zealanders.

Today, I don’t want to talk about all the things that the Government has done. There are very, very many of them. I don’t want to talk about all the things the Opposition says that we haven’t done; they keep finding things that they think that we haven’t. Today, I want to talk about something that is not only good for New Zealand, that this House has an opportunity to come together and demonstrate to New Zealand that we can work together, that actually we have done so in the past and we will do so again where it is in New Zealand’s best interests and it will deliver for every single New Zealander.

You see, we are a country of 5 million people in two small islands, a long way from everywhere, and we hear it from Labour when they are in Government, or we certainly say it in the coalition, that nobody in the world owes us a living. We must go out and find that for ourselves. Kiwis are good at this. They are good at going out and finding people to make friends with, to trade with, to create business relationships with. Our farmers are the best in the world, but all over the world other Governments put up barriers and they stop us from getting access to that market, from our farmers, to our growers, to those that provide services, to everything in our economy. And successive Governments, although we haven’t always completely agreed, have gone out generally with the support of enough of the House to level the playing field for hard-working Kiwis on the world stage. Because the world is not a fair place; doesn’t have to be a fair place, but it’s the job of Governments to go out there and level the playing field, to open the door for Kiwis to go through.

In this I’m talking about our exporters, the men and women of New Zealand who work hard, they toil, they come up with great ideas, and they sell those ideas to the world. Who would have thought a couple of Kiwis all those years ago down in Queenstown, you know, with nothing to do but tie rubber bands around their legs and jump off bridges, could sell that to the world, and people would pay them to be pushed off bridges—

Celia Wade-Brown: It started in Ōhākune.

Hon TODD McCLAY: And in Ōhākune as well, and everywhere. Thanks for that important contribution to my speech. The point here is whatever we do in New Zealand, we have to sell it to the world to create the living that we need. And it is important to us. I think all members, whether they like all parts of trade—trade policy—will accept that.

We produce enough food—well, 400 million people get 10 percent of their diet from New Zealand every year. We couldn’t eat that ourselves. We would be larger people for it. So we have to level the playing field. And Governments, both Labour- and National-led Governments have done trade deals, and actually, at the moment, we have about 100 free-trade agreements, investment agreements, and double tax agreements with countries of the world. We are small, but we have them with the big guys out there. We have a trade agreement with the United Kingdom, they’re bigger than us. We have a trade agreement with the European Union, they are bigger than us. Last year, we sold $2 billion extra in goods to the EU as a result of the trade deal that was started when we were in Government, completed by a Labour Government, put into effect when we came back to Government. That was over a nine-year period. Trade is not about one parliamentary term; it is about actually us working together to deliver for New Zealanders.

We have a trade agreement with China. When we first signed that agreement, we had a couple of billion dollars’ worth of two-way trade. This year we will sell them $22 billion of goods and services from New Zealand. That is nothing but jobs in New Zealand for New Zealanders. We are small, but we are good as a nation at fighting above our relative size, and we have a wonderful reputation from the hard work of our trade negotiators to our exporters overseas, and we need to keep that going.

Just before Christmas, we were able to announce the conclusion of a free-trade agreement with India, the world’s most populous nation. I’ve had the privilege of being the Minister for Trade and Investment for a second time all those years ago. I got to negotiate with India, and it was hard as other Governments had for a long period of time, but for our negotiators to have concluded a high-quality agreement that means 95 percent of New Zealand’s exports are covered by this agreement. On day one, 57 percent of all the goods we export will be duty free, raising to 82 percent on full entry into force with the other 17 or 18 percent having significant reductions is a very big deal.

I say to you, we are a country of 5 million people; India is 1.4 billion. What do you think we can do with that agreement to deliver for every single New Zealander? It is significant, and I’m not going to go through the large list, because we’ll have time during the course of this week. I’m appearing before the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee on Thursday to go into detail and talk about that with those members and the public and the media to start talking about where the opportunity and the benefits are for New Zealand.

In apples and in kiwifruit, and in wine, and in lamb, and in coal, and in many things that we produce in abundance and are good at, we have tariff-free access. That is good for New Zealanders and good for New Zealand, and, ultimately, this is a relationship that is important. India have very few trade deals. This is one of the highest quality they’ve done with anybody in the world. It is better than their Australian free-trade agreement, although Australia is negotiating an upgrade to their agreement at the moment. It’s a competition and a race to see who can get the best, first. India is about, we hear, to announce a trade agreement with the European Union, a significantly larger group of countries than we are, but we got there before them. I say this, I think our agreement will be as good as theirs; in fact, I think it will be better than theirs. Do you know why? We have 5 million people and they’re 1.4 billion. This opens up opportunities for the future. So as we talk about growth and futureproofing and we talk about the roads and the schools and the hospitals and the things we need in New Zealand, we afford those things by selling to the world, by Kiwis earning more, and by them actually innovating and becoming better at what they do.

This trade agreement, as the EU and the UK and the China and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), all of those agreements, deliver for New Zealanders. And without those high-quality agreements and the work of our officials, we will be worse off; we won’t be better off.

Finally—and we’ll talk about this much more when I’m in front of the committee—there’s been a lot of speculation about the things that we had to give. You know, we are a small nation, as I have said, and there is very little we can do to assist India in the areas where they have the challenges that they have. But we are able to come up with agreements that allow us to meet the needs of our economy. We have skills shortages in many areas. Our businesses call for these workers.

In this agreement, we have agreed that 1,670 skilled workers per year can come here for three years, and that is all. At the end of the three years, they go back. It’s under the conditions set by current and future Governments of the skills we need, and actually they come and they work, and they will return home. Only in the areas that our economy needs them. If our economy doesn’t need them, we have the ability to change that skill to bring them in. It includes nurses, of which we need some, to the New Zealand standard, to our requirements.

We also want to help with education, with a real focus on Masters’ degrees and a focus on PhDs. And so we have agreed that they can come and they can study here, but there is no commitment on the part of this or a future Government as to the number that would come. That is for the Government of the day to make decisions about. But if they apply for visas and the condition of the Government is they can come in, of course we want them to study here to gain experience, and then return home, which they must do.

This is a very high-quality agreement that delivers for New Zealanders. As with the last two agreements we were able to do during this term of Government, with the United Arab Emirates and the Gulf Cooperation Council, we’re working hard to ensure that trade remains bipartisan. Since the CPTPP agreement, trade has been bipartisan between the two major parties in this Parliament. There have been super majorities, and the vast majority of this Parliament has supported trade because it’s good for New Zealanders. The Indian free-trade agreement is something that all New Zealanders can benefit from and it will be a pleasure later this year to commend it to the House.

Hon JAN TINETTI (Labour) (17:38): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Before I address the Prime Minister’s statement, I, too, want to begin by acknowledging the deep mamae that is being felt in the Western Bay of Plenty community following the devastating slips at Mauao and Pāpāmoa last week. To the whānau who have lost loved ones: e te hunga mate moe mai rā, moe mai rā [those who have passed, rest well]. To the families, friends, and neighbours left heartbroken, our aroha is with you.

These tragedies have shaken our region to its core. Both Mauao and Pāpāmoa are places that hold our histories, our hopes for the future, and our whānau connections. When the whenua moved, so too did our hearts. But, in the aftermath, we have seen the strength and resilience of the people in the community. We have seen kai being shared, homes being opened, manaakitanga shining bright. That is who we are in Tauranga; we’re a community that stands shoulder to shoulder even in our darkest days. To the people of Tauranga moana: we stand with you. We see your strength, your compassion, and your unity. Together, ka ora anō a Mauao, ka ora anō tātou—our mountain will heal and so will we.

As we do stand together in strength and, I should say, in grief, we must also stand together in a determination, because for too many of our whānau, the struggle didn’t start with a natural disaster. Every week, families across New Zealand, and especially in our local rural communities, are facing an economic storm that shows no sign of easing at all. The cost of kai, of rent, of childcare, of power, it’s all going up. While wages simply aren’t keeping pace, more and more whānau are hurting majorly. I hear from parents who are choosing between petrol for their car and kai for lunches for their kids. No one should have to make choices like that in this country. This is a country where we have always prided ourselves on the fact that we look after all, but this Government has chosen to look the other way. Why have they done that? Because they have made choices that everyday New Zealanders are suffering from.

Christopher Luxon promised to make this economy better, and it has only gotten worse. This Government tells everyone here that they should tighten their belts. They tell us that the supports that they’re taking away will achieve a balance. But whose balance are we restoring? Because the whānau that I talk to in foodbank lines, the solo parents that I’ve spoken to recently, who often are working two or more jobs, the kaumātua who are turning off their power so that they can afford to pay their power bill, the whānau who are suffering majorly because they don’t know how to pay their rising power bills, they have no balance left to restore. There is no balance left for those people. They don’t know any other way of how they can so-called tighten their belt. They are already doing it tough.

Labour believes in lifting up people, not pushing them down, as this Government believes in. We believe that Government has a responsibility to care, which we’re not seeing at the moment, to provide, to protect, and ensure that every child and every whānau has the opportunity to thrive. The cuts that we’ve seen to essential services—to education, housing support, and community programmes—are not just numbers on a spreadsheet. These are real supports that help real people. They are lifelines that this Government has severed. They are the futures that are currently being constrained. That is absolutely disgraceful.

I say to this Government that they need to listen to the voices of our people, listen to the pain and exhaustion that we are seeing daily from those who are working harder than ever to fulfil their needs and their wants for themselves and their families, and yet they are falling further behind. Because leadership is not about lecturing people on personal responsibility; leadership is about collective responsibility. I can’t wait for our Labour Government to be able to show that. Thank you.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (17:43): Kia orana, Mr Speaker, and happy New Year to you and welcome back to parliamentarians across the House.

Last year, heading into the Christmas break, we talked about the fact that there would be conversations happening over summer barbecues all around the country. My, my, my, have those conversations taken place. The very clear message from people all around the motu is that they are doing it tough under this current Government—that Christopher Luxon, as Prime Minister, is out of touch; he’s putting tax breaks for property speculators and tobacco companies ahead of helping Kiwis when they are doing it tough. That has seen record numbers leaving this country.

In the Prime Minister’s statement today that I was in the House listening to, he had 20 minutes to talk about what was so important about his statement that he tabled this afternoon. He ran out of puff and he gave up, actually, with still more than six minutes left on the clock. I think he took a look at his colleagues over there and realised that they were disengaged; they’d lost interest. He knows that it is better to quit early because he has a plan that is not actually a plan that is being backed by anyone in this Chamber.

New Zealanders need a Government that focuses on things that really matter: on jobs, on health, on homes, and on real action when it comes to the cost of living. Christopher Luxon promised to make the cost of living better for Kiwis; instead, he is making it worse. When people go to the supermarket and the checkout, they know that things are more expensive. Now, Nicola Willis will tell you that it might “feel” as though things are more expensive. The reality check is this: they are more expensive. The cost when it comes to power bills—electricity costs—continue to skyrocket. The cost of everything is increasing. This is a Government that has whacked a drivers tax on people, by increasing the cost of car registrations.

Then, when we look and we add to that the ongoing saga that is the school buses in rural communities and other communities all around the country, forcing additional costs on to households when they continue to do it tough. Places like Ashhurst, Longburn, add to the list Rongotea, Shannon, Tangimoana, Hīmatangi, and more. They are looking at private bus services—several thousands of dollars in additional costs. Erica Stanford and this Government could cease this pain right now, but instead they choose not to. They are out of touch.

Today, in the Prime Minister’s statement, I was expecting him to talk about health. I counted, I think, twice when he used the word “hospital” or “hospitals”. I’m not surprised, because there is no substance when it comes to addressing the real health concerns and needs of communities by this Government. They should be ashamed at the state of health here in Aotearoa New Zealand. In Palmerston North, health is the number one issue that constituents engage with me and my team about.

Now, we can talk a lot about the track record. Let’s look at the last 12 months just with this Government. In Palmerston North, there’s been delayed surveillance colonoscopies. I’ve continued to ask the Minister of Health questions about this. The numbers are still in the hundreds of people who are waiting. It is simply not good enough.

The emergency department (ED) wait times in Palmerston North are simply not good enough. The fact that the children’s ED was closed for part of last year is simply not good enough. The emerging lack of gastroenterologists, amid fears that this will be a reduced service for the people in my community, is simply not good enough. The fact that the coroner indicated that the mental health unit in Palmerston North was far from ideal. The previous Government set aside funding for it, wanted to make a difference, and it was opened by the Government in September of last year. There is still not a single patient or staff member working out of that new facility. It is simply not good enough. This is not a Government that cares about health.

What people and what Kiwis need is a Government that will care—a Government that will provide three free doctors visits for them every year with their Medicard. They need a Government that actually has a plan to address the issues. This is a Government that, actually, is out of touch and continues to be so.

Homes and housing is a real issue in many communities. When we think about the number of houses that this Government has cancelled when they were proposed to actually be built in areas in Palmerston North and elsewhere, this clearly indicates that this is a Government that is out of touch and they’re not focused on the real issues. What the community needs right now is a Government that will focus on jobs, on health, on homes, and on real action when it comes to the cost of living. What Christopher Luxon and this Government have done today is they’ve clearly indicated that they have no plan, they’re not concerned about the community, and they would rather, actually, that people continue to hurt. It’s simply not good enough.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) (17:48): Well, thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in support of the Prime Minister and his statement to Parliament today. It’s a very good statement. I commend it in its entirety to colleagues and to other people who are listening and maybe watching on television this afternoon, because it is a statement that sets out how this National-led coalition Government is fixing the basics and building the future.

We now know what the election date will be: 7 November this year. It’s not far away. But in the relatively short period of time this Government has had to try and remedy the mistakes, the errors, the mountain of debt inherited by us, I think that we have done exceptionally well. Most of that is about fixing the basics and building the future.

Before I go on any further, I want to take an opportunity to talk a little bit about the Coromandel. I have the privilege and honour of representing the Coromandel in this Parliament, and it is one of the regions that has been so impacted this last week or so by heavy weather events that have caused so much devastation and concern and damage to people not only in my region but in other parts of the country as well. I want to initially thank those people who often put themselves and their own families second at a time when an emergency takes place in the community, and that’s our first responders. It’s the members of volunteer fire brigade, search and rescue, Coastguard, who do enormously good work at times when there is crisis and when there is urgency in communities.

Sadly, in regions like the Coromandel, these are issues that arise with reasonably regular occurrence. Until a week or so ago, we’d actually been having a pretty good summer. I had been talking to colleagues about how great it was to see so many of them holidaying and spending time and money in the Coromandel, and that it was the first summer, probably since COVID, when our local businesses had anything like a normal, traditional, classic Coromandel summer, where we have literally hundreds of thousands of visitors coming to spend, as I say, time and money in our patch, and my local businesses need that revenue. To have the summer ruined by this heavy weather event has been devastating.

I had an opportunity to visit several of the communities in the Coromandel with the Prime Minister. I went to Tairua with him, and we could easily have had a similar situation on Mount Paku to the tragedy that occurred in Mount Maunganui with big landslips, houses devastated, and had there been even a few more metres of slippage occurring in that community, the potential for tragedy was very present and very real. Again, local communities, local people stand up in a situation like that and they respond magnificently in a humane, caring Kiwi way, and that is both humbling but also something that I think as New Zealanders, we can be proud of.

I wanted to just share one little story. Tairua was cut off as a community for a day and a bit—a bit more, actually. There was no water, no sewerage. Several houses disintegrated. People were discombobulated, out of their homes, and what have you. The Prime Minister and I spoke to an elderly couple who were without water, without ablutions. I think they had been visiting the local rugby club on foot to use the facilities there. In amongst all this devastation, in amongst all this chaos, really, the older gentleman said to me, “Well, I haven’t got any water, I haven’t got a shower, but I’ve still got some whiskey.”, which I thought was actually kind of nice and appropriate, but just kind of put into context that even in dark times there is a slight glimmer of humour and good nature and goodwill.

I want to also extend my grateful thanks to the officials, to the mayor of the Thames-Coromandel District Council and his team, and to the Mayor of the Hauraki District Council, Toby Adams, and his team. Both those areas are still in a state of emergency. They lead those teams, and to go and see those emergency centres at councils working so efficiently, so calmly, so carefully at a time of crisis is truly heartening. I want to thank those people for the work that they do in terms of the assistance they provide, the clear, calm guidance that they provide, and the work that they do on behalf of our communities.

Similarly, in the Western Bay of Plenty—a lot of issues there. There are still roads closed in that part of the electorate. Whangamatā—a major slip there. That’s going to be quite some time before that slip is repaired. There is still a slip blocking folks living in Kūaotunu, up where my forebears first arrived in New Zealand back in the mid-1800s and where I have a place, and there are members of my family that are there, as we speak, that are not able to get to Whitianga. I’m told that that piece of road will be cleared in the next day or two, so grateful thanks to the contractors often working under difficult circumstances, challenging circumstances. They do a terrific job, and again they often put themselves at risk and put their own personal situations as a secondary consideration to the considerations of the wider community.

I want to acknowledge the Government’s support for the Mayoral Relief Fund—$1.2 million. The setting up of the temporary accommodation service has been activated and there has been talk by the Prime Minister and others of further funding and support becoming available by way of improving roading resilience in my part of the world. Many of the roads around the Coromandel were built at a time when issues of the sort we are facing today were not as prevalent, not as common, and not as harsh. What we find is that a lot of those windy, hilly coastal roads were built for a different time. We are asking those roads to do work that were they were never really designed for.

During Cyclone Gabrielle—in fact, just after—we had a situation where State Highway 25 collapsed. The good news about that was even though it was very concerning for many months—far too many months—the repair work that was done was better than what was there.

The lesson we learnt from that exercise was that when there is repair work required, don’t just replace with what you had there before. If a bigger culvert is required, put in a bigger culvert. If there are better drainage systems required, then improve the drainage systems. If there are roading, engineering issues that need addressing, then don’t just replace with what was there first off; improve it properly. State Highway 25A has held up pretty well, so the lesson for us there is when we do the repair work, to build for the future. I’m sure that that will be the case as we go forward.

Again, we have had a tragedy at Mount Maunganui—no doubt about that—and our hearts go out to those friends and families of the victims concerned. It’s challenging for us as a nation to confront issues of that sort. Sadly, in my time in this place, there have been a number of occasions when we as a Parliament have had to confront and address issues of catastrophe and tragedy confronting our nation.

One of the things that we do do quite well in our Parliament—and there are many things that maybe critics might say we don’t do terribly well—is acknowledge appropriately and in a meaningful way situations when we as human beings are confronted by our role as parliamentarians. At the end of the day, all of us in this place are just human beings. We all have families, we all have neighbours, we all have communities, we all have a relationship with the places from which we come, and we all have our hearts there and our minds there. It’s at times of tragedy and concern that I think New Zealanders have traditionally, historically, repeatedly shown that they are good people doing good things under harsh duress situations. I am enormously proud of the way that communities in my electorate have stood up to this latest issue, and I know that in future when they are confronted with something similar, they will do so again. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7.30.

Sitting suspended from 5.59 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Good evening, members, and welcome back to this new parliamentary year.

Debate interrupted.

Personal Explanations

Question No. 2 to Minister, 16 December

Amended Answer to Oral Question

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister) (19:30): Point of order, Madam Speaker. I seek leave to make a personal explanation to correct an answer I gave in response to question No. 2 on 16 December 2025.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. In my answer to the fourth supplementary question from Chlöe Swarbrick, I said: “What I’d [notice] is that it has been good and encouraging to see that this month we’ve had the lowest number of New Zealanders departing New Zealand. In fact, it’s been the lowest this month than it has in any given month of the previous Labour-Greens Government.”

What I should have said is: “It has been encouraging to see that this month we’ve had the lowest number of New Zealanders departing New Zealand since November 2022, or the whole period of Chris Hipkins’ time as Prime Minister.”

Government Business

Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

Debate resumed.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The next call is a Green Party call.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (19:31): Thank you, Madam Speaker, and welcome back to everyone.

When we are looking at education, what we have seen in the Prime Minister’s statement is the Prime Minister and their colleagues have been touting the success in education, but I’m here to talk about the data and evidence that supposedly backs some of that. But I want to preface that by saying that education is important. I am, as the Green Party’s education spokesperson, somewhat biased, but I do believe that education is one of the cornerstones of our societies. Education should be about curiosity. It should be about allowing students and allowing children to be able to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. There is an old saying in Chinese that “Failure is the mother of success.”—probably quite a few cultures have a similar phrase, but I think that reflects quite accurately what education should be about.

However, we haven’t seen that with this Government. Just in terms of some of the things that we have seen in terms of the numbers that have come out, it is important to highlight that when the Government communicates success in education, it’s prioritised confidence over clarity, optimism over evidence, and affirmation over explanations. Education depends on trust, nuance, professional scepticism, and long-term thinking—not slogans, not victory laps, not labels that have been used on something that is a narrow test within the whole pedagogical system.

For example, when we’re looking at the data that has come out in terms of mathematics, we’re looking at a year’s progress, which simply means a gain of 20 to 30 e-asTTle points where the control group has an average of 27.76 points. But the score does not reflect things on things like geometry, algebra, statistics, or conceptual flexibility. So we are seeing problems within the way that the Government has portrayed its numbers. We’re seeing that the trials that have been suggested only test a narrow component of math—but that also was when we’re looking at something like the success that has been stated in terms of phonics. The overstatement in terms of the success of the phonic test is a 40-word test on how well children sound out words. It’s not about reading or understanding. It’s also important to know, when we’re looking at it from a statistical perspective, that the improvement in results in term 3 was not tested on the same students as they tested earlier—so there’s even inconsistencies within the way the Government has tracked its own data.

But this is not all in terms of some of the concerns we’re seeing out of this Government when it comes to education. What we’re seeing in terms of the Government is a power grab of various aspects of the education system and to have total authoritarian control over the education system. We’re seeing a complete lack of consultation and transparency with the sector over the changes to curriculum, over the scrapping of NCEA—the fact that the New Zealand School Boards Association themselves didn’t even know that the amendment was going to be introduced that scrapped the objective of Te Tiriti o Waitangi from section 127 of the Education and Training Amendment Bill.

This is not about wanting our education environment to thrive; this is about dictatorship and this is about control, and that’s what we are seeing with this Government. We’re seeing that the minute that the schools actually stand out and push back against this Government, with more than 1,800 schools reaffirming the commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi—that’s over 70 percent of schools in Aotearoa New Zealand—they are branded as being bullied into it, as opposed to “This is something that I genuinely believe.” This is how the Government operates. We see that in not just the education portfolio alone. We’re seeing the ugliness of a Trumpian style of politics being played out here in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The Green Party have a vision for education. We want our children to thrive; we want them to succeed. But this is not the way to do it.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ (Green) (19:36): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I appreciated that, in his first speech of the year, the Prime Minister quoted scripture with a beatitude, so I’ll quote scripture right back at him. The quote I picked is: “By your deeds, you will know them.” What are the deeds of this New Zealand First and National Government? It is economic carnage. Inflation is above the target rate that they’ve set it at. Our economy is smaller than when they took office. Our unemployment is reaching levels that it reached in the great financial crisis. Small-business removals are the highest it’s ever been, with small-business liquidations reaching nearly 3,000. This Government has liquidated more small businesses than the most gung-ho Stalinist commissar.

Ordinary New Zealanders are paying more for less, whether it’s in their supermarket bills or their power bills, while their options and income shrink. If they’re in the regional community, they’re seeing the industrialisation, with their mills and freezing works closing. If they’re in a big city, they’re seeing their jobs in the Public Service, in construction, in hospitality disappear as long-time household businesses, such as Leuven in Wellington, close. At the same time, this Government’s rich donor mates—whether in big tobacco, big fossil fuel, or big landlords—are getting billions in subsidies and tax breaks. The cost of living crisis is a cost of greed crisis that’s being borne by ordinary New Zealanders, not this Government’s rich mates.

Like the “6-7” meme—like the “6-7” meme—this Government doesn’t really make much sense. One party wants to take us back to a 1950s style of economic management. One party wants to take us back to the 1700s. Fundamentally, this Government is too divided to agree on a coherent economic strategy. So, in the absence of a clear plan, what did they agree on and what did they implement? It’s cuts, whether it’s in the Dunedin Hospital or environmental programmes or critical public services that everyday New Zealanders need. This coalition took Labour’s miners cuts and accelerated them to the point that the critical services that New Zealanders rely on are under pressure in our hospitals. Our doctors are having to waste their time cleaning beds and doing admin works thanks to the Government’s cuts to the health workforce.

Our natural environment is suffering from cuts to conservation and climate. Whereas the previous Government deferred programs like the container deposit scheme, this Government has slashed and burned the environment with billions of dollars of cuts to critical environmental programmes. One of the other things that’s characterised this Government’s agenda is short-term thinking. Our nature, which is fundamentally the basis of our economy, has seen massive desecration at the scale of this Government, with our conservation estate being opened up to mining to rich foreigners and our people being made unemployed and being made to flee to Australia—being driven away with the starvation of options and opportunities, with the starvation of the tertiary sector, with the job losses in the polytech sector, and with the underfunding of the apprenticeship schemes.

But there is a better way forward. We can choose to invest in our green solutions, which are cost of living solutions. We can choose to break our dependence on overseas energy imports and invest in a transition to a greener economy with homemade renewable energy.

We can choose to invest in our people, whether young or old, whether in the North or South Island. And we can choose to tax wealth fairly and restructure our economy in a way that everyday people are not struggling to get by while foreign oligarchs hoover up all our property and reduce us to tenants in our own land.

To do this, we need a change of Government, yes, but we also need a real Government of change. We need real change, not just a return to incrementalist policies that tweak policy settings. We need genuine transformation that actually recognises the intrinsic link between nature and the economy, that recognises that it is actually everyday New Zealanders that make this country go round. Not the donor class, not the billionaire class, and not the people that this Government is serving.

This year, on 7 November, voters around the country have an incredible opportunity to affect the real, good, green change they need by supporting the party that has stood up consistently for people, planet, and Te Tiriti over the past three years. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Defence) (19:41): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’ve listened to the last two speakers’ contributions, and I have to say I don’t know which countries they were talking about because it’s certainly not our country here in New Zealand, which is the best little country in the world. And as someone who has endured some health issues last year and was able to get excellent treatment through our public health system, can I say that is not the public health system that I see, and that I see from time to time with my physio that I have to deal with. What I see is a group of people who work very hard but also are very aware of the fact that it’s taxpayer dollars that are paying for what they do.

So when I hear the Green Party talk about taking money off people, and then just giving this money out, it’s actually those very people—the physiotherapists, the doctors, the nurses, the orderlies, the people who actually work in those hospitals—who are paying for the sort of ambitions that we hear from the other side. And when they talk about the renewable energy, “We should do that.”—oh my goodness, we’ve been doing that for many, many, many years. Well before those last two contributors were born. In New Zealand we have been a huge pioneer of renewable energy. At the moment we’re around about 90 percent renewable energy. And that’s called the wind and the rain and the water, the hydros, the hydro system set up by National Governments in the 1950s and 60s—those ones. That’s actually what we are using now to keep the lights on, and am I very pleased of the fact that that’s happening.

I want to deal with a couple of issues. First, the weather events. I want to give a big thank you to our first responders; a big thank you to the Prime Minister and the Hon Mark Mitchell and all the MPs who were there; the mayors; the local government people; everyone who turned up; the fire service—FENZ as they are now; the Urban Search and Rescue people; the Police; the Defence Force. I’m so pleased that the Defence Force kept me informed as to what they were doing and where they were, where these assets were going. That’s one of the reasons you need a defence force: because you never know when you’re going to need them, and it’s not like the weather gives us that much notice. So a big thank you to them.

I’d also like to deal with another issue on defence. I put out a statement the other day on Afghanistan and our contribution on Afghanistan. I’m going to read it out to you, Madam Speaker, because I think it’s important that all members in the House understand that, as the Minister of Defence, I said, “New Zealand is proud of the service of personnel who deployed to Afghanistan. We responded to the call for assistance alongside our partners and our people served willingly and with professionalism in challenging and often dangerous conditions. We continue to honour the memory of New Zealand Defence Force personnel who lost their lives in Afghanistan, and we acknowledge the enduring loss felt by their families, friends, and colleagues. New Zealand takes great pride in the professionalism, courage, and commitment shown by all those who served there.” 3,500 New Zealanders served in Afghanistan, 10 of whom never returned.

Two who did return are in this House, Tim Costley and Dr Vanessa Weenink. Tim in the Air Force and Vanessa on the ground with the Army. Vanessa there as a captain and then later as an acting major. These are very serious contributions made by at least two parliamentarians, and I congratulate them for it.

I went to Afghanistan as the Minister of Police because we had our New Zealand Police in training the Afghan National Police, and what a great job they did. I looked at the conditions in which they lived and they worked, and in which the people lived and worked, and I can tell you it was dire—absolutely dire. I want them to know that we appreciate their contributions. So I’m very proud of our defence force. I’m very proud of our police, all those who contributed and contribute today to help keep our heads up high, knowing as good, decent people in the world that we are always there to do our bit and often more than anyone else expects. So thank you.

This country is very lucky to have a Government that is focused on fixing the basics and building the future. You can talk all you like about, “Well you’d like to have this, and you’d like to have that.” It’s like 100,000 homes that never got built. It’s all those things you’d like to do—you know, “I’m going to do this; I’m going to do that.” And actually, you’ve just got to understand someone has to pay for it and the people paying for it are the wage and salary earners, the small-business people, all of that.

We had to get our water tanks cleaned the other day. And the people who own the business said that they were going to come on Monday. And I thought, “Well, they won’t be on Monday. That’s the Auckland public holiday.”—it was in Auckland. Guess what? They turned up on Monday, and they were there working all day. I thought, well, that’s the difference between people who are small-business owners for whom every job counts and for someone who’s thinking back here in Wellington in our system thinking, “Oh well, someone else will do it, or we’ll wait another day.” I think we need to understand it’s that work ethic, that dedication to getting the job done and having a happy customer that is something that we should be very proud of in this country. And it is actually endemic in our country, and we should be proud of that. We should not be making excuses for the fact that we do need to have more of that attitude.

We are spending our money—the money of the taxpayers, which we all are, as well as those of us who are paid by the taxpayer—very carefully. We’re being very careful about what we do. I congratulate Erica Stanford on the work she’s doing in education. I’m just overjoyed that she is putting basics back into school. That kids are learning to read the same way that I learnt to read, and that is using the phonics method, actually chopping words up and sounding them out and putting things together. That’s how kids learn, not this ridiculous 30-year experiment that was taken over by some academics who probably never, ever taught a child to read. I also want to say, thank goodness we’ve got maths back in the place it should be—back in the classroom. And it’s all very well saying, “You can use a calculator on your phone.” Well, first off, you want to know what that calculator is and what it does before you ask it to do anything.

But it is important that we stop wasteful spending and that we’ve got inflation under control. We think, now, our inflation rate at the moment is 3.1 percent and that’s where it’s above the 3 percent level. But actually, only two years ago it was 7.1 percent. Why should that matter to everyday New Zealanders going about their business, trying to make ends meet? The reason is this: it puts up the cost of everything. If I look now at the costs that are really still up there, one of the biggest costs are council rates, and I look at the way in which some of our councils, particularly in Wellington and also in Auckland, they’re saying, “Oh, we’re going to keep it to a seven-point-something-or-other-percent rate increase. Well, what other business in New Zealand behaves like that? What other business is doing that?

The fact is that we have these large councils who think it’s their job to act like mini-Governments. Well, they’re not. They’re local councils. They can collect the rubbish—that would be really good. They can keep the rates under control, and they can look after pests. As far as I’m concerned, just about anything else is complete nonsense. They should get away from it. But that’s because I get to pay the big rates bills and I’m sure plenty of other people in this House do too.

It is important that we look at crime and the fact that we have had 38,000 fewer victims of crime since this Government came into Government. That is incredible. If we look at ram raids: down 85 percent—what an astonishing outcome—85 percent drop. Reduced serious youth offending by 16 percent. That’s 16 percent fewer people being victimised. It’s also probably 16 percent fewer people ending up in the youth justice system because they’re not committing those crimes. And that’s one of the other things. If you let people who are problematic in their behaviours get away with this sort of behaviour, then they will think that that’s OK for them to do.

Their lives, as well as those of their victims, will be ruined by it. Let’s not make that happen. Let’s make sure they know that there is a problem. Of course, there’s been work on capping sentence discounts. There’s been all sorts of work going on in the justice sector, particularly by Paul Goldsmith and Mark Mitchell. I also want to mention Casey Costello and also Nicole McKee. They’ve been doing great work, working together in the coalition Government.

When you look at things like classrooms, I remember hearing an awful lot from the previous Minister of Education, I think it was one Chris Hipkins, about classrooms. Well, since January 2024, we’ve delivered more than—wait for it—430 new classrooms; 430 new classrooms when we took over a situation where the interest alone on the debt that we were left with is costing us over $9 billion a year. That’s the entire amount that we currently spend on defence, plus corrections, plus police, plus the Ministry of Justice—the entire lot of the justice system and defence—all in interest because of the wasteful spending of the previous Government. So congratulations to our Government—we’re doing a great job.

Hon ANDREW HOGGARD (Associate Minister of Agriculture) (19:51): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Government’s programme for the year and to commend the Prime Minister’s statement to the House. My summer break was probably a bit different to everyone else’s. I spent every single day doing farm work and there were fences that got built; posts that got rammed; hay that got mowed, baled, stacked; water troughs that got fixed and installed; flow meters got put in; the tail end of the herd got AI’d. Now, just to be clear, that’s not the ChatGPT kind of AI; that is the rubber glove kind of AI.

There was a bit of unparliamentary language when the post rammer decided to have a malfunction, but through all this I absolutely loved it. It reminded me of why I enjoyed farming so much. It was a bit of a challenge to take off the gumboots and put the dress shoes back on and jump in the car yesterday, but for me, it’s a key thing of why I’m here: that I’m here to keep speaking up for rural New Zealand, to progress changes for rural New Zealand, so that farmers can do that stuff they love doing—those jobs they love doing. Doing the stuff they want to be doing, that they got into farming to do; not to deal with red tape and paperwork and spend money. They want to spend their hard-earned cash on improvements to the farm—things that make the farm go better and that look after the cows; all that sort of stuff—not on a whole compliance industry that is built up around them. So that’s why we’re back here, doing this work.

And 2025 was a big year for rural New Zealand and 2026 will also be a big year for rural New Zealand. There have been a number of things that this Parliament has dealt to over the last year and will finish off this year that have long been a challenge for farmers and have created frustrations over the years and really sapped away at rural confidence. Confidence is so key to any business, big or small. Because, without confidence, if you’re not confident in your future, you’re not investing in the business, you’re not employing new people, you’re not trying new things, you’re not coming up with new products, you’re going into bunker mentality. And when you go into bunker mentality, you’re not spending. When you do have confidence and you are spending, that’s with other businesses, that’s increasing their confidence, and it all just grows exponentially. That is the key thing we need to be doing here is instilling that confidence in rural New Zealand and other parts of our economy that they can invest and that there is a future in this country.

So key to that, this year is going to be those Resource Management Act reforms. We talked about it last year. We had the first reading—so important. For so many years that Resource Management Act has held this country back. So really important—the key thing, I think, for this year—is making sure that that bill passes. But key to that also is those standards that fit underneath it. Those standards are going to be the things that provide the definition and the detail that makes sense to people to know, “OK, here is what I have got to do. So I just need to follow these steps, and I can get on with doing stuff. I can get on with adding to this economy. I can get on with building new things that are important.”, rather than, “Oh, I have this massive consent process that I’ve got to go through that’s going to sap all my energy away and completely destroy my soul.” So that’s important.

Chief among those will, obviously, be the national policy statement on fresh water. From the ACT Party view, it’s important that we move away from this one-size-fits-all approach—that we move away from vague spiritual concepts like te mana o te wai. We need to be focusing on clear science and clear statements that give people confidence as to what it is they need to be doing, so that they can achieve the goals and get on with doing stuff.

In terms of this one-size-fits-all approach, we need to be looking at catchments and going, “OK, what is happening here?” Often, we’ve got these targets that are based on a national number, but not reflecting what’s naturally happening in that catchment. Often what’s coming out of nature could be higher than the national bottom line. So we need to have numbers that are responsive to what is happening in that catchment. They need to be fit for purpose. Also, yes, we’ve got to be aspirational. We should be looking at how we can improve, but we’ve got to be realistic about how we do it. On the positive side—I look at my 28 years in farming—I have never seen our farmers more engaged as they are at this moment around being proactive around the environment. This gives me great positivity for this interface between farming and the environment. Our farmers are really going above and beyond with catchment care groups and other things.

Another key standard that’s got to be worked on this year is that around biodiversity or significant natural areas (SNAs), if you will. For too long, landowners were, basically, at risk of a council officer looking up Google Maps, thinking to themselves, “Oh, that looks pretty. That looks significant.” And, basically, painting an overlay and snatching it up. Going forward, those landowners need to have the opportunity—those ones that have had their property rights taken off them—to ensure that those SNAs are reviewed under a far more targeted criteria as to what’s actually significant. Most importantly, in the future, we are going to have a situation where if a council wants to engage in regulatory takings, there will need to be compensation for it.

The other key action that happened in the last year that had created massive issues with rural confidence over the last three or four years was around the methane targets and taxes. We’ve removed that threat of taxes on methane, which just would have resulted in a reduction in farming in this country, which makes little sense. I’m sure on the other side they will decry the fact that if we’re not taxing methane then we’re going to have more adverse weather. I’m sorry, that’s not going to be the case. Our farmers are the most efficient in the world. If you want less methane in the global atmosphere, the answer is pretty simple: have more farming in New Zealand. The ACT Party will continue to push for more changes to those Paris commitments that we’ve made. We’ve recognised the science behind the split gas approach, and yet we haven’t really fully embraced it in our Paris commitments. We’re clear: we need to change those commitments, we need to embrace the split gas nationally determined contribution, and we need to have the courage to walk away if that’s what it takes to get common sense. The reality is our global customers are interested in the footprint of their products—the intensity—not any national targets. And good luck to those companies if they think they can reduce their product intensity without ingredients from New Zealand.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to highlight the work of my colleague Nicole McKee to replace the Firearms Act. In rural New Zealand, firearms are a tool of the trade. They are used for pest control, for humanely euthanising animals, and—for anyone that’s gone out to rural New Zealand in the first weekend of May—they are a key part of our social interactions. Her reforms cut unnecessary red tape, restore common sense, and focus enforcement on where it belongs: on criminals and gangs, not rural people doing their jobs. Submissions are open now, and I would say to rural firearm owners: make sure you have your say. It’s great to finally have an adult in the room who knows what she’s talking about and recognises that respect for licensed firearm owners doesn’t diminish public safety; it improves it.

Finally, I’ll just quickly finish up on covering some of the key goals I’ve got in my portfolios this year. In biosecurity, we’ve made great progress on the yellow-legged hornet and set up a response to a single fruit fly incursion.

I want to thank the team at Biosecurity New Zealand for the great work and the hard work they’ve been doing over the summer on both of those. Last year, we signed a number of operational agreements—around foot-and-mouth, avian flu—and we’re going to look to do more of the preparedness work this year, along with also introducing legislation to reform the Biosecurity Act.

In food safety, the red tape will continue to be cut where it does nothing to enhance food safety. The good example there is around export exemptions. It is also important that we keep making progress on reducing those application times for agrichemical and vet medicines approval. We need to ensure that we get these essential new solutions and tools into farmers’ and growers’ hands.

In the environment space, I’m really looking forward to bringing nature-based credits forward and also having smart and sensible farm plans that will enable farmers to avoid a range of costly consents and Draconian rules.

Rural New Zealand is the economic backbone of this country, and this Government—and especially the ACT Party—supports them and wants them to do well, and we’ll do our damnedest to ensure that they do well. Thank you.

Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Minister of Customs) (20:01): Madam Speaker, welcome to 2026. We started with sunshine and complained about the quality of the heat, and we were quickly stopped in our tracks by the forces of nature, the face of tragedy, and the destruction by weather conditions. New Zealanders did what they do: they rallied and they came together. My mother and her close whānau in Whangaruru were luckily safe. Although isolated through washed out roads, they were protected by a community that rallied, that came together and checked on each other, and made sure they were safe. It took a while to get out, but they did get out and everything was safe.

I would like to acknowledge, where it’s due, Hūhana Lyndon, for her advocacy for the region. She was out and about, standing at Helena Bay talking to our whānau, and I would like to thank her for her efforts in bringing that community together. I fully acknowledge how lucky I am that everyone I know and love was safe. My heart goes out to those who are dealing with a very different reality.

I would like to acknowledge Minister Mitchell and the Prime Minister. I was appalled when it was referenced that they flew in and flew out and that their efforts were in any way diminished. It is the hardest thing in the world to sit with someone who has lost people they love and be with a stranger in that tragic moment. That is exactly what they did, and they did it when it needed to be done. I applaud them for their efforts.

Now, I rise to speak on behalf of New Zealand First as part of the response to the Prime Minister’s statement. Earlier in this debate, we had to endure a bravado on that side of the House that was quite breathtaking. We were followed up with the Emperor’s New Clothes fable by the co-leader of the Green Party. You know the story: the foolish emperor who was sold a fancy cut of clothes and was forced to accept it because he was challenged that, if he didn’t see it, he was a fool. That is exactly what that side of the House is asking us to accept.

Look at their doomsday narrative, and that is followed by the assurance that they have the answer: they know what to do; you can’t see it because we’re, obviously, fools. Our leader announced it; it’s the borrow and hope strategy. It is: “Believe it because we say it’s so, and we’ll carry on with this narrative.” The yarn they spin is reliant on New Zealanders being foolish again, and I don’t think they will be, because they won’t forget, as much as they want to paint the picture, the record rental price increases, the record inflation rates, and the record interest rates that we all suffered and toiled under.

Let’s not forget the things that weren’t delivered—the houses; the increase in crime; all of the things that we’re now told to forget because, apparently, on this side of the House, we’ve got it completely wrong. Well, no, we don’t have it completely wrong. We don’t believe farmers are the enemies. We don’t want to penalise tradies for wanting to own a workhorse vehicle. We don’t want to make it harder for retailers to do business and put more and more criteria on them on how they do business. We don’t want them to live in fear because of ram raids. Astoundingly, the Green Party is still complaining about these businesses going out of business when they demonised their ability to make a profit. They want them to be in business, but they’re not allowed to make a profit!

That is the problem. That is the confused narrative that they are asking us to accept. They’re still lecturing this side of the House—the people who have never owned a business, the people who have never toiled to attract and retain staff, the people who haven’t had sleepless nights trying to work out whether they’re going to make payroll. One more time we’re being lectured about the evil of profit. Landlords are depicted as the super wealthy, the robber barons, when they know most rental properties are owned by mum and dad investors, not this big business narrative they want us to believe.

This is about the people who have toiled and worked and, as they’ve got older in life, have bought a second property and they rent it out to supplement their retirement. That is by the sweat of thy brow. That is the stuff about personal accountability and responsibility, and that is about the hard work that makes New Zealand great. It’s hard work that this Government knows. We are the front-line workers, the farmers, the builders, the business owners, the military personnel that understand the importance of a hand up over handouts, the importance of education as the long-term investment in our future, and that optimising our resources and innovation is essential to our prosperity. What a fantastic team I have the privilege to be part of with this Government and my New Zealand First colleagues, returning to 2026 rearing to get on with delivery.

Before talking about the year ahead and what we have done and are doing, I would first like to acknowledge those hard-working Kiwi battlers, the front-line services that kept on while this House was adjourned. Firstly, Madam Speaker, I would like to talk about, as Minister of Customs, the hard work of that team, who were tasked with facilitating trade, supporting travellers, and, importantly, keeping us safe.

On Boxing Day, 10 kilograms of meth and 8 kilograms of cocaine was intercepted at the Tauranga port. A few days later, 18 kilograms of meth was intercepted at Auckland Airport. Unfortunately, this is business as usual. This is what is happening at the time of peak travel numbers through our ports and airports. It is this continual effort at our borders that highlights how important it is that we tackle transnational and serious organised crime. The strategy launch that I announced late last year included the priorities and key functions to support enforcement agencies to make New Zealand the hardest place in the world for organised criminal groups and networks to do business and cause harm. The enormous amount of money that these criminal cartels siphon off our economy is eyewatering. It is essential that we come together and strengthen our response, and that is what this strategy does.

New Zealand First has always been about practical solutions and getting the job done, and our work to combat organised crime is about bringing greater levels of cohesion and cooperation, improving information sharing, and exploring options for a central agency to be responsible for organised crime. I am proud to be part of a Government that is committed to law and order and to continue the legacy of New Zealand First’s commitment to supporting our front-line workers by being tough on crime.

What we know is that New Zealand does not sit in isolation, and we’re reaching out to support our Pacific neighbours. While most of us were still enjoying time with our families, my leader, Winston Peters, was already back in the Pacific, engaging with our Pacific neighbours and strengthening our relationships. It is ironic that the Leader of the Opposition, the Hon Chris Hipkins, was critical of how the world was viewing New Zealand. Yet, under his leadership, New Zealand had almost become invisible on the international stage.

We have rebuilt our presence and our respect on the international stage. Our response to organised crime includes cross-agency Pacific maritime operations with the Customs Service and the New Zealand Defence Force, building on the activity of last year. We have also had continuing success with the Pacific detector dogs programme, with a target of 30 operational units in the Pacific by the end of 2026. This includes—

Hon Damien O'Connor: Point of order, Madam Speaker. Look, I don’t do this and I don’t like to interrupt someone who is speaking, but there is, of course, a Standing Order that says that we shouldn’t read speeches in the House. I appreciate that from time to time, people do, but if people are going to read speeches, they should at least be accurate, and that one is not.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I’m still waiting to know what the point of order is.

Hon Damien O'Connor: Thank you, Madam Speaker. There’s a Standing Order that says we shouldn’t read speeches in this House. That’s what the member has done—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): OK, if you want the Speakers to implement that rule across the House, that’s going to impact an awful lot of people, or were you just picking on one or two in particular?

Hon Damien O'Connor: I’d love you to rule that speeches should be more accurate if they’re read.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I’m not going to interfere in the content of anyone’s speech, I say to the Hon Damien O’Connor. But as we get into our third year of this term, there will be a lot more emphasis on ad libbed speeches, rather than read speeches, and I can forewarn you of that. But I have been watching and the Minister has added quite a bit of other information, rather than just being focused on what, obviously, is in front of her. Sorry to interrupt the Minister. Would you like to continue?

Hon CASEY COSTELLO: The concluding part of my speech is really around our Pacific response to organised crime, the importance of our relationships across the Pacific, and the work that we will continue to be doing. As the Minister of Customs, I’m incredibly proud of the work that we have done to build those positive relationships. We are continuing to work to support the customs administration of our Pacific neighbours to develop good legislation to enable them to strengthen their borders, and we will continue to drive better legislation for New Zealand with border security legislation to help enforce our borders and provide the protection that New Zealanders need to live in this great country. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ORIINI KAIPARA (Te Pāti Māori—Tāmaki Makaurau) (20:12): E te Pīka, tēnā koe. Today, the Prime Minister stood in this Whare and he painted a picture of progress: a picture of prosperity, of stability, and a so-called stronger Aotearoa. But for Māori up and down the country, in Te Ika-a-Māui, Te Wai Pounamu, and especially in Tāmaki Makaurau, that picture is a fiction—meaning it’s not real. Mum would say, “It’s all kaka.”

What it is is a carefully crafted image that ignores the lived reality of whānau who have endured two years of anti-Māori, anti-Tiriti policies that strip away Māori rights, erase our reo and tikanga, and undermine every part of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. What’s despicable is that they’re OK with pushing many a whānau Māori further into crisis, and nowhere is that crisis more visible and more brutal than in housing.

The Prime Minister said that the Government is committed to solving our decades-long housing crisis and that we are making good progress. Let’s talk about that progress, shall we? Giving a $3 billion tax cut to landlords—is that their progress towards solving our housing crisis? Is it? Building bigger barriers for people to access emergency housing—is that progress? Selling much-needed homes to overseas buyers for holiday houses—I mean, seriously, that’s progress to ending our homelessness and our housing crisis? The only progress these kinds of policies are making is towards homelessness.

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again and again and again until our housing and homelessness crisis is ended: the greatest breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi is that tangata whenua have no whenua and have no homes. Homelessness, housing, and anything remotely resembling stability, security, and safety is being denied to far too many of us, and not just to Māori but to thousands—thousands—of us who call Aotearoa home. There remain over 110,000 homeless people, people without homes across our country, and more than half is made up of our future leaders. Rangatahi are on the streets. A third of homeless people are made up of wāhine Māori, many of whom are new or expectant mums, and the rate right now is increasing daily, so much so that service providers can’t keep up with the demand. Furthermore, kaupapa Māori providers who have survived severe funding cuts, just like Te Whare Hīnātore at the Auckland City Mission, are forced to reject whānau with nowhere else to go.

Homelessness and housing is a crisis we can end overnight. There is a simple solution staring us all in the face: ghost houses—whare kēhua. We have 112,000 of them right across the country, so why not house our people first? That’s not throwing away money; that’s securing our future. Why not cut the homeless crisis at its core and prioritise our rangatahi first?

At the end of last year, I delivered my first member’s bill to end youth homelessness, which focuses on the cure, not the crisis. It’s not radical; it is responsible. It is not ideological; it is actually evidence-based. Not only is it by Māori for everyone; it is rangatahi-centred and rangatahi-led. It is transformational. Now, that would be real progress.

There are other ways to solve these housing and homelessness crises that we are faced with, but they will require real courage. It will need a Government who isn’t scared to entrench Te Tiriti across all laws and who cares more for Papatūānuku than for profit, and one Government that prioritises equity for all, including wāhine—our women—youth, our rainbow and takatāpuhi whānau, whaiora, and whaikaha. That will be the time when a Prime Minister should speak of real progress, but that time is not today.

It is not now, and so, on behalf of Tāmaki Makaurau and Te Pāti Māori, I will say this: we will not accept the erosion of our rights. We will not accept this. Our people deserve better. Aotearoa deserves better.

MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI (Te Tai Tokerau) (20:17): Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. Hoi anō, ka aroha ki a tātou, te kōrero tuatahi i roto i te Whare.

[Greetings, Madam Speaker. Greetings to those in the House. I sympathise with us all here with regard to the first speech in the House.]

The first thing that we have to refer to is the loss of life. It seems, from our opening earlier this afternoon, as it should be—the acknowledgments made to our whānau in Mauao, Pāpāmoa, and Mahurangi. And so we should. But what does that tell us? What might that indicate to us as Māori, as whānau, as families across the motu? Nō reira, just in that regard, ka aroha ki a tatou [I sympathise with us all], so my first speech today is to acknowledge and share with the House my condolences to all of our whānau across the motu, and particularly to our whānau in *Mauao and *Pāpāmoa and Mahurangi.

I did listen with interest, as I’m sure you all did, to the Prime Minister’s statement, and I’ve listened to several as we’ve gone through the day. I just want to add my contribution to that and say this: we have reached the third and final year of this parliamentary term—yee-ha, I say. And then we reflect, as we must and as we should—we are forced to confront a very simple truth: our world has changed. So I do agree with one comment that the Prime Minister did say, which was that the last five or six years have been tough. That’s probably the only thing I might agree with.

But I want to add to that and say we have endured, as we all know, a global pandemic, the Christchurch mosque attack, the Whakaari eruption, Cyclone Gabrielle, and now the most recent and tragic weather events across the North Island. Globally, we have witnessed genocide in Gaza, the invasion of Ukraine, and the unfolding crisis in Venezuela.

These events do not pass without consequence. The fall out is real, and we carry it. This is precisely when leadership matters the absolute most—not leadership that punishes and not leadership that blames; not leadership that makes wrong the most vulnerable but leadership that stands with whānau, that stands with families, and that stands with the people, to lift them up and forward.

Yet, in the Prime Minister’s statement, he describes the Government’s response as prudent and fiscally disciplined. To make reference to discipline, I suspect that is exactly how many New Zealanders feel. They feel disciplined: disciplined into homelessness, severe, under reported, and growing; disciplined into a 5.3 percent unemployment rate; disciplined into education reforms that choke out diversity; disciplined into a housing programme that looks like it is in our prisons, and now our windows have bars on the windows. If that’s what discipline looks like and feels like, we’re screwed, “we” being the most vulnerable; I’m talking about whānau and families that are vulnerable, that are unprotected, and that are defenceless. Things aren’t looking good for the most vulnerable.

By the way, they might be vulnerable, but they’ve got their solutions; they’ve got their plans. They know what they want and what they need from a good Government. What they need from this House is to be listened to, to be understood, and to be worked with. As a first responder in Whangārei recently, what I saw from those who are the most vulnerable, the amount of whānau and families that came in, was that those who had the least brought the most. They brought kai, they brought towels, they brought socks, they brought taro, they brought their love, and they brought their hands, and they brought it to the marae. So what did we do? Go pick up the keys, open the marae, and make sure we can feed people and look after them.

These are the things that people with their own solutions and their own ideas are ready to provide. This year, we’re listening, and I’m listening, my Te Tai Tokerau. Tēnā koe. Tēnā tātou e te Whare.

Hon MATT DOOCEY (Minister for Mental Health) (20:22): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. How good; what a year 2026 is going to be. Can I first acknowledge you, Madam Speaker, and your news of your retirement? You will be sorely missed. We came into politics together, almost 12 years ago—such a long time ago Parmjeet Parmar was a National MP! That’s how long ago it was. You’ve been a huge advocate. You are a very proud, staunch Coaster and Mainlander, and we will miss you.

It is going to be, as I say, Madam Speaker, a great year, 2026. I think of my electorate of the Waimakariri, in North Canterbury. There’s a lot on the go. Of course, we are going to turn the sod soon on the start of the construction of the Woodend Bypass—tick. Boy, have we waited a long time, because, of course, it was the last National Government that announced the Woodend Bypass in 2017. The transport Minister—who was it at the time? Anybody take a guess? Simon Bridges; that’s who it was. Then that nasty Labour Government came in, and they cut it in 2018. It might even have been one gentleman who’s in the Chamber tonight. That set that project back six years. Think of the cost that it would have cost to build six years ago and now, today. That’s why I get really frustrated when I see the people I represent stuck in congestion in Woodend in North Canterbury, to think it could have been delivered under a National Government. It’s great to see that it’ll be launched and under construction this year.

Of course, we’ve also got the Waimakariri irrigation scheme. My good friend and colleague Mark Patterson came in and announced $15 million; water storage is back, which is absolutely brilliant. North Canterbury will get reliable water storage, and that’ll be a game-changer. In a time of economic headwinds, it is our exporters, it is our primary industry, that’s leading the economic resurgence that we see being led out of Canterbury. Whether it be our sporting record or other indicators, there’s no surprise that Canterbury is leading from the front, because, of course, when Canterbury does well, the whole country does well. It’s great to see we’re backing our farmers in Waimakariri, and then, of course, we’ll be opening the new North Canterbury afterhours medical facility in Rangiora. Won’t that be great for my local constituents?

As you can see, it’s going to be a great vibe in 2026, and of course, nationally, as we go to an election year, we will be talking to voters, saying, “Don’t put this at risk”, because it doesn’t take you long to think of going back to a time under that last failed socialist experiment that was the last Labour Government. Think of projects like KiwiBuild, Auckland Light Rail, restructuring the health system in the middle of a pandemic. I mean, who in their right mind would do that? And, of course, that taniwha that was three waters. How did that go down? Like a cup of cold sick. Quite rightly, that’s why they were voted out, and that’s what we’ve got to raise awareness of: don’t put this country at risk.

There’s one area I want to talk about. I mean, we’re still looking for it, aren’t we? That $1.9 billion for mental health that the last Government announced. The Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission said there was no evidence of it—“made no material improvement”. That’s so emblematic of that last Government: talked a big game, put the trophy out. The easiest thing is to make a big announcement—money here, money there—but it failed on the follow-through and implementation. That’s why, for mental health, this Government is very different. Our mental health plan is working: faster access to support, more front-line workers, and a better crisis response.

You only need to look at the latest data coming out of the mental health targets. It’s the first time we’ve had mental health targets in New Zealand. There’s nothing more accountable for me, as mental health Minister, and this Government is setting very clear targets and holding us to account. For primary mental health, the target is 80 percent of people to be seen within one week, and the latest data shows that 83.4 percent of Kiwis get seen within one week for primary mental health. For specialist mental health: to be seen within three weeks, the target is 80 percent; nationally, we’re at 82.2 percent of Kiwis in their time of need being seen within three weeks. Emergency departments: to ensure people are admitted, discharged, transferred within six hours; 66.8 percent under a National Government, a marked improvement from the last Labour Government.

What’s really interesting is that, by actually measuring something, you can improve the performance. You capture the data. The data shows that Māori are accessing mental health services faster than any other community. Not only that, the data shows that our rural communities are accessing mental health services faster than our urban communities. That is happening under a National Government. Māori are getting faster access to support. Rural communities are getting faster access to support. It shows that, if you have a clear plan and you follow through with implementation, you get the results.

For more front-line workforce, I’m happy to announce the latest data, out at the start of this year, an increase of over 11 percent more front-line workers now at the front line from when we came into Government.

It’s quite staggering when you look at some of the statistics. The vacancy rates for mental health nurses when we came into Government:15 percent; now down to 7 percent. Drug and alcohol practitioners: 14 percent; now down to 5.5 percent vacancy. Social workers: the vacancy rates are halved. The Auditor-General was critical of the last Government for no mental health workforce plan. We kicked that off in our first year, and that’s why, in 2026, we’re seeing real results. We committed to having 60 psychology clinical interns in 2026; we’re going to hit 74. We had 33 psychiatrists as registrar trainees, and that has been expedited up to 48. We’re making a real improvement.

One of the most important areas, I think, in mental health is building out a better crisis response. I’m happy to announce that we’ve just completed the roll-out that anyone coming into the emergency department will be now seen within one hour of the police mental health change programme. That’s a game-changer: not—under the last Government—sitting in emergency departments for five or six hours while you’re having a mental health crisis, sitting next to two big police officers with tasers, a brightly lit room, noisy, a lot of people round. People are being seen and handed over within one hour.

But what I did last week is announce the new four locations for the mental health co-response teams. Just a little background on that: the last National Government announced $8 million to start the roll-out of that in 2017. The last Labour Government came in, after talking a big game in mental health, and cut that programme in 2018. We lost six years on that vital programme. Quite rightly, when people ring 111, they want a mental health response. They don’t want a criminal justice response, but they get that with the police coming round.

Now, under this Government, we’re pairing up mental health professionals with our police officers to ensure that people get a mental health response in a time of need. That’s a $28 million programme, and it’s all part of the increased funding in the mental health and addiction ring-fence. When we came into office, that sat at $2.4 billion; it’s now at $2.8 billion, and I expect it to go up further this year because that’s the importance that we place on mental health—that we are committed to getting more money out of the back office and to the front line. That’s why we’ve got more people in mental health roles. But not only that; more money out of Wellington to grassroots organisations, NGOs like our Rural Support Trust, who actually can scale up, and they’re already delivering the work, and this Government will back them in 2026.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour) (20:32): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. E tautoko ana ahau i te mihi ki a koe mō tō karere, tō pānui ka heke iho koe i te Whare Pāremata ā te mutunga o tēnei tau, nō reira e mihi ana ki a koe. Tuarua, e huri ana ngā whakaaro ki ngā whānau, ki ngā hapū, ki ngā iwi, ki ngā hapori i pā i te āwhā me te ua me te āhuatanga o te rangi i ngā rā tata ake nei, i ngā wiki kua pahure ake nei. Ko taku rohe tērā o Te Tai Tokerau, Te Rāwhiti, te rohe o Ngātiwai, ki ērā o ngā hapori ki Te Rāwhiti, e mihi kau ana ki a rātou me tēnei wā taimaha ki runga i a rātou. Otirā e tautoko ana ahau te mihi ki ērā atu o ngā rohe me ngā mate o tēnei wā. Nō reira, e mihi aroha ana, e tangi hotuhotu ana te ngākau mō rātou kua wehe ki te pō me ō rātou whānau e noho ana i raro i te kapua pōuri.

[Greetings, Madam Speaker. I support the acknowledgements you have received in regard to your message, your announcement that you will be stepping down from Parliament at the end of this year; therefore, I acknowledge you. Secondly, I turn my thoughts to the families, the subtribes, the tribes, and the communities who were affected by the storm, the rains, and the weather in recent days and past weeks. This includes my region: Te Tai Tokerau, Te Rāwhiti, the area of Ngātiwai. To those communities in Te Rāwhiti, I unreservedly acknowledge them and the burden they carry at this time. I also reinforce the acknowledgements to those other regions and those who have passed recently. Therefore, I give my sympathy, and my heart sobs for those who have departed as well as their families at this sad time.]

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker, I just want to start my contribution by recognising and acknowledging your news that you will be finishing at the end of this year, and also by turning my thoughts, along with others, to those who have been impacted by the latest severe weather events. In my own rohe of Tai Tokerau, particularly on the eastern coast of Tai Tokerau, we were impacted—those communities in Rawhiti and also in Ngātiwai. I want to acknowledge also those further down the country who have been impacted, and, of course, those who have lost their lives, and those whānau who are grieving for their lost ones at this time.

It was incredibly heartening to see, once again, our marae and our communities stand up and support those who had been impacted by severe weather events. We have seen that numerous times in our communities in Tai Tokerau. We saw news where there were tourists who had been caught up in this because, of course, it’s in the middle of the summer holidays. The marae opened their doors, welcomed them in, and gave them hot kai and somewhere to sleep and to get themselves sorted and prepared to be able to go back to their own homes. So I want to acknowledge our marae and our communities for that once again. This is what kotahitanga looks like; this is what it means to embrace unity over division, and this is the type of Aotearoa that I want my children, and all of our children, to be growing up in.

When I think about a future built here in New Zealand and giving our tamariki the best start in life, I want to turn to my education portfolio. What that doesn’t look like is being afraid of six Māori words in a kids’ book. It doesn’t look like stripping Te Tiriti o Waitangi away from school boards. It isn’t the watering down of our Aotearoa histories curriculum, and it isn’t about forcing our children to learn an imported curriculum. The Minister of Education, Erica Stanford, and the Prime Minister—who was boasting about what this Government has done in education—think that these are all great ideas, but countless experts, teachers, and parents have spoken out strongly about these changes. One can only hope that the emails that the Minister has been receiving about these changes are not being treated akin to spam.

When I opened up the media in the last couple of days, already education is hitting the headlines. What did we see to start the school year? A teacher shortage. As we know, record numbers of New Zealanders have been leaving the country for a better future elsewhere, particularly Australia. And we know that amongst those leaving, because I have spoken to them—it includes our teachers, teachers who we need here for our tamariki in Aotearoa New Zealand. Hundreds and hundreds of teacher vacancies exist around the country at this current time.

Then I opened the news again and I saw a headline about an alleged conflict of interest between the Minister of Education and the now chairperson of the Teaching Council. Dodgy is what those text messages look like to me, to the New Zealand Educational Institute, to the Council of Deans of Education, and to others who saw an exchange between the Minister of Education and somebody who is setting up a training provider, who made enquiries about tertiary funding, who then thanked the Minister when that funding had come through, and then was appointed to be the chair of the Teaching Council.

Tomorrow, we will be hearing the first submissions, on the Education Committee, for the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill, where this Government is taking away the independence, taking away the mana, of the Teaching Council from the teaching profession. It is a ministerial overreach, where now there will be more ministerial appointments to the Teaching Council, where we have concerns that the Minister is giving herself the powers to interfere in the profession, in the curriculum. We have had untold letters of concern, and concerns expressed from the sector. The Prime Minister spoke in his statement today about the importance of education, yet they don’t see it as important to work with the sector. The sector has been shut out of these changes that are being ram-raided through for political expediency, not the best interests of our children.

We are not seeing collaboration with the sector; we are seeing chaos. We are not seeing respect for our sector; we are seeing ministerial overreach into that profession. We also heard the Prime Minister talk about youth crime and boast about the improvement in the statistics in youth crime. What the Prime Minister didn’t recognise is that the one of the main contributors to the reduction in youth crime has been initiatives started under Labour and continued by this Government—no recognition of this side of the House, who introduced programmes like Circuit Breaker and Fast Track, which have been expanded by this Government.

Instead, we have also got the Government investing up to $30 million into boot camps—a failed experiment. The Government was warned of the failure rate of boot camps; ignored, once again, expert evidence and advice; and continued to push forward with military-style academies. It had a huge failure rate. When I asked the Minister questions at the Social Services and Community Committee last year about the next iteration of the boot camps, she was cagey, she was dodgy, and she was not answering the question: when will the next boot camp be taking place? Well, I can tell the House it will be in March, before the legislation has passed through Parliament, before those who are eligible under the legislation will be able to do the boot camp.

We have only just received the evaluation, which was not a glowing evaluation of this programme. It was not showing positive results that justify the spend of up to $30 million into military-style academies. That money could be better spent supporting initiatives around early intervention and prevention and wraparound services for whānau, for all of our rangatahi and tamariki who are interacting with the youth justice system. Instead, this Government will continue to spend money on failed experiments, and therefore that is not going to mean that we have less victims in Aotearoa New Zealand. They are spending money on something that has a high recidivism rate.

My time has gone. I have only just started to scratch the surface of my list. We have quite some time ahead of us in the House this year where we will continue to hold the Government accountable for the failures in terms of the money that they are spending in youth crime and also what they are pushing through, forcing through, without collaborating with the sector in education. We do not support the Prime Minister’s statement.

Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula) (20:43): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d firstly like to join with others around the House in acknowledging your news of retirement. It’s been a lovely pleasure to have you in the team in National and to be part of that with you. Thank you for the way you’ve supported us newbies, and we are really knowing that we will miss you—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I haven’t gone yet.

Dr VANESSA WEENINK: —and I’m sure others around the House agree. Oh, you won’t miss us? OK, that’s fine. That’s fair.

Speaking in response to the Prime Minister’s statement today that really carried on from reflections across the House in regards to the terrible tragedy in the recent weather events in the North Island, I’d also like to express my heartfelt sympathies to those who have lost loved ones and also to acknowledge the work of all of those community participants who have been there on the front lines of these disasters and also our emergency services, including the Defence Force.

The Prime Minister also spoke in recognition of the uncertain times of this world, and he also spoke of his pride and of our national pride in our Defence Force, and especially in our contributions that we made in Afghanistan. The Hon Judith Collins, the Minister of Defence, had previously made media statements in support of our forces, and she actually read some of that media statement as well in the House this evening and very graciously acknowledged myself and other colleagues like Tim Costley, who served in Afghanistan as well.

Having had these memories of Afghanistan raised, it’s hard for me not to acknowledge again our Defence Force and my colleagues who I served with on my two tours of Afghanistan, but also all of those who I looked after as a medical officer who had served in all of our rotations of various deployments that we sent to Afghanistan, including our special forces, who are very much on the front lines, and all of those who lost their lives, including my neighbour Lieutenant Tim O’Donnell, who I think of quite often. He was one of our first officers that we’d lost in New Zealand for a long time. I remember before he left to go to be the patrol commander of the Romero base that we knew was the most dangerous, he said, “Have a beer for me, Ness.”—have a beer for me. I think he knew that he wasn’t coming back, and it gives me shivers to think of that. It was sad that we lost him. It was sad that we lost one of my medics as well, Jacinda Baker. She was an extraordinary young woman.

I acknowledge all of those that we lost. I acknowledge everybody who misses those people and thinks of them often—their families, their friends. As time goes on, those memories seem to get stronger. I know for those who have recently lost people in our recent disasters in New Zealand, for those families the memories will be with them forever, and this is such an incredibly tragic time for them.

Thank you for allowing me that little sojourn into memory, but I want to get back to more positive things. Obviously, being an MP from Christchurch—we’re very positive down there. We’re very positive in Christchurch. It is an absolute star at the moment. We are feeling the positivity of an improving economy. We’re seeing that in sectors across the board. We’re seeing that in manufacturing and construction and we’re seeing that in in our primary industries in particular.

As the MP for Banks Peninsula, I have one of the fastest growing suburbs in the metropolitan area of Christchurch, which is Halswell. That is somewhere we are literally building the future. Just this week I was nearby a large area under construction with new retail and new supermarkets that are going in place. What’s really interesting is that it took more than five years to get the consents in place for some of those supermarkets, and there’s been an incredible battle. One of the key things that our Government is doing is bringing in changes to the Resource Management Act, which will mean that planning will be much more simple. Once we’ve fully implemented the new system, it will be a lot less complex. We’ll have a very clear hierarchy of instructions from the law right through to the planning system so that there’s not new and different variations and interpretations in every single council. The construction firms that I’ve spoken to who work across Selwyn and Waimakariri and Christchurch City Council, they have got to work in a situation where they have different interpretations of the law under those different councils. It’s an incredible imposition in cost as well as just time. The amount of time it takes and the cost to get things done in this country is far in excess of what it should be.

Also, in the electorate of Banks Peninsula, we are building the future in terms of new classrooms for our schools. We were very glad to announce that there’ll be 14 new classrooms going into Cashmere High, the high school in the electorate of Banks Peninsula. That’s on top of another 10 classrooms that are already under way.

Cashmere High is one of the most subscribed public schools in the country, so more than 97 percent of the children who are eligible to go to Cashmere are going there, and they’ve got fewer than about 30 students that are outside of zone in the school. With 2,500 students at the school—incredibly popular school and with a very good reputation. It’s great that we could announce those classrooms. It was something that had previously been stalling but, thanks to our wonderful Minister of Education Erica Stanford, we were able to get those confirmed and under way.

Also, a new school in Milns Road in Halswell is going to be fantastic—

Hon Chris Bishop: What road?

Dr VANESSA WEENINK: Milns Road in Halswell. The Minister of Transport will be with me soon down in Christchurch, so we’re looking forward to that. We’re seeing more of those roads around Halswell.

Also, Somerfield School is getting some new classrooms; badly needed classrooms, across there. The infrastructure that we’re building within Christchurch includes some of the roads around Halswell, as mentioned. Halswell Road, that leads into Lincoln Rd is a bit of a—what would I call it?—graveyard for road cones at the moment. It’s quite a spectacular place. The Hon Simeon Brown actually joined me on that section of road last year, I think it was, or the year before. It’s taken its time and currently, for those of you in Banks Peninsula and Halswell, please go ahead and fill out my survey that I’ve got going at the moment on the extra bit of road, the bus lanes, and what we should do about that, whether it should be a Transit 2. So just a little plug there.

Suze Redmayne: How do we do that? On Facebook?

Dr VANESSA WEENINK: Yeah, on Facebook, is the main one. We can find the link on there or just on my website. So thank you very much.

This is going to be an exciting year. We’ve got an incredible programme of work to get through in Government but also around the country—building the future of this country. Fixing the basics is already under way, and we’ll continue to do that where it’s required. There are exciting things being built and opened. I should have mentioned this earlier when I was waxing lyrical about Christchurch, but the stadium—we can’t wait for the stadium to open and also the events that are going to be coming to Christchurch as part of our plan to boost those events across the country.

Yeah, we’ve got a great programme coming up in April around Anzac Day with—I think it’s something to do with rugby; people who care about that sort of thing will know more about that. So National is firing away under this year and we’re building the future.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (20:53): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, and happy New Year to all my colleagues here today; a pleasure to be back here in Parliament. Now, when I sat here this afternoon and listened intently to the speech being delivered by Christopher Luxon, I did wonder whether he’d been in New Zealand for the past year or so, because the picture he painted was vastly different from the one that I see in my local area and the stories that I hear from people that I talked to over the holiday break.

The two things that he sort of alluded to, which were the same two things that his party campaigned on at the last election, were law and order, and the cost of living. Both of those things I’d like to speak about today. First of all, the only promise that this Government made at the election about law and order was to deliver 500 more police officers in two years. Well, that date has been and gone, and we still do not have 500 more police officers in New Zealand. So to be trumpeting achievements for law and order, for this Government, when the only promise that they made has not been delivered on or failed, because they did not deliver those 500 police officers at all. That in itself has been a huge fudge in terms of trying to say that it will happen in two years or three years. We’re really unclear about what that means for New Zealanders.

It also means that the ratio between how many police officers compared to how many people in New Zealand has significantly declined, compared to the previous Government. Under Labour, we promised 1,800 additional police and that was delivered on, over our period of time and Government. This Government promised 500 and failed. I think it’s important to note that. That’s not the only thing, though, that they’ve failed on in law and order. I’d also like to draw your attention to the fact that methamphetamine has increased over a one-year period by 97 percent—the single biggest increase in New Zealand’s history for methamphetamine finding its ways into New Zealand homes and streets, which has wreaked havoc up and down the country to communities, and causes ongoing issues; additional issues such as retail, crime, family violence, other issues within whānau are all made worse by the prevalence of methamphetamine within our communities.

What happened right before we saw that spike? We saw Government cuts to areas like Customs where front-line Customs jobs were taken away by Nicola Willis’ economic cuts. All those Government departments were required to cut 6.5, 7 percent, 8 percent. That meant jobs gone from Customs, intelligence jobs, people that actually put their heads together, and decide how they’re going to counter—fighting drugs coming into our country. It’s only when we saw that significant spike of 97 percent more in methamphetamine that we started to see a reinvestment. Only then do we start to see a group set up to investigate how they would counter this and how organised crime would be countered in New Zealand. Absolutely unable to understand how this Government can trumpet that it’s achieved on law and order when it’s failed to deliver 500 police officers, and a 97 percent increase in methamphetamine over a period of 12 months.

But it doesn’t stop there, because we also have the Ministerial Advisory Group on Retail Crime, chaired by no other than Sunny Kaushal. What we’ve seen in the past few days is the majority of those members have resigned. The head of Retail NZ—you think of the experience and the expertise that Carolyn Young would have brought to that group and was able to lead. A great opportunity for Retail NZ to have input into good, forward-thinking policies that would actually help get on top of retail crime. Because of the dysfunction of that group and the way that person was treated, and others, we have seen a mass exodus from that advisory group to the point that it is dysfunctional.

I think that what New Zealanders see is that it’s a group largely set up to help Sunny Kaushal line his pockets, with the amount of catering, office space, and other luxury items he’s able to put together along with his salary of over $900 per day, which is what I have seen, has no tangible benefits. The reason why some of those members of that retail crime advisory group resigned was some of the measures that were being recommended by the chair, Sunny Kaushal, were considered dangerous. It’s not just those in the retail crime group who walked away because they thought the suggestions were dangerous for New Zealanders, the New Zealand Police also gave clear advice that citizen’s arrest powers and people on the streets detaining people who could be violent or dangerous may lead to loss of life in New Zealand.

But no, the Government trucked on anyway and kept him in that position, still trying to show that they’ve made some kind of difference in retail crime, when the reality is they’ve wasted money on ideas that were offered to our Government for free and declined because police advised that they were dangerous.

The last one in law and order I’d like to point at is the boot camps: the absolute dismal failure and waste of money that boot camps have offered New Zealand. The reality is when the Prime Minister stood up in his address this afternoon and stated how ram raids had declined, well, they started declining under our Government, and the reason they declined were programmes like Kotahi te Whakaaro, programmes like Circuit Breaker, those wraparound, quick response services that were put into place under Labour. This Government, right now, knows that they work because not only have they kept those programmes, but they’ve expanded them because the evidence speaks for itself.

Over 80 percent of young people who go through those programmes do not go on to reoffend, whereas it is the absolute reverse under boot camps. Well over 80 percent—as we know from the failed trial—reoffend in New Zealand. But they’re not giving up because it sounds good. So they’re going to keep on saying boot camps even though all the evidence demonstrates they do not work.

In the Prime Minister’s opening speech, talking about the wins they’ve had for law and order, when they’ve got no 500 cops, methamphetamine rates through the roof, boot camps are an utter failure, and the retail crime Ministerial Advisory Group has just imploded—I fail to see how he points to any mark of success in that suite of measures.

But that’s not the only thing he talked about; the cost of living is something that National campaigned hard on and the cost of living bites New Zealanders every single day. New Zealanders are hurting and they know that this Government promised them—they promised them—that they would make things better, that life would get better, and it’s got worse. It costs more for food, it costs more for bills, it costs more for rates, it costs more for every single step of the way because this Government has pushed all those costs out into the areas.

And what’s their solution for things like that? Oh, just cap rates. That’ll fix it. What a National solution that one is. All those people who were promised that they would get relief from the cost of living crisis, they have not received that. We know, in Wellington alone, the number of people who have lost their jobs, who have become unemployed, who have had to take up part-time work at a lower rate that they would have got and struggle to be able to pay their mortgage, struggle to be able to pay their rent, and struggle to be able to put food on the table and give their kids food to eat each day—good healthy food. When we see the cost of bread going up by 60 percent—60 percent increase in bread—that is absolutely unaffordable for some families in my areas.

In order to eat healthy and to live, life has got harder, not better, under this Government. And Kiwis know that. They know that well and good and that comes back in the polls. People know that they promised they would get debt down—it got worse. They promised that they would get inflation down—it hasn’t. They promised they would grow the economy—it shrunk. Everything that they’ve promised has not happened.

The reality is that New Zealanders want jobs; they want an opportunity to earn; they want to be able to stay here in our country, to put roots down, and have a future for their families. But what this Government has done is drive Kiwis offshore in record numbers—70,000 gone. Those people are bright, have opportunity and so much to offer our country, and this is such a failure of a Government that has driven those people into other countries. We want to build a country where there are jobs, where there is affordable healthcare, and people can have a home, jobs, health, and homes. It’s not too much to ask—it’s not too much to ask. And we will be working strong grassroots right across New Zealand in those communities where they’ve lost jobs, where they can’t afford food, and we will be telling them that it was that National Government that failed them and that is why we need to change this Government.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Leader of the House) (21:03): I move, That this debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to.

Debate interrupted.

Bills

Legislation Amendment Bill

Legislative Statement

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Attorney-General) (21:03): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I present a legislative statement on the Legislation Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Second Reading

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Attorney-General) (21:04): I move, That the Legislation Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

The broad purpose of the Legislation Amendment Bill is to make legislation easier to find, use, and understand. The bill seeks to improve access to secondary legislation by amending the Legislation Act 2019.

Secondary legislation is law made under a delegation from Parliament. It includes regulations, orders, rules, exemptions, by-laws, notices, and instruments, with many different names. This type of law is made by Ministers and by departments, occupational regulatory boards, and the like. The bill will require publication of secondary legislation, together with key information about that legislation, on the agency’s website or another website prescribed in regulations. Everything will be identified, indexed, and linked, and it will, over time, turn the New Zealand Legislation website into what it should be: a one-stop shop for legislation and information about that legislation. It will also enable users to more easily find legislation on agency websites and to know that they are looking at legislation.

The New Zealand Legislation website will go live in the next few months and it will include a host of new features for making legislation easier to find, use, and understand, including a pilot of the new agency, the secondary legislation service. You can already find thousands of pieces of secondary legislation on the new website as part of that pilot. This bill, once it fully comes into force, will enable a full production service for secondary legislation by setting the requirements for publishing agencies. I encourage everyone watching and listening to check out the new website, if you have not done so already. These are very exciting developments for the 25,000 unique users per day who use the current site.

Following the first reading, the bill was referred to the Justice Committee for consideration. The committee has recommended several amendments to clarify and strengthen the provisions of the bill, all of which I agree with. I want to briefly outline some of the main changes.

The main focus of the submissions and the committee’s consideration related to changes the bill proposes to revision bills to make them a more useful tool for repairs and maintenance of the statute book. The simple truth is that despite this House’s best intentions, the current restrictions have severely limited the usefulness of revision bills as a vehicle for keeping the statute book up to date. Only two revision bills have been completed since the programme’s inception in 2012, and I hope that the third—the Valuers Bill—will soon be passed. While these bills are all excellent pieces of work, something needs to change if we’re going to achieve the original objective of having progressive and systemic revision of the statute book.

This bill makes changes that will enable revision bills to be a more effective tool. At present, revision bills mainly seem to re-enact the old law in up-to-date language. These changes will make it easier for revision bills to carry out repairs and maintenance at the same time.

I thank the Justice Committee for its careful consideration of this aspect of the bill and the changes it has recommended, including requiring the explanatory note for revision bills to identify changes that ought to be brought to the attention of the House. I also note that the committee resolved to write to the Standing Orders Committee suggesting possible changes to the Standing Orders to ensure this House will continue to effectively scrutinise revision bills.

The committee has also recommended other changes to improve the operability of the Legislation Act and support it to achieve its purpose. One such change proposed is in relation to the Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017 provisions concerning electronic transactions. These provisions are default rules that apply to all legislation and they supplement Part 2 of the Legislation Act, which deals with the interpretation and application of legislation. However, their location in that Act does not make it clear that they apply to all legislation. To address this, the committee recommended that the bill contain a signpost provision in Part 2 of the Legislation Act which points to those provisions in the Contract and Commercial Law Act. This makes it clearer that those provisions have general application to all legislation. The committee also recommended other minor amendments to clarify and adjust provisions of the bill—for example, around what the Parliamentary Counsel Office drafts and publishes—and to clarify how the transition to the new publication system will work.

In conclusion, I want to thank the Justice Committee for its careful and thorough work in continuously improving the bill. It is important work that takes time, and on the note of continuous improvement, I intend to release a short Amendment Paper to the bill to put the finishing touches on these multi-year reforms. I’ll look forward to discussing these during the committee stage.

Finally, I acknowledge those organisations and members of the public who took the time to engage with the bill’s content and make a submission. Your efforts improving the quality and the accessibility of the law are greatly appreciated. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): The question is that the motion be agreed.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour) (21:09): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I rise for the first time this year to take a call on behalf of Labour in support of this bill. Before I do speak to the bill, I did want to add my thoughts and condolences to those who’ve been impacted by the weather events across the country. As a West Auckland - based MP, I’ve certainly seen, and we’ve felt, how deeply these weather events can impact community, and I also wanted to acknowledge, as we come up to the third anniversary of Cyclone Gabrielle, that we’ll have community members who are both feeling very much for those who are impacted but also feeling, really, that sense of what happened to them and their communities, too.

I was very excited to see this bill come up as the first bill, essentially, on the Order Paper this year because while it may not be what gets everyone’s blood flowing, it is an extremely important bill, in my view, because it is a constitutional bill. It is about ensuring at its heart that law is known and knowable and that people can access regulation. We have thousands and thousands of pieces of regulation in New Zealand that govern the everyday lives of New Zealanders, and so I did want to commend the Attorney-General for getting us to this stage. It has been a considerably long journey, which I will speak briefly to.

A little bit of history to get us going. In terms of the genesis of how we report and ensure that people know what the law is, traditionally for us it’s been through the Gazette. The Gazette has its origins in the Oxford Gazette, which came about in 1665, when King Charles II moved to Oxford to escape the plague, and that was the way in which the King would communicate in terms of decrees and alert Parliament as to the King’s views. Then, of course, in the 1840s we had gazetted notices being issued out of Paihia, and out of Russell, as well, and that continued and developed.

Surprisingly, it was only in 2014 that our printed Gazettes were replaced entirely by the online published version, and so that’s probably a lot more recently than many people know. But, essentially, the problem that we’ve had for a number of years is that not all of our secondary legislation is accessible, even via that format. We have Parliament Counsel Office (PCO) - drafted legislation, and they do publish and always have published their legislation. However, if there are pieces of secondary legislation published by the other 120-plus agencies that might produce it, you cannot guarantee that you’ll be able to locate it.

We have a serious issue of accessibility, where if someone wants to find that regulation, they could try and first establish who is responsible for making it, and then contact that agency if they can’t find it gazetted or online. It is a considerable amount of effort and, potentially, a considerable amount of money as agencies try and establish what their obligations are, and Parliament really has reduced oversight in terms of being able to very quickly understand what regulations are in place and what powers are being used.

So there was a need to do this work. It started well back in 2016, and I recall that in the last Parliament there was considerable discussion about change. The initial proposals for change put a very high burden on the PCO. Essentially, the PCO were to gather all the legislation and they were responsible for putting it up. Between that Parliament and this one, there’s been an understanding that that would simply be too large a burden, and so those are some of the changes that we’re seeing in this bill in front of us. I think the important thing to know is that that information will still be available. It doesn’t change the accessibility objective, but it is an important change in terms of ensuring that this is doable.

The real attractiveness of this bill, and, I think, the huge constitutional significance, is clause 20, which inserts new sections 77 and 77A. Essentially, that says that those pieces of secondary legislation don’t come into force unless certain minimum publication requirements are met, and that’s absolutely critical, because it’s a fundamental principle of the rule of the law that legislation—secondary included—should be knowable before it applies to citizens.

Now, there are some exemptions to this, and I referenced our weather events earlier in my speech. One of the exemptions is in relation to extreme weather events, where it’s understandable that you wouldn’t necessarily need or want to have things published and up first before you had a Government who is taking action. There are other very sensible exemptions as well, including where there isn’t any disadvantage to the citizens, and so that regulation would, essentially, be to their favour, as well.

The one thing that was removed that I did quite like—and I can understand the reasons for removal—was that the part around prospective consolidation of changes has now been excluded. Prospective consolidation would show future changes that have been passed, or decisions made, but are not yet in force. I think that is beneficial especially to lawmakers and for us here in the House holding the Government and executive to account, but I can understand that it’s obviously a considerable administrative burden, and so I understand that.

There are two other major sections of the bill. The Attorney-General has spoken to the revision bills. There have been significant changes that were proposed that broaden the scope of when revisions bills can come into play in the House. Now, a revision bill isn’t intended to make huge, substantive changes to the law. It’s intended to ensure that when we need to make updates, we can do that in a consolidated way, as we’ve seen in the past with the Contract and Commercial Law Bill, and this expands that. The select committee made some proposed changes—the Attorney-General has agreed with that—that would in some ways restrict the scope of what was initially proposed. It’s just to ensure that we’re not straying into a space where there were substantive changes being made in bulk without adequate scrutiny by the House.

The Attorney-General also did mention that the intention of the committee was to write to the Standing Orders Committee about the process of the House. These changes can be made to revision bills. The House still has control over how we want to process every bill in this House. If we want to say that a revision bill skips a second reading, we can do that, and if we choose to give greater scrutiny to revision bills because we’re broadening the scope of what can be included, we can also do that. So I think it’s important for the House to bear in mind that this isn’t necessarily taking us to a place where there is far less scrutiny. There is an administrative need for us to ensure that legislation is updated when it should be, but there is work to do on the Standing Orders to make sure that there are appropriate constraints around that, too.

The other thing I wanted to mention is the changes—the fascinating changes—to legal privilege. At present, the provisions apply to PCO staff members and contractors who hold a practising certificate, and the advice to us was that, frequently, PCO will contract with other providers who don’t hold a practising certificate. These changes will extend legal privilege to those individuals, as well.

Now, initially, I did question this. I did question whether it was appropriate to make that expansion, but with my former community law hat on, we have law students working for us on several occasions who are working under the supervision of practising lawyers, and they are also covered by that legal privilege, as well. I do think that this is, again, a practical change that we’re making—a significant one.

One thing the Law Society raised that we might want to monitor was the fact that PCO don’t draft tax legislation at the moment. It’s probably one of the only departments where the IRD still holds that quite separately, and so I’m looking forward to continuing to monitor whether that’s appropriate.

No doubt there’ll be some teething issues as this all kicks off and there’s a lot more responsibility on agencies. I, for one, am looking forward to reading through the annual Secondary Legislation Practices Survey, which I’m sure committee members, as well as my colleagues on the Regulations Review Committee, will be eagerly awaiting. Otherwise, I thank the Attorney-General again, and I commend this bill to the House.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (21:19): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to speak on the second reading of the Legislation Amendment Bill. While I did make a response to the Prime Minister’s statement before, I didn’t get an opportunity to also offer my condolences to, particularly, those who have lost loved ones in the most recent tragedy. In both Mount Maunganui, as well as Pāpāmoa, I want to especially acknowledge everyone who has lost their lives and acknowledge their families, but, specifically, Sharon and Max, who were students from my old high school in East Auckland, Pakūranga College. I also want to offer my condolences to the newly named 10-year-old and his grandmother, Austen and Yao. This is also affecting our Chinese communities, as well.

When it comes to the Legislation Amendment Bill, as the previous speaker has mentioned, this is something that is a long time coming, and I want to just address a few aspects of this. I think one of the things that is in need of an update is the consistency around secondary legislation, and particularly how secondary legislation is interacting with primary legislation on the New Zealand Legislation website. While this might be something that not every New Zealander uses on a day-to-day basis, for those who do, the website itself does offer significant quality-of-life improvements, as well as accessibility in its ability to link primary legislation, and also in terms of hyperlinking secondary legislation, as well.

In terms of the secondary legislation component, it’s also important to mention—as the previous speaker Vanushi Walters has also mentioned—that some of the quality-of-life changes are much needed changes in terms of the requirement to publish secondary legislation as it becomes effective. As I have been sitting on the Regulations Review Committee, it has become apparent—and I’m also constantly in awe of both the members who are on the Regulations Review Committee, as well as the support they receive from the Office of the Clerk for that select committee, on the enormous amount of work that goes into tracking down non-compliant secondary legislation, in many ways, whether it is a missed signature or a missed date. We’re hoping the consistency and a new framework will also offer a level of update and the ability for us to ease some of the workload that we do see sometimes going through the Regulations Review Committee, as well.

I want to address something that the Attorney-General has mentioned at the beginning. This is one of those things that is a common practice we see here in Parliament, but it nevertheless needs highlighting. The Attorney-General made mention of an Amendment Paper that is going to be accompanying this bill, and, once again, what we’re seeing—and we’re seeing it as a concerning trend, in general, over the last year—is the number of Amendment Papers that change the legislation in a significant way. In some ways, there is a level of scepticism about whether that Amendment Paper is potentially—and I just checked the legislation website, and that Amendment Paper is still currently not available on that site. I think that a lot of the consideration that we have for this bill will now be in some sort of limbo. We’ll reserve our position on the final reading of this bill, and also upon seeing what that potential amendment, for good or for bad, is going to look like.

I draw the House’s attention to a number of amendments we have seen over the last two years where significant changes have been made. Probably one of the more high-profile recent changes was the change to the obligation of school boards in having them not need to consider Te Tiriti o Waitangi, under section 122 of the Education and Training Act. Again, that has not gone through a select committee process and it has not had any particular comment during the select committee process from public submitters, and yet it has been introduced by the Minister as part of the committee of the whole House stage overall.

Again, it’s one of those things that probably is a reasonably common process, but we have seen the Government abuse that level of good faith in the way that we can have that robust discussion and that transparency when it comes to the legislative process here in Parliament, and so I do have concerns. Potentially, it could be quite benign, but, again, we wouldn’t know, because it’s not available for us to look at right now. It will probably drop just before the committee of the whole House stage, but, I guess, as precedent would have it, I do have concerns over the content of any Amendment Papers by Ministers in general.

I want to also mention other parts of this bill that deserve mentioning. Again, the legal privilege and liability is something that was discussed at length during the select committee stage, and I do want to thank officials for being very honest in terms of the kind of personnel that would be considered under the legal privilege and liability. I think part of the concern that we expressed during the select committee stage was the intent of the legal privilege, which means that even under for an Official Information Act request, certain documents would not be publicly available, and they’d be struck out as part of that. The kind of personnel that it extends to is not simply those from the Parliamentary Counsel Office but also legislation analysts, counsel assistants, contractors, and secondees, and the extension to contractors and secondees was the part that we had particularly robust discussions on during the select committee stage.

The next important aspect that I want to draw the House’s attention to is the idea of having powers to make editorial changes, and this is to do with the ability to change even things like the title of secondary legislation. There were a lot of questions, and, again, we have received responses from the Parliamentary Counsel Office around what that would entail and some of the scope, and also the limitations on what those editorial changes are going to be.

Finally, I want to address probably the most concerning aspect to do with this bill for the Green Party, and that is around revision bills. This is something that we did discuss at length during the select committee stage in terms of what revision bills could potentially mean. The Attorney-General has, rightly, pointed out that since its inception, there have been only two bills—and there are soon to be three, with the Valuers Bill—that have gone through using this process, and they are the Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017 and the Partnership Law Act 2019.

The issue that we have with this is that even though there have been additional limitations placed on it, it is still an expansion of the scope of the existing settings. While we recognise that certain settings may have created certain cumbersome processes—and there has been work around some of those processes, such as the Valuers Bill, with the ability for you to introduce Amendment Papers—we need to be clear that revision bills in themselves already have a very light legislative process, where we do not have a first reading. It goes through to a recommended subject select committee, it comes through a second reading, and there is no committee of the whole House and there is no third reading, and so some of the accountability and scrutiny mechanisms we do see do not apply to revision bills. There is a genuine concern that if we do expand the scope of revision bills to make it more flexible and easier and to have more things being passed under that process, what is this going to be able to allow in terms of the loopholes that we have already seen this Government exploit in our legislative processes and in our Standing Orders?

To give an example of that: when you’re looking at the ability to make changes through a revision bill based on the clarification of parliamentary intent, there is no guarantee that that particular process would not be abused. We have seen the fact that the Government has introduced an 11-day submissions process for the Fast-track Approvals Amendment Bill, despite it not having to go through a debatable motion in the House. We’re seeing those additional issues. This fundamentally undermines the democratic process and the ability for Parliament to have that kind of scrutiny, and so while in other cases the Greens would have been OK with something like this expanded scope, the track record of the current Government and the way that we have seen flippant disregard of our democratic process means that at this stage, unless we do change the settings of the changes to revision bills and also the changes to how we look at Standing Order 276 around revision bills, the Green Party cannot support this bill, currently.

TODD STEPHENSON (ACT) (21:29): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take a short call on the Legislation Amendment Bill. ACT shares the concern of many New Zealanders that, actually, it’s quite hard to deal with Government. There are too many rules and regulations and too much bureaucracy, but this bill actually starts to address one of those issues, which is that if you are subject to laws, you should actually be able to find those laws, understand them, and access them in one place. This bill is very simple: it’s bringing legislation to the people so that it can be understood and it can be in one place.

I also hope that it will actually have our Government departments and agencies change their behaviour so that they will have to explain to the citizens of New Zealand the laws and rules that they’re subject to. I have no hesitation in commending this to the House.

JAMIE ARBUCKLE (NZ First) (21:30): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support the Legislation Amendment Bill in its second reading. This is a common-sense piece of legislation that addresses a fundamental requirement of a free and democratic society, which is that the people must be able to find and understand the laws that govern them.

It’s really disappointing to hear that one of the Opposition parties is now not supporting this bill. Through the first reading, we had that support through the whole House, and also my understanding was that through our select committee process, we also had that support, but, for some reason, tonight that has fallen away.

One of the key principles of the New Zealand First Party is to have open and accountable Government, and so this bill really is around that fundamental principle, which we support. Having a single point of access for all our laws makes a lot of sense. The New Zealand Legislation website, where you’ll be able to find your secondary legislation, will no longer be a maze to go to find the pieces of legislation that you require. We’ve had that situation recently, where you would find pieces of legislation hidden away in newspapers or on agency websites, and it was just a maze to come across what you were trying to find. On that, I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Celia Wade-Brown—sorry, what call are you taking, Ms Wade-Brown?

CELIA WADE-BROWN (Green) (21:32): I’m taking the Green Party’s split call with Te Pāti Māori, and they don’t seem to be here.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): No—have you made that arrangement with them?

CELIA WADE-BROWN: No; I’m just speaking next.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Sorry, this is the Te Pāti Māori call.

Teanau Tuiono: Yeah, they’re not here.

Hon Members: They are here.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): No, no, sorry—this is a Te Pāti Māori call. This is a second reading, so unless you’ve made an arrangement with them—just hold on. [Speaker seeks advice] My apologies—that is, the Greens are taking the second part of the call, and so it’s a five-minute call. Thank you—my mistake.

CELIA WADE-BROWN: Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s understandable, Mr Speaker—no problem. I’m speaking for the first time in this calendar year in this House, and I would definitely like to add my condolences to the families, to the whānau, and actually also to the small businesses that have been hugely impacted by the recent weather and landslides.

I do rise, though, to speak to the second reading of the Legislation Amendment Bill on behalf of the Green Party. I rise not as a member of the Justice Committee and not as a lawyer—I think we’ve got quite a few lawyers in the House—but as spokesperson for digitising government, and I would like to commend much of the bill. The clarity of having primary and secondary legislation accessible is a good aim. From the point of view of making good use of today’s technology, there are some good steps.

The scrutiny of secondary legislation and the ability for the general public, for advocacy groups, and for MPs to actually find the details is definitely important, but I have some reservations. Our party policy does say that we should have comprehensive and accessible legal information—for example, through the internet—and the values and principles of the justice policy include the principles of openness, accountability, and transparency, and so it’s a pity one can’t vote for three-quarters of the bill, rather than vote for or against the whole thing.

Before I move to reservations about the revision bills, I want to say a few words about resourcing. The New Zealand Law Society Te Kāhui Ture o Aotearoa, in their submission, referred to how the Law Commission identified that in the 1990s, the Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO) was severely under-resourced, which was the reason for some of the practices at that point that are being changed within this bill. If we look at new section 130, “Functions of PCO”, in clause 44, they are quite significant. Establishing and maintaining the legislation website—which will be more complex to do, even though it will be easier for the public to see—is not a cheap exercise. I am concerned that past Budgets have not sufficiently resourced some of our parliamentary services, and I would just hope that if we are going to make the PCO responsible for these things, Budget 2026 will actually adequately resource this and other parliamentary services.

I come to the reason why, at this stage, we are voting against. Although we’re reasonably happy with many of the provisions, we are uncomfortable with the ability of revision bills to be a little wider than we would have hoped, and, as my esteemed colleague Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan pointed out, it can mean less scrutiny. We may be convinced by the Amendment Paper. It would have been nice to have seen it a little earlier so that we could perhaps be happy with this, but as we are at the moment, we have our reservations about this being another way of slipping legislation through. We have seen urgency used, we have seen submissions and select committee timing curtailed—I mean, we’re looking at people being told in December that they should submit in February, which, in theory, if you don’t have any holidays, if you don’t have any children to look after, and if you don’t have all sorts of flood mopping up to do, might be feasible. But, actually, having that is a problem, and we will be voting against the bill.

CARL BATES (National—Whanganui) (21:38): Thanks, Mr Speaker. I just want to acknowledge you, as this is the first time I’ve stood up to speak in the House this year, and I just acknowledge all those experiencing challenges across the East Coast.

I just want to acknowledge the Justice Committee for the work they did in bringing this legislation back to the House. My colleagues on the other side of the House are going to spend a lot of time in the Justice Committee this year as we do work to make this country safer. That’s a big part of the job of the Justice Committee. This is not quite related to that, but it is an important bill and, therefore, I commend it to the House.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (21:39): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Labour supports this bill. We know that it is a good way of increasing the accessibility of secondary legislation by providing a single point of access. There’s been a lot of work that’s been put into this bill. The bill provides for a system of legislative and also administrative tools that can work together to improve the quality of access to legislation, and we know how important it is to make sure that that is accessible.

It’s a significant task, indeed, because secondary legislation sits in many different parts, and to be able to bring this together in an orderly way, there are new publication requirements that are put in place by this legislation to cater for a variation amongst all the different agencies that are involved in that. These tools will be able to ensure that the system provides not only certainty but also the flexibility required for the system to operate effectively, and it is also taking into account the minimising any legal risk.

It was really interesting to be part of the Justice Committee and to watch how this is going to operate. While we do support this bill, we note that it pre-empts the passage of the Regulatory Standards Bill in that it provides for clauses to repeal Part 4 of the Act before it comes into force, and we do know that Part 4 would impose disclosure requirements for Government-initiated legislation and even, indeed, potentially duplicate key elements of the Regulatory Standards Bill being processed by the Minister for Regulation. Agencies, in this instance, will need to devote significant resource to be ready for Part 4 to commence, and that will occur in March of this year—so not too far away—and engagement with the House will be required. Instead, existing Cabinet-mandated provisions for disclosure requirements for bills will continue to apply.

We have known for some time that the inaccessibility of secondary legislation can be problematic for certainty if not drafted and published by the Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO). When people talk about secondary legislation, it can sit in many different areas, and it can be rules or notices, or it can be by-laws, and that is a real weakness in New Zealand’s legislative system. It makes it much harder for the Government to do business and for the public to use and to understand the law if we don’t know where all these different parts of secondary legislation are, and so it’s a significant piece of work not only to be able to locate all of the secondary legislation but also enable tools where they can be accessed.

The provisions of the bill and the Secondary Legislation Act provide that under the provisions, agencies would continue to draft secondary legislation, but they would lodge that legislation with PCO for publication on the legislative website. Similar to what our primary legislation does now, the process will now be stipulated for secondary legislation, and so that would include things like, for example, significant safety risks, complexity, and also the cost of PCO for drafting agencies. In terms of what the bill offers as an improvement, it is that it will instead adopt a lower-cost and lower-risk solution which will establish just one, single point of access to legislation. Really, in this day and age, in terms of the advances we have in technology and how, more than anything now, people are finding legislation online, they will be able to use that.

The single, broad policy is to promote high-quality legislation for New Zealanders that is easy to find and is easy to understand, and, to that end, the bill proposes a number of key changes to make sure that whatever the agency is—whether it’s the Ministry of Transport, or even a local council—the relevant administering agency is required to electronically publish agency-drafted secondary legislation and information related to that legislation so that people understand what the purpose of it is and where it is to be used. Many times there might be a by-law in place, but it’s not clear as to what the purpose or even the intent of that secondary legislation is, and sometimes, when things are outdated or outmoded, that can cause confusion as to what is actually intended to happen. So having all of that on the internet and having that accessible to people provides a way to be a lot clearer about what should be occurring.

The bill makes a number of changes. But the key point is that it is providing rules, powers, functions, and duties for PCO, the Attorney-General, and administering agencies to support these changes, including exceptions and exemptions, and the role of the legislation website includes supporting administering agencies to publish legislation.

It’s not that sexy—secondary legislation—and I know that many members’ eyes can glaze over, but this has been a piece of work that has taken a considerable amount of time to bring together. I remember that when I was first a member of Parliament back in 2017, when I sat as the deputy chair of the Governance and Administration Committee, this task was being worked on then in terms of trying to locate all the different sources of secondary legislation. The task is a significant one, but I think it’s a good piece of work, which has occurred over different Governments, and it’s good to see it progressing today.

It’s important that we know all the different types of by-laws or rules that are in place in order for people to be aware of them, and to make sure also that if there are ones that are obsolete or if that are conflicting, we have a way of searching and finding them and bringing them together. It’s a modernisation of our legislation that’s well overdue, and I commend this bill to the House.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini) (21:46): It’s a shame that the Green Party is opposing this bill on the basis of an issue that we discussed at length in the Justice Committee, the result of which would actually ensure more oversight with respect to revision bills. But, as usual, the Green Party just plays with taxpayers’ time and money. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): This is a split call.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (21:46): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s an honour to speak on this bill. I, regretfully, have not had the opportunity to look at this as part of the Justice Committee, but I have seen the substantive report that they’ve put forward and I know that the Justice Committee is a very busy committee and has taken its time in making sure that this has been well looked at.

The Labour Party is supporting this bill, and, personally, as someone who’s had to deal with laws and secondary legislation as a former lawyer, I can see why this is such a good idea. Secondary legislation is difficult to find at the moment, even for those of us in Parliament. If I was to say to a colleague, “Please go and find this piece of secondary legislation.”, often it’s a bit of guesswork as to whether you get the correct version of that. If you look online or if you try and get the versions from some of the printed legislation, it can often be quite difficult, too. So the fact that there is a concerted effort into making sure that secondary legislation is accessible for New Zealanders and is available is a really positive thing.

I’m a regular user of the Government legislation website, which I understand is going to be the receptacle of the secondary legislation under this bill. That is a really helpful website. It’s publicly accessible and it is something that most people in New Zealand would consider to be quite a reliable way to access legislation. It is, of course, possible to access legislation in other ways, but I think that as more and more things are coming online, this makes really good sense.

There are concerns that people have raised around this bill, and one of the major issues, I think, is the slight lack of clarity on whether this bill will have unintended consequences. I’ve heard some of the contributions tonight from colleagues in the Green Party and also my fellow Labour Party colleagues who have alluded to the fact that there are, potentially, powers in this bill which may do something that we do not intend it to. I think the main section that I wanted to refer to was new section 96(3)(iv) in clause 37, where it states that “conflicts or adverse interactions between legislation” could be a reason for revision bills to be changed. Now, funnily enough, that does provide a little bit of ambiguity within this bill, and ambiguity is also a reason that things could be changed. It’s really difficult to draft the perfect piece of legislation, but I think the intention for this particular piece of legislation is that the pieces of secondary legislation that are difficult to access at the moment become more easy to access upon publication. But, of course, there is this potential issue here with the fact that maybe it may go a bit far in terms of revision.

My colleague Dr Duncan Webb and I have recently been in Parliament when we’ve been looking at minor changes to secondary legislation. I can’t remember, but I think it was the Statutes Amendment Bill, or something like that. In the Statutes Amendment Bill, we looked at a number of provisions, and I think one of them was changing the provision of currency from something like a pound—a very old form of currency—

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: You can remember it, Mr Speaker.

CAMILLA BELICH: —and I’m sure you probably remember it. Anyway, it was very outdated.

It was very surprising to see that type of outdated language in legislation, and it is a substantial job to actually keep on top of all legislation, even in this day of digital bills and Acts, to make sure that everything is kept up to date. So, if that prevents Dr Duncan Webb and me from using the House’s time—talking about things like how a dollar is a better term to use than a pound—then, obviously, that’s going to be good use of the House’s time.

Additionally, I think that all members of the public would agree with the premise of this bill, which is that we should be able to access secondary legislation. We have some concerns around how this may be implemented. Hopefully, in the committee stage the Minister can give some assurances as to how this will be interpreted and the intention, and, of course, that forms part of the statutory interpretation of the bill. That would be really helpful, I think, to give the House confidence in how this bill will end up being enacted. I commend this bill to the House.

PAULO GARCIA (National—New Lynn) (21:51): The Legislation Amendment Bill should be every legislator’s objective: to promote high-quality legislation that’s easy to find, use, and understand. The Justice Committee recommends that we should pass the bill. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central) (21:51): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and it’s good to speak on this excellent piece of legislation. It’s easy to dismiss this as kind of technical legislation—and it is technical—but it’s also about how we make law, and so it’s actually, genuinely part of our constitutional framework, and I think we’ve got to remember that when we come to talk about it. It’s also unusual in a couple of ways. One way is that it’s identifying this concept of a revision bill, and in that sense it’s directing the House. We know that, by and large, we let the Standing Orders deal with matters of procedure for the House, but because of the interface between the Attorney-General and the Parliamentary Counsel Office and the confirmative various powers, it’s probably appropriate that it go here.

It does a number of things, and I’ll only touch on three, all of which have in some way been touched on already, but I do want to just discuss a few of them. Firstly, secondary legislation. Everyone has noted that there’s now this direction that secondary legislation from particular Government agencies is to go on the legislation website, and that’s, in fact, in one sense an access-to-justice issue. It means that people can find, particularly, rules and regulations, if you like, on the Government-administered website and it’s, essentially, got a quality check.

I do want to observe, though, that is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to secondary legislation, and the number of departmental rules and exemptions that are made within Government departments—which will fall outside of this; it’sthat grey area which falls below kind of an actual regulation but above mere policy—is one area. Then, of course, there’s a huge area of secondary legislation made by non-Government bodies, whether that be testing standards for building materials, whether it be professional rules for accountants, or whatever it may be, and so there’s a whole range of other legislation which actually still won’t be captured.

In fact, one of the interesting provisions here is that secondary legislation, with some exceptions, won’t commence until it’s properly published. The problem that previously existed was that there could be secondary legislation which had passed its appropriate legislative process, whatever that might be, but was never publicly available, but it was nevertheless in force. So that was a real problem, and that’s the first thing I wanted to talk about.

The second thing I wanted to talk about is a little more obscure, actually. It’s to do with electronic transactions, which is a matter close to my heart because one of the things that the Legislation Act does is it gives definitions: definition of what a day is, definitions that say that if the legislation says “man”, it means man or woman, and all kinds of things like that.

One of the things it doesn’t do is define writing in terms of electronic transactions—not just electronic contracts and commercial arrangements, but electronic stuff, if you like—and the reason it doesn’t do that is because some clever person put it in the Contract and Commercial Law Act. So way over there in the Contract and Commercial Law Act, you’ve got a provision which deals with what amounts to an electronic signature in all of the law. It’s actually the wrong place to put it; it should be in the Legislation Act, and this cropped up in the Justice Committee. It was essentially out of scope to insert this at the last minute, and our advice was that that’s not a good idea to pull it out of one piece of legislation and put it into another, but, rather, a provision was inserted essentially saying, “and writing means what it says in the Contract and Commercial Law Act”. So, to be perfectly honest—and I’m pretty sure our counsel would agree with us—it’s a pretty messy solution, but it’s the best we could get to on the day.

Then, the flavour of the month is, of course, the revision bills. Can I just say that I think that parliamentary counsel are extremely long-suffering, because we certainly gave them a working-over on what could be said to be a minor point, and I heard my colleague Vanushi Walters talk about this. I heard her erudition in respect to, was it King Charles and Gazette notices and Oxford University, or some such thing—which always astounds me, the depth of her knowledge—but the issue is this. The concept of a revision bill historically has been a modernisation bill, and so you pick up the Partnership Act from 1908 and you say, “Yeah, the rules in it are fine, but the language, the ordering, and the expression desperately need to be cleaned up, and so let’s do that.”—and so it’s simply modernisation.

If that’s what we’re doing, we really don’t need a first reading debate and we don’t need a committee of the whole House debate. We can truncate these processes, but let’s send it to select committee, make sure that people have their say, and get on with it. That makes perfect sense, but—and this is the point, I think, that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan was referring to—if we then turn it into a general tidy-up, is it appropriate to truncate the scrutiny to such an extent? The real point is this: do we trust the Government not to abuse the expanded rights to use revision bills, because, goodness knows, they’ve abused urgency throughout this term of Parliament, and so that’s the concern.

If you look at the kinds of things that can now be included in revision bills—and I must say that I still have some reservations. For example, in new section 96(3)(b) in clause 37, it says that a revision bill may “make amendments to reduce or avoid any of the following: (i) unduly onerous or burdensome requirements:” Now, that sounds fine, but what is “unduly onerous or burdensome” is very much moot, and those members might think temperature requirements for hot water in childcare facilities are “unduly onerous”, or they might think that food safety standards are “unduly onerous”. We don’t; we think things like that are important safeguards. So that is the danger.

Now, one of the protections is that these are drafted and certified by parliamentary counsel and the Attorney-General. That gives me some comfort, but I’m still concerned that if, as you go through this, new section 96(3)(b)(ii) says “unnecessary compliance costs:”. Sure, there will be things which are genuinely unnecessary compliance costs, but what is an unnecessary compliance cost? You know, I heard Andrew Hoggard’s speech on farming, and his view seems to be that keeping cows out of waterways is an unnecessary compliance cost—you know, “Just get rid of the green tape and let us do our farming.” That’s the question, right?

But my point is well made that there’s an argument to be had, and a modernisation bill would be one which didn’t change the rules—it didn’t change the needle on regulation—but it just changed the language. So the revision bills, now, that can be put before this House are actually not revision bills; they’re amendment bills, and this is my good-faith point: when any Government comes to a revision bill, they need to accept the word “revision”, and any changes of that nature, particularly in that new section 96(3)(b) needs to be consistent with the original purposes of the Act, and not changing the kind of regulatory burden imposed by the Act itself.

I guess that’s my constitutional point. That is why this is part of the framework of our law, because it dictates to this House the constraints under which laws can be made, but like any constitutional framework, it’s imbued with convention, and that convention is important. I think it’s important that all parties in this House adhere to the convention that revision bills do not change the substance of the legislation.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): We’ve reached that time of the night—that awkward time of the night. Because I’ve had indications that there will be a contested call for the Green Party call, I’ll interrupt the debate.

The debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow. Good evening.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10.02 p.m.