Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

JOHN KEY (Leader of the Opposition) Link to this

I move, That this House has no confidence in the Government led by Helen Clark because it lacks any vision or purpose apart from getting re-elected, it refuses to be accountable or responsible for the public services it oversees, it is tired and bereft of ideas, and all it can offer New Zealand is a collection of empty slogans.

That speech from the Prime Minister may not have convinced many New Zealanders about climate change, but it will most certainly have convinced them it is time for a change. I feel sorry for those in the parliamentary press gallery, who have to write something about it. About the best they could say is that she used the word “sustainable” 33 times. That is the new buzzword from the Beehive.

Hon members: No slogans.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Minister of Finance) Link to this

I seek leave to table a document in which Mr Key says he was very interested in discussion around alternatives on monetary policy, and, on 12 December in my office, outlined how a variable interest rate levy on mortgages could work, did not express any opposition to it, and agreed there should be further work done.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) Link to this

There are times, both in our country and in other countries, when one hears the address or speech of a new leader and it is elevating, exciting, stunning, and charismatic. [ Interruption] I did not say I was about to deliver one, but thanks very much. There are times when a new leader rises on the scene and he is charismatic, he is exciting, he is elevating, and he makes stunning, coherent addresses, but, alas—

GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam) Link to this

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I notice that the leader of New Zealand First could not quite last for 20 minutes. Perhaps those members would like to split that time with another one of their speakers for the next 2 minutes.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) Link to this

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I sat down because I saw you raising your hand to the bell, Madam Speaker. Unlike Gerry Brownlee, I played in the backs, where one had to have a fast mind.

GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam) Link to this

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. The member also had to have a fast eye, and the ball was not coming for him.

JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) Link to this

The Prime Minister has announced a call to action on sustainability. She has called it the compelling issue of our time. She has said that it should define our national identity. And after 30 years of advocating for sustainability and warning of climate change and oil depletion, and after 10 years of pressing for those issues in this House and seeing those issues first ignored and then ridiculed and marginalised—as they have been by some members today—obviously the Greens welcome such a statement from the Prime Minister.

At this point I was going to say something about National’s call for action on climate change and sustainability, which I thought might be forthcoming, but I could not actually find anything to comment on, so I will carry on without it.

What we are looking for now from the Government is the action to back up the words, and, in the Prime Minister’s own words, we are looking for the substance, not just the slogans. So the Government can expect the Greens and, I believe, the public—and, I hope, the media—to measure its actions regularly against its goals.

The Prime Minister’s speech has taken some first steps, which I want to acknowledge. I have been saying for many years that the Government cannot expect anyone else to embrace sustainability if the Government does not do it in its own departments, and today’s announcements of actions made by Government departments to walk the talk are welcome. Last year I raised in the House the appalling performance of the ministerial car fleet, which is among the worst gas guzzlers in the country. So I welcome the news that when those cars are replaced, it will be with much more efficient cars—we wait to see how much more efficient.

I am glad to hear that six Government departments are to be carbon neutral. It is true, as John Key says, that they are mainly pen-pushing departments, and I look forward very much to the news that they will be joined, for example, by Landcorp, which has some appalling carbon behaviour.

I welcome the Government’s support for the Greens’ Waste Minimisation (Solids) Bill and for adding some mandatory measures to the voluntary approach in the New Zealand waste strategy, which has not been particularly successful.

But this was a speech in two parts. The first part had—I am told by staff who have counted—something like 30 references to sustainability. Well, that is a first. Then the Prime Minister turned to the economy and we were back to business as usual; sustainability was absent, and there were no further references.

The Prime Minister says that business needs to be sustainable, and I want to talk particularly today about sustainable business, because if business is not sustainable, our economy cannot be sustainable, our way of life cannot be sustainable, and our nation cannot be sustainable. That is a given. But business is responsible to its shareholders and it cannot survive if it is not profitable. That is a given, too. Business will and must respond to the rules, the price signals, and the opportunities in the wider economic environment, and a Government’s role is to ensure that those signals encourage the behaviour it wants from business. It is Government’s role to ensure that business can profit from being sustainable—and it is not doing that.

We can look at the business tax review. It is billed as designed to transform the economy—but to what? Sustainability is never mentioned in any of the objectives of the business tax review. The aims are to increase productivity, competitiveness with Australia, exporting, and staff training. All of them are good objectives in themselves, but they are seriously inadequate for a Government that wants to blaze a trail to sustainability and carbon neutrality.

The trouble is that there is no joined-up thinking. The Government thinks in silos that are patterned on the departmental silos that make policy. Climate change and sustainability policy is made by the Ministry for the Environment, and it rarely connects with what Treasury, the Inland Revenue Department, or the Ministry of Economic Development do. That has to change.

The tax review proposes tax cuts, whether as accelerated depreciation or write-downs, for businesses that invest in productivity gains and export development. A sustainability policy would give tax incentives to businesses that invested in plant or processes that reduce energy use, that reduce pollution, that reduce the use of toxic materials, and that reduce waste. The taxpayer can afford to do that, because it reduces what we have to pay in 2012 for greenhouse gas emissions over and above our 1990 levels.

Tax concessions are also proposed for research and development. What sort of research and development? We want to see incentives to do research and development on less carbon-intensive production methods, less carbon-intensive food miles, alternatives to toxic materials, and ways of using less water. “Tax incentives for staff training”—in what? “Increased productivity”—fine, but what about training in cleaner production techniques, minimising spills of hazardous materials, and better plant maintenance to reduce energy waste? We used to train engineers in this country in advanced energy auditing. There are no such courses now that I can find. We simply do not have the people who can walk into a business and show it how to cut its energy use by 30 percent, which is usually possible if one knows how.

There is a proposal to reduce compliance costs for small-scale payers of fringe benefit tax, which is good, but again it is what is taxed that is ignored. What about removing fringe benefit tax for employers that give their employees public transport passes and cycle facilities rather than cars or car parks? The tax review is a huge missed opportunity to put some meat on the bones of the Prime Minister’s goal by making it profitable for businesses to be sustainable.

Probably the most unsustainable thing about our current way of life is the way we use motorcars. Transport emissions, which are mainly from motorcars, are 43 percent of our carbon dioxide emissions, and they are growing fast. Last year the rise in oil prices that took petrol to $1.70 a litre prompted people to look for alternatives. For the first time in years traffic volumes on the inner Auckland motorways decreased, and public transport trains and buses in Auckland and Wellington were full at rush hour. This is a golden opportunity for Government to build on that new awareness, and to put substantial money into new infrastructure for rail freight and passengers and into facilities for public transport generally.

What did Michael Cullen do? He gave money for more roads. The Prime Minister says that New Zealand needs to go the extra mile to lower greenhouse gas emissions. I want to suggest that not going the extra mile might be a smarter way of reaching the goal of sustainable transport. We already have an annual roading budget of $1.63 billion—it has virtually doubled over 5 years—but just before the last election our Minister of Finance “found” a spare half a billion dollars and threw it all into roads. Then, in the 2006 Budget, he “found” another billion and a half and threw that into roads, too. Now he has just announced that he intends to borrow money from our children to fund the largest roading programme New Zealand has ever seen. Well, it is well recognised in all the overseas literature that building new roads encourages people to drive more and further. This extra traffic soon fills up the road so it does not even reduce congestion for very long. And then more roads have to be built, so new roads mean more carbon emissions.

Our rail system is in a dire state, and now that we own it again are we seeing money found, suddenly, to fix it up? Unfortunately not. Many large towns have no public transport at all, and some cities have only a skeleton service. The Prime Minister says that we have increased our spend on public transport by seven and a half times what it was in 2000. That is good, but seven times almost nothing is still very little, I tell the Prime Minister.

The Government in its roading addiction has reached the stage of the alcoholic who, having spent what was in the bank on booze and then robbed the grocery money, is now borrowing from the kids’ piggy banks to fund the increasing addiction. Both the repayments of the infrastructure bonds the Government is issuing and the interest on that debt will be paid by our children at the same time as they try to cope with the effects of increasing climate change, the cost of an increasing price on carbon, and oil prices that will go through the roof. We have inherited a fully-paid-for system of roads from our ancestors, and we are charging our children for what we want to build. To change the words of an old Values Party song from many years ago, we did inherit the world from our fathers; now we are borrowing it from our children, and we are charging them the interest.

It is good to see the increased target for the sales obligation for biofuels. If that is to work, we will need to regulate vehicles coming into the country from now on in order to make sure they are capable of accepting at least 10 percent of biofuels in the mix, and preferably more. Otherwise, they will hold us back as we try to raise the level further.

I believe we should also have a statement of origin regarding any fuel that is imported. There is no certification system yet, but there is a real problem in that the worldwide rush to biofuels will lead to the extinction of the world’s remaining old forests and all the wildlife that lives in them—as is happening in Sarawak, where rainforests are being cut down for palm-oil plantations for bio-diesel—and there is also a worry that land will be taken from feeding the hungry into feeding the cars of those who have them. So a statement of origin is necessary to ensure the sustainability of biofuels.

I welcome the statement that we need to change our farming practices, and I hope that the Government will start with Landcorp, which is not exactly a model of sustainability in terms of its nitrogen use, riparian plantings, stocking rates, and methane and climate-change emissions. It is certainly not a model of sustainability policy in the way it is converting huge areas of land from forest to dairy farms, with the loss of carbon storage and the emission of large quantities of methane from animals.

We have to make sustainability part of our trade. The problem with free-trade deals, like the one being negotiated with China, is that giving preference to environmentally friendly or local production is seen as an impediment to trade, and destroying more of our manufacturing industry by opening it up to full competition with China does not enhance the sustainability of the New Zealand economy.

We need environmental education. The UK Government has just announced that education about climate change, energy, and the impact of people’s decisions as consumers will be part of the compulsory core curriculum for 11 to 14-year-olds. It announced that in the last couple of weeks. But despite the Minister responsible for Climate Change issues and the Minister for the Environment both strongly supporting environmental education, despite the Green Party’s successful initiative in the last Budget for $13 million for that education, and despite the growing recognition by teachers and schools of its importance for our future sustainability, the Ministry of Education’s deputy secretary, Anne Jackson, has confirmed that it will not be part of the new curriculum, and that schools could, if they wish, incorporate it into various learning areas. There is, and will be, no compulsory environmental education, at all, in New Zealand. It is entirely up to schools whether they teach anything at all to prepare future citizens for the rigours of an environmentally damaged world.

The Prime Minister has devoted three whole lines of her speech to the relationship between the Crown and Māori. It is a relationship that has recently been returned to the darker days of New Zealand’s paternalistic attitudes. The refusal to support the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the imposition of a settlement deadline for Māori and not for the Crown, in just the last few months, displays an amazing arrogance. It is no surprise, then, that the draft education curriculum has omitted to prioritise the education of our children in the history of the Treaty. It is an absence that will continue to breed ignorance and that will entrench racism.

The Prime Minister has talked a lot about national identity, and it is extremely important for a small nation in a large world to know what it is that makes us New Zealanders, and to know that it is something that unites us and that we can be proud of. I strongly agree that sustainability as a goal should be part of our national identity. We already refer to ourselves as Kiwi; that is part of our unique biodiversity. Our biodiversity is under threat—more, perhaps, than that of any other nation because of the introduced pests and predators that are making extinctions occur very rapidly here. There is no reference in the Prime Minister’s speech to our unique biodiversity and the extent to which that can be part of our national identity and part of our sustainability.

The Greens have been working with Government to foster our national identity with the Buy Kiwi Made programme, where I believe we can show a lot more pride in our manufacturers, the products they make, and the people who work in those businesses. We intend to continue to promote that cause.

The Prime Minister congratulates us on our nuclear-free status being part of our national identity, and I believe strongly that it is. That is all the more reason, then, to look at why it is that the rules for the Government’s New Zealand Superannuation Fund allow the guardians of that fund to invest our savings in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. Either the guardians did not respect the criteria they were supposed to operate under or—much more likely—those criteria allow investment in the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

Michael Cullen remarked to the media that the guidelines for the guardians were consulted on with the Greens; that is true. They came to see us. They said: “What do you think?”. We gave them quite a lot of information, but none of it ever made it into the instructions that were given to the guardians. I think it is time they were rewritten. The Prime Minister is uncomfortable about our savings going into tobacco. I believe she should also be uncomfortable about our savings going into any other form of unsustainability, including Exxon Mobil Corporation, which funds most of the climate-change deniers in the world, and including anything related to nuclear weapons. So we look forward to working with the Government to progress legislation that will make sure that, like Norway’s superannuation funds, which have achieved a very good financial return for their future pensioners, ours are also invested in the things that we want to promote, rather than in the things that we shun.

TARIANA TURIA (Co-Leader—Māori Party) Link to this

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnātātou te Whare. On Waitangi Day the highest rank of Order of New Zealand was placed upon a man of Te Ātiawa whakapapa, the Rt Rev. and the honourable Sir Paul Reeves. Sir Paul, one of an elite group of highly distinguished citizens, warned that despite the seeming calm of Waitangi there are many issues simmering for tangata whenua that will rise to the surface again unless given a proper airing. It is a warning the Māori Party assumed would be considered in the Prime Minister’s address—highlighting these issues as critical matters for the State.

Her address asked us to make a stand, called for boldness in our approach, and directed us to be truly sustainable, and indeed to be all this we must invest in he tangata, he tangata, he tangata. So we expected the address to identify how Māori have fallen behind other New Zealanders in just about every indicator in health—cancer, heart disease, child mortality, obesity, diabetes, and life expectancy. But there was no mention of this. This debate might have raised the fact that anything less than a statutory obligation to improve those figures would be failing Māori. We expected that the debate might have looked at the $758 million Māori pay as an apportionment of tax for health services, posing the question: was this value for money? The debate might have reviewed the study by Professor Peter Davis in The Lancet, which revealed that 14 percent of Māori admissions to some 13 hospitals were associated with health-care mistakes. The study concluded that Māori were more likely to receive suboptimal care than any other groups. In particular, the debate would have given us a chance for the hard questions to be put to the Ministry of Health. Again, there was no mention of these matters.

Earlier this year a major review was released by the Director-General of Health, Stephen McKernan, concluding that the Ministry of Health needed to introduce significant changes because it is risk-averse and slow to make decisions—“risk-averse and slow to make decisions”, when there is literally a fine line between life and death being experienced in too many communities. That review called for greater efficiency and stronger leadership to ensure that the $10 billion health spend was going to make a difference, and the Māori Party will be watching for this to happen.

In making a difference, there can be no more stark reminder of the urgent need for action than in the education sector. Research from the Child Poverty Action Group suggests that more than 10 percent of the 125,000 children in the poorest schools are malnourished and need food to improve their ability to learn—malnourished: vitamin D deficient, leading to rickets. Yes, that is happening here in Aotearoa. Who is most affected? Respectively, Pasifika and Māori children are 10 times and three times more likely to suffer from chest infections than European children. Poor nutrition has a significant impact on how well children can learn. How can we reasonably expect anyone to learn when he or she is unable to focus on anything other than the hunger that comes from inadequate income?

But it is also vital that we look at the nature of the hunger in our schools. Which children are being short-changed, receiving an education that still leaves them hungry because the menu they are served has not nourished their unique and special character? If we are truly to be bold in our approach we must name the problems before we can ever make progress. The crisis facing this nation cannot be glossed over by referring to a significant minority of young people who fail badly. This minority is called Māori and Pasifika. If we are to be bold, let us be brave enough to face the truth.

The Education Review study should be reviewed by every member of this House. To recap, 53 percent of Māori boys who left school in 2005 did not have any of the three levels of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement, compared with 26 percent of Pākehā boys. Forty percent of 16-year-old Māori boys left school in 2005, many of them by means of special exemptions that allowed them to leave before that age. School-leaver qualification figures show that only 9 percent of the Māori boys who left school in 2005 had university entrance.

As a grandmother and great-grandmother, these figures leave me gasping in utter frustration. How many years do Māori need to wait to receive a basic education? How can any business continue to be supported by the State when over half the clients of a particular group are being failed by that service? What difference is there between 2007 and 1960, when J K Hunn reported that the state of Māori education left much to be desired?

The new Pro Vice-Chancellor Māori of Waikato University, Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith, has pointed out that perhaps the one difference is that schools are more explicitly racist now. In her analysis of an international study of reading, mathematical, and scientific skills of 15-year-olds, Professor Smith highlighted enormous underachievement of Māori and Pasifika pupils, identifying that the strategy is one of containment, as opposed to education; except that the crisis fast approaching our nation has exploded out of its container and no amount of subterfuge by the Minister of Education—no excuses that the mass of underachievement is really just another way of looking at high employment—will wash with New Zealanders who are sick of waiting for the system’s non-compliance to be addressed. The reality they are telling us is that bureaucracies and Ministers alike always appear to have a new spin to dress up the situation of shambles, when all they want is a straight answer.

A straight answer is also what those in the fisheries sector want, as a response to the shared fisheries proposals. These are proposals that serve to erode the individual transferable quota that was agreed to as the currency for commercial fisheries rights in the Treaty settlement. The rights guaranteed under article 2 of the Treaty stipulated that tangata whenua have exclusive and undisturbed possession of their fisheries. Indeed, one would be struggling to find a more explicit statement of property rights existing under English law. But it is clear that many in this House prefer to jump from article 1 to article 3, and ignore article 2. Yet this Government has announced that it intends to transfer part of the commercial share of the total allowable catch to the recreational sector; in effect eroding the value of that settlement, instead of encouraging the customary recreational and commercial sector to try to find a solution between themselves. It gets worse. Inequalities are worsening, disparities intensifying, and entitlements to basic health, educational, and social justice are being denied to tangata whenua, and now the writing is on the wall for a massive counter-attack on the fisheries allocation.

Analysis from a senior United Nations economist, released yesterday, confirms all our worst fears. The evidence places New Zealand in the context of “a significant and disturbing increase of inequality.” In the book Flat World, Big Gaps: Economic liberalization, globalization, poverty, and inequality, author JomoSundaram concludes: “The question of economic growth is not simply a matter of increasing the aggregate of income, but is a matter of the kind of growth, the composition of it and whom it has benefited.” These issues must be central to any legislative and policy intentions to come before this House. The Māori Party has been speaking of the need for a genuine progress index—a progress that measures the inequalities and takes into account whom is benefiting from any growth.

Finally, I want to commend the Prime Minister for saving the best to last and mentioning reconciliation in the final section of her address. We must be bold in all aspects of reconciliation. The restoration of justice must be at all levels—economic, social, environmental, and cultural. We must restore hope and pride in our nation. We must address the truths that have not been told. We are at a critical junction in the advancement of our nation. How can we talk of growth and GDP, when over half the population are missing out, or their potential curbed, as a result of culturally biased and inadequate policy provision?

We must do all that we can to achieve the optimal conditions for success for all peoples. We cannot hide behind the smokescreen of public relations spin that is masking the desperate disparities that afflict our communities. It is time to get real and to get even in our commitment to acquit equitable outcomes for all New Zealanders. We need to hear from our constituencies about their ideas to achieve the growth of healthy, resilient, independent people, and we must work together to take the great leap forward that is required to advance Aotearoa. The Māori Party for one is ready to step up to that challenge.

Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) Link to this

I begin by expressing my congratulations to Katrina Shanks, the fourth of the candidates who stood in the Ohariu-Belmont electorate at the last election to make it to Parliament. I wish her well for her time here.

United Future is a modern, centre party that is committed to strong families and vibrant communities. As such, we are far more interested in the substance of the delivery of politics and policy rather than in the rhetoric that sometimes surrounds it. In that regard I want to comment on some of the matters contained in the Prime Minister’s statement.

We support the initiatives that were outlined in a general sense with regard to climate change policy and the promotion of sustainability. But stating them today is one thing; implementing them will be something else. That will require the support of two key elements: firstly, this Parliament as a whole—because Governments may come and go, but the impact of climate change will be with us forever—and, secondly, the business community, which is going to be at the forefront of a number of the changes that have been proposed. That is why I repeat the call that I have made previously, which I gather the Prime Minister is not unsympathetic to, for there to be a summit meeting of political parties—I now think supplemented by the business community as well—to build a broad and lasting consensus on what is achievable in terms of New Zealand’s climate change policy response. The last thing we can afford as a nation is to implement policies in the life of one Parliament, only to have them overturned in the life of the next. A long-term sustainable response to climate change comes down to long-term sustainable policy commitments, and those will come through involving as many people as possible in the build-up to the agreements and the decisions that will flow from them.

Over the next year, as a result of a number of the initiatives in the supply and confidence agreement that United Future has with the current Government, a number of major tax changes will take place. Reference has already been made to the business tax review, which will deliver significant changes in business taxation arrangements from 1 April next year. That will affect the way a number of businesses are able to operate. It will certainly boost productivity and competitiveness. But it will also open the opportunities for businesses to have relationships across the Tasman, and it will be encouraging to many of our smaller businesses in terms of their ongoing development. We have acknowledged that there may well be consequential impacts for personal taxation rates and systems at that time as well.

In addition to those issues, which have been flagged for some time, I anticipate that at the beginning of April next year we will also see a new charitable donations taxation regime put in place, arising out of the review that has just been conducted. That will recognise the contribution that many New Zealanders make to supporting charitable and voluntary organisations in New Zealand and the contribution, in turn, that those organisations make to the fabric and vibrancy of our society as a whole.

Early next year, as Minister of Revenue, I will be releasing a Government discussion paper on income splitting—a policy long dear to the heart of United Future, and one that has the capacity to revolutionise the way we treat household income in New Zealand and to break through a lot of the issues that we have talked about, and come up against for too long as being too hard, about how to deliver a measure of support that recognises fairly the contribution of both parents to the upbringing of their children.

In July this year, once the KiwiSaver scheme is introduced, a whole new dynamic will be in place in the savings sector in this country. What will come very much into play at that point will be the debate about savings, compulsory savings, national savings levels, and the steps that we may need to take in order to lock in those changes for the future. I think there is a shift under way in the public mind in New Zealand. I am not yet convinced that there is an overwhelming public consensus in favour of compulsion—although I think it is building—but I want to make this point. We have had two false starts so far: in 1974 under the Kirk Government, and in 1997 during the National - New Zealand First Government. If we are to embark down that path, we cannot afford to get it wrong for a third time. There needs to be a lasting political consensus that change of that type is in order and can be made—that a system can be implemented to give effect to that policy.

Turning KiwiSaver into a compulsory savings scheme for all would not be a very difficult transition. The mechanisms are largely there. At that point we would then be able to look to future tax reform based on trading off contributions to superannuation saving against rates of taxation. I think that at that stage a lot of the issues that have been spoken of by the leader of New Zealand First already this afternoon, about the New Zealand savings rate and about how we provide for our future, could start to be addressed on a sustainable basis.

The issue that the co-leader of the Green Party referred to, about intergenerational borrowing for infrastructure development, could also be addressed. We support the Government’s moves in respect of infrastructure bonds. Although we do not think they have gone far enough in the first tranche, we support the initiative. But a dedicated fund arising out of a comprehensive superannuation scheme would enable us to go much further than we have gone. It would also enable us to look at infrastructure in far broader terms than we have to date. We have tended, to date, to view infrastructure in terms of physical assets: roads, buildings; those sorts of things. Many of our services are also infrastructural—those in health, in education, and in dealing with disadvantage and the underclass that it has become so fashionable of late to have been part of, at one stage, or to now ascribe to caring about. We can help to address those issues if we have the pool of capital available that such a scheme would provide. I think the changes that will be unleashed later this year will start to take us down that path.

United Future is proud to be associated with other initiatives during the course of this year that will also make life better for New Zealanders. We will complete the development work on a national medicines strategy relating to the quality usage of pharmaceuticals. Every day, as we hear of new medicines becoming available and new conditions that require treatment, the demand for such a policy increases. The other issue that we have to start to tackle with much greater vigour than has been the case to date—brought home by figures last week about the level of surgery now being conducted in the private hospital sector—is the interface between public and private. We cannot go on running, essentially, two parallel systems in New Zealand. We have the resources. We need to integrate public and private, and I say to the House—[Interruption]—and to the member opposite, who I know is genuinely interested in this area, that this year we will be placing a priority upon a provision in our agreement with regard to that. One of the great fallacies in the whole debate is that New Zealand lacks health resources. We do not. The issue is the way we configure them between both sectors; we have more resources than we need.

This promises to be an exciting year. It promises to be a challenging year. I echo the sentiment that the leader of New Zealand First began his address with. Many would prefer to forget the 2006 political year. The level of behaviour and the reputation of this Parliament sank, I think, to new lows. The challenge now confronting all of us—as we are into what is really the business year of the parliamentary term—is to start to see the implementation and delivery of policies that will make a real difference for the people we all claim to serve. United Future stands unrelentingly in terms of its commitment to families and stronger communities. The initiatives that I have talked about this afternoon, which we will support, promote, and work with other parties on during the year, will all be geared towards making this a better place for New Zealanders, and making this a better place for people to take the best of the opportunities that are available and to prosper as a result of that. If we are able to do that—working collaboratively, working constructively—then I think we can look back at the end of 2007 and say it was a far better year than 2006.

HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) Link to this

We have just listened to a Prime Minister’s speech that epitomises everything that is chronically and terminally wrong with this Government. I move, That all the words after the word “That” be omitted and the following substituted: “this House has no confidence in the Government, which is in denial about the real issues confronting New Zealanders, keeping families dependent on government, and stands between our people and prosperity.”

Let us first remind ourselves that this is a Government born of desperation and self-interest, primarily between the Labour Party and “Winston First”. This Government conspires to deliver a society ever to be remembered as “Helengrad”. It follows its leader in a state of collective denial of the carnage it is creating. Denial is evident throughout the Prime Minister’s speech today. Can there be a greater manifestation of this desperation to cling to power than the latest act of denial? It was proof positive that 80,000 Kiwi kids attend school with no breakfast—and no lunch either. But do their empty stomachs keep the Prime Minister awake at night? Not at all. She denies their very existence. The alternative, of course, would be to admit the abject failure of this Government. But there was no admission of that in the speech we have just heard. The Prime Minister and her deputy, sitting over there laughing at the prospect of 80,000 children being hungry, are the masters of the art of denial.

We witness the crumbling health service creaking under its own bureaucratic weight. Countless thousands of Kiwis are waiting for lifesaving and life-changing treatment. The Government’s solution is simple: to deny it. The Government had them wiped from the waiting list. What problem? See, it has gone!

Unemployment is no problem; one just manipulates the figures. People are not unemployed; they are invalids and they are sick. They are sick, all right—sick of being denied by this Government. It is the Prime Minister who should feel sick—sick with shame. But no, the Government has convinced itself that anything is justified—any slick twisting of the facts and any spinning of the truth. Anything is justified in the pursuit of power. Let the children go hungry. Let the sick suffer. Let the jobless wither away—generation after generation of them. There is denial after denial, because the solution would be to deny the crazy ideology that drives this Government. The Prime Minister is in denial that the answer lies in creating a truly fair society—a society where hard work and enterprise are rewarded, a society where the disadvantaged are given a hand up not a handout, and a society where people can depend on the Government to create an environment in which they can all prosper.

When the economy did pick up, the Government read the signs that a burgeoning middle class was emerging. More and more Kiwis were actually in danger of taking charge of their own destiny and being less dependent on the Government—a Government awash with cash. Did the Government welcome this transformation? Did it embrace the opportunity? Did it do what any responsible Government would do and return the money to the people who earned it in the first place—a move that would have empowered hard-working Kiwis and innovative companies? No, it panicked. It did not see a nation set free from the chains of excessive taxation; it did not see families with choice; it saw its voter base eroded. For this is a Government that depends on people being dependent on it. So what did it do? It fell into a bout of chronic denial and set about turning middle New Zealand into a land of beneficiaries.

That is the Labour way. That is the “Winston First” way. It is not the Māori Party way. The Māori Party knows the perils of intergenerational dependence and is sick of Māori being just another statistic for Labour to lie about. It is not the Green way. It knows that only a well-educated, healthy, invigorated workforce can support the vulnerable and truly needy. The time has come for everyone on the right side of this House—whatever our differences—to end the denial. The more I talk to our friends and colleagues in other parties the more I am encouraged by how we are united in our desire to create a prosperous nation.

The Prime Minister knows that the answer is to repair the infrastructure, education system, justice system, and health service, and that the people will take care of the rest. But instead she stays in denial, locking as many people as possible into a lifetime of dependence on the State, on Government, and on Labour, pretending all will be well. It is clear from her speech what the Prime Minister seeks. More than anything else it is another term—another 3 years at the helm. To achieve that she is prepared to practise the cruellest of hoaxes: she will use the money that hard-working Kiwis pay in tax to turn them into dependants in the fervent hope that they will reward her with their vote.

Such is this state of denial that some of the Labour members chipping up over there have even managed to convince themselves that this is somehow a manifestation of socialism. They insult their own heritage if they think that. Labour Prime Ministers, who once stood for reform and new ideas, were never afraid to address the social and economic issues of their day. If this Prime Minister believes she lives up to their reputation, then she is in denial about that, too. This country could once lay claim to being a model of social democracy. ACT recognises, respects, and believes in just that. I long for a day when a Prime Minister stands in this House to return power and self-respect to the people, for a Prime Minister leading a Government that puts in place the building blocks for a fair and just society, and for a Government that encourages success and recognises that its duty is to lead and aspire.

The speech we have just heard was a classic twist on the Mark Twain gag. Yes, the Prime Minister has principles, and if people do not like those then she has others. It is not good enough. Those 80,000 hungry children do not live in some far-off land, to be pitied over chardonnay then denied by breakfast; they are our future. They are our fellow New Zealanders. The tens of thousands of sick and suffering wiped from hospital waiting lists are not a tear-jerking statistic from a World Vision commercial; they are our fellow New Zealanders. The victims of avoidable crime do not live in some far-off ghetto; they are our fellow New Zealanders. The hard-working men and women supporting others dependent on the State do not live in some Third World country; they too are our fellow New Zealanders. They all deserve better. They deserve a Government that will not deny them.

Hon JIM ANDERTON (Leader—Progressive) Link to this

I had prepared, I thought, a reasonably far-sighted, visionary piece to say, but I listened to the speech made by John Key, the Leader of the Opposition, and I had to revise my view. Over Christmas I too read the book The Hollow Men. It is a sad book for anyone who has a deep regard for the democratic process in New Zealand, because of the actions of senior members of the National Party who aspire to lead the country. The actions of those MPs bring New Zealand politics into disrepute—that is the truth of it, and one cannot read it without coming to that conclusion.

That description—“hollow”—accurately describes the speech made by John Key this afternoon. Here is a critical reason to support that view. John Key talks about the underclass in New Zealand and proclaims himself deeply concerned about it. Anyone would be concerned about the no-wage and low-wage families. Certainly, I and, according to him, John Key too, came from one of those families. We are all concerned about that group because we have experienced some of the problems those families face.

His prescription to help them—the only prescription, actually, that he gave today—was to reduce taxes. Will that prescription help them? I do not know whether John Key understands that the lower one’s income, the less effect that tax cuts have. I do not think John Key is unintelligent, but anyone who thinks that lower taxes help low-income families is either stupid or deliberately misrepresenting the truth. There are only two possibilities. Do I think John Key is stupid? No, I do not. He is not stupid. So he is deliberately misrepresenting the fact that lower taxes will help underclass families in New Zealand—because they will not. How do I know that? I know that because I lived through it and was in this House—I do not know where John Key was; he might have been in futures trading somewhere—when a Government I was once a member of actually reduced taxes by far more than John Key has ever dreamt about.

The top marginal rate of 66c in the dollar was reduced to 33c in the dollar. Now, there is a tax cut for you! But, of course, the poorest families in New Zealand had their taxes reduced only from 20c in the dollar to 15c in the dollar. So the richest people like John Key, and even middle-class people like myself now, got the biggest tax cuts and the best opportunities in terms of increased income, and the poorest families got the worst deal.

What is different about what John Key is proposing? Nothing is different. I ask myself whether John Key or his National Party has learnt anything from that era, and the answer has to be no, they have not, except that they suggest they want more than they were given then. That was a licence to print money for the affluent of New Zealand. It is no wonder some people want more of it, but in my view that is completely counterproductive if John Key is to be taken at his word and he really cares one single iota for the poorest families in New Zealand.

I believe that if that is his prescription, he does not care about them. He does not, and he is a hollow man. He is representing hollow men and women in what he says, because tax cuts cannot fix the problems of the underclass. What happens when we want a decent health system and we have tax cuts coming out of the pockets of the poorest people in the country? Who pays for their own health care? The people who have the tax cuts can pay for it, but the people who have not get a poorer health system and less accessibility to it. I went through that period. But, furthermore, just to rub insult into injury, having given, through one Government, the biggest tax cuts in New Zealand’s history as far as I know, and having had that fail, the Ruth Richardson - led financial move was not only to sheet that in with surcharges for superannuitants, but also to reduce the income of even poorer people than those on low wages—beneficiaries—by 24 percent.

I was here when it happened. I could not believe it. I was gobsmacked by the audacity of it. We had just been through this period of the richest people getting the most by a country mile, then the even poorer people than the low-wage people had their income slashed by nearly 25 percent. Has anyone noticed what actually happened? What happened was that we had an underclass squared. Those people were the poorest of the poor. They were the people whose kids, in many ways, we have inherited as parents and we are now dealing with that trouble. The inheritance of now is from then. Everyone asks why we have all these problems with drugs and alcohol. It is an inheritance from the past. I would hope that people like John Key, if he had any kind of integrity at all, would be looking to the future and saying that the inheritance for the future must be better than what we have inherited from the past.

Surely full employment would be one of those things. Do we have full employment now in comparison with what we had then? We had 265,000 jobless people when we had the biggest tax cuts in New Zealand’s history. How did that work? We are told now that tax cuts will fix everything. Did the biggest tax cuts we have ever had fix everything? If they did, why are National members complaining that we have not made as much progress as they had hoped? If tax cuts would have fixed it, they would have fixed it forever. How can one do any better than halving the tax rate? Is John Key suggesting that he would halve the tax rate? Well, we did, and what happened? It was a disaster and an inequality.

Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Defence) Link to this

This debate started this afternoon with two speeches, one of substance by the Prime Minister and one totally lacking in substance by the Leader of the Opposition. I listened closely to what John Key had to say. I cannot criticise his enthusiasm. He addressed the topic with all the enthusiasm of a secondhand-car dealer and about the same level of sincerity. When one analyses it what does one find that speech said? It was shallow, it was without substance, and it was a veneer—like the person who delivered it. The Nats’ body language during that speech was really interesting. They cheered as though they were on a drug-induced high. Then at the end of that speech, as Winston got up to speak, suddenly that high turned into a post-high depression, and they sat there with glumness as they contemplated what John Key had actually said, which, of course, was nothing.

Leadership is about substance. It is about depth; it is about experience. It is about reliability, trustworthiness, and sincerity. What we got in the Prime Minister’s speech today was a speech of substance—a programme for how this Labour-led Government is going to take the country forward this year—setting out principles, setting out directions, and setting out priorities. It focused on areas that, I think, are really important: a sustainable economy, both environmentally and in terms of transforming that economy to address the needs of the 21st century. It also focused on sustaining our families and our communities and their social needs, and, last but not least, it focused on enhancing our national identity—on what we want to be as a small but smart, creative, inclusive, sustainable nation that plays an important and a positive role in the world. I am proud of that New Zealand. I would have liked to see some sincerity on the part of the Leader of the Opposition in picking up those points and adding his voice to them.

I would like to record just a couple of the points of progress made under this Government and alluded to by the Prime Minister. Between 2000 and 2004, 60,000 kids were lifted out of poverty. That is not rhetoric but is substance; we actually did that.

GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam) Link to this

That was a “come follow me” speech made by the angry young man in the Labour Party, Phil Goff. He has worked out that the rudder has dropped off Helen Clark’s ship. He knows that she and Michael Cullen are at loggerheads and that it is all over for both of them. He is putting his hand up and saying: “Come follow me; I am the saviour!”. Well, at least he talked about some things that Labour has done. It has not done them well—he did not talk about that—but he did talk about what it had done. Helen Clark did not talk about those things, because no social indicator in this country is heading in the right direction. It does not matter how many times Helen Clark says things are good, because the statistics show the truth. The Government is in severe trouble.

In recent times Michael Cullen wanted to go out and tell all New Zealanders who pay an average mortgage that the Government would be sorting out its own problems by charging those people $80 a week for the privilege of holding that average mortgage. And he wants to say that our leader, John Key, was in favour of that idea! Let me tell members the true story. When John Key went up to Michael Cullen's office he thought he would be hearing some massive solution to one or two issues that exist in the economy, and he was unbelievably excited that a finance Minister in a Labour Government could think the solution was to tax people $80 a week, on average, to sort out one of his Government’s problems. I tell Mr Cullen that the reason Mr Key was excited was that he simply could not believe his luck. We know that, despite the Prime Minister’s denials, that idea still lurks in the background, and that that is what Labour would do if it got half a chance and thought it would get away with it.

We should look closely at Labour’s record. We have heard some interesting comments this afternoon by Mr Peters, the great upholder of the current Government. Mr Peters thinks it would be a good idea to fix New Zealand’s savings rate by impoverishing us as a nation through currency deflation. Members should work that out! With the strike of a pen he wants to lower our exchange rate—that is, cut the value out of the New Zealand economy. Apparently, that would help us save money!

Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of State Services) Link to this

I begin by welcoming everybody back and wishing them a happy new year. I am looking forward to a positive and productive year. I start by commenting on Gerry Brownlee’s speech. He is a man who smiles on the outside but is a seething mass of hurt and disappointment. He has a strong sense of betrayal. That is how he really feels. He may be smiling now, but that is not what is inside him. He has every right to feel like that. In fact, I would have made Gerry Brownlee the National politician of the year 2006. That man carried the National Party through a pretty rough year and through a very poor performance in Opposition. In fact, he stood out as the Opposition. He was the Opposition. Day in and day out, from his seat as deputy leader of the Opposition, he stood up and did the bizzo while the rest of the National members, I am sorry to tell Mr Brownlee, were busy plotting the leadership. While Mr Brownlee was doing the business, they were busy doing the bizzo on the new leader.

I agree with Winston Peters, who said there is no sin worse than ingratitude in politics. There was no gratitude for the role Gerry Brownlee played. Where is he now? He is on the way out—demoted. I tell Gerry Brownlee not to give up. He will rise again; he will be back.

I hope that this year in Parliament we will put aside the personal attacks and the sleaze, and concentrate on the issues. This country wants us to concentrate on the issues. It wants a good Government and a constructive Opposition. I say to the members of this House that we owe the people of New Zealand a good Government and a constructive Opposition.

I looked at recent polling and it shows that New Zealanders believe that this Government is doing a good job. New Zealanders continue to support the leadership of this country. They support, in large numbers, the leadership of this country. Even more important, they continue to support the direction this country is going in. A good Government does not just rest on achievements but looks continuously to see how it can improve the lot of New Zealanders. That is exactly what this good Government is doing. The Government has done a lot in a short time. In fact, Gerry Brownlee made a mistake in his speech. He said the Prime Minister gave no examples of what this Government has done. Well, he was wrong. Let me just run over some of the examples the Prime Minister gave. In education, she pointed out the 20 hours per week of free early childhood education that will start from 1 July.

Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) Link to this

New Zealanders listening on their radios today will be laughing at the irony of Annette King talking about loyalty. It was 11 years ago this year that Annette King waited on Helen Clark to tell her to leave the Labour Party leadership before the 1996 election. She wheeled herself up there with Mr Cullen, Phil Goff, and Jim Sutton, and they called on Helen Clark to go. They said: “You can’t do it, Helen. Go!”. They were right. She led Labour to its worst election result in 70 years. But Annette King is not a woman of good judgment. She displayed that 11 years ago, and she has displayed it again in this House today.

The Prime Minister’s speech today was a triumph of sloganeering—out with economic transformation, in with sustainability! How many times could the Prime Minister say “sustainability” in the space of 35 minutes? Her speech should be recorded as one that demonstrates how out of touch New Zealand’s Prime Minister has become after 7 years of first class. This Prime Minister has become incredibly out of touch with what is happening in the reality of New Zealand today. In her speech the Prime Minister implied that there could be no criticism of Labour’s record, because there had been record investment in this and record investment in that. But record investment is not matched by record achievement when it comes to this Labour Government.

In education Helen Clark boasts about the school buildings. Those buildings do look good, but many children inside those shiny schools that the Prime Minister opens are not teachable, because they are hungry. Too many of those kids are leaving these bright shiny schools without a decent education to equip them in the world ahead.

In respect of health the Prime Minister boasted this afternoon about big increases in health spending and so many new hospitals. Four billion dollars is a lot, and the new hospitals do look good, but no one can get in them. Spending is up by $4 billion but fewer people are having operations.

The Prime Minister boasted in her speech about more State housing. But inside some of those homes, families are falling apart. Those families are under pressure trying to make ends meet on welfare, and this Prime Minister says there is no underclass in New Zealand.

I read recently that 50 years ago the economist J K Galbraith spoke of “private affluence and public squalor”. It was said that our problem today is the opposite. We have more public affluence than ever before. The Government’s coffers are overflowing. Public services are funded at levels unimaginable even 7 years ago. But in private, in families and communities, there is greater “squalor” or hardship than ever before.

The market is booming, the State is booming, but so many of our families are running into trouble. And Helen Clark says there is no underclass! This Prime Minister has become so infatuated with the mantra of more money for this and more money for that, that she is not realising that more money is not making the difference. The kids are turning up hungry to the nice shiny schools that she skites about, and they cannot get an education. The public cannot get into the nice new hospitals that she is talking about; and in the State houses that she likes to skite about, so many families are under real pressure and falling apart. This Prime Minister is so completely out of touch because she continues to allow in her Cabinet incompetents who are undermining First World quality public services in this country.

The greatest incompetent of all in this Labour Government is the Minister of Health. This Minister of Health fails to address any of the really important issues in health today. He has 42 reports on how to get more doctors, nurses, and workforce for our health services, and he is not doing anything about it. He is on record denying any problems with midwife crises, yet he now says there is one. He is on record as saying there is no problem with general practitioner shortages, yet he now says there is one. This Minister is in denial and never prepared to accept the big issues he faces. He says nothing about the financial sustainability of health, nothing about ageing and what we will do to make sure that our health services prepare for the ageing population, and nothing about dealing with the torment of the waiting, waiting, and waiting to get services from our public health system.

This Minister will stand up in the House this year and say that waiting lists are not a problem and that they are way down. Well, of course waiting lists are way down when people cannot get on them. We should ask how many patients face long waiting times for surgery or hospital care. Eighty-five percent of New Zealand general practitioners said their patients often face long delays—the highest in any of the Western World countries surveyed by the Commonwealth Fund.

I will share with the House a chart that has four lines on it. The top line represents the number of first specialist appointments that the public health service has offered in the last 7 years. It is a flat line. The second line, in green, represents the number of surgeries performed in public hospitals in the last 7 years. It is a flat line. The third line represents the number of people who have received elective surgery in the last 7 years. It is a flat line. Only one line is going up in this chart—and it is going up dramatically—and that line represents how much money the Government has put into Vote Health.

Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE (Minister for Social Development and Employment) Link to this

Well, after that tale of doom and gloom it is not hard for anyone in the House, or for anyone listening to this speech or, in due course, reading it, to understand why members of the National Party are walking around the halls of this place with such long faces, looking so depressed. I guess it is the same formula that we have seen coming out of the United States and out of the grubby little political regime that the National Party brought to us last year, together with their friends—that is, the politics of doom and gloom, and the politics where one turns one’s greatest weakness into one’s greatest strength. Who would have thought that Mr Bush would be able to convince, some time ago, the Americans that Iraq was his greatest strength, and who would have thought, at a time when unemployment remains at record-breaking lows in this country, that Tony Ryall or any other brat-pack member or not front-bencher from the National Party could stand up and make such an extraordinary speech?

The facts of the matter speak pretty clearly for themselves. I will tell the members of the party that tells the half-story rather too often—and I will come back to that in a moment—and other members of the House some of those facts. In 1999, when National was last in power, unemployment was at 161,000. Let us make that really clear, for the benefit of people who are listening to this debate as they drive home in newer vehicles than they had previously, thanks to the economic growth we have seen in this country. In 1999, when National was last in power, unemployment was at 161,000. Later on I will talk in more detail about the unemployment figures, but what is the unemployment rate now? Most New Zealanders know that unemployment has trended down consistently since that time, and last month the figure passed through to fewer than 40,000. Later I will also talk about the issues where we have had such great success, thanks to the work of our really good and dedicated professional staff at Work and Income. We have had great success with sickness beneficiaries, invalids beneficiaries, people who need support in our community, and also recipients of the support called the domestic purposes benefit.

But let me come back to the half-story comment I made earlier. Mr Key, in his half-speech, talked about the Ministry for the Environment and its waste production. What he did not tell the House—or, indeed, did not tell the public of this nation—either by design or by accident, was that he knows only too well why the Ministry for the Environment figures do not at first look as good as they might. It is really simple. Since the comparative figures were produced, the ministry has introduced a creche. The member might not know this, but one of the by-products of childcare facilities, especially for younger people, is quite a lot of waste, including—dare I say it—nappy waste. Although we may hope that one day the ministry will move to the use of washed cloth nappies of the sort that Ms Rich and I used with our children historically, which we are very proud of and with which we now polish our fuel-efficient vehicles, the ministry has not been able to do that just yet. The volume of waste from the creche is why the ministry has had an increase in its waste. It is working on it, but it is not the sort of rubbish that Mr Key represented it as being.

And while I am talking about half-stories, let us look at the wonderful half-story that we saw in the Dominion Post for 2 consecutive days. It is the story of the wonderful pizza parlour—and it does make good pizzas; it is just a pity its other policies do not match up with that—and the story of a young woman who went to Work and Income for assistance. What did National members say about that? They did not mention that that was night-time work, part-time work, or broken work, and I am not sure whether they mentioned that the young woman concerned had a 10-month-old baby, either. And they certainly did not tell the public of this country that the young woman went to Work and Income because she had already told her employer in Hastings of the difficulty she had with regard to childcare. She went to Work and Income to ask for both assistance with full-time work and support for childcare—and that is what Work and Income is providing her with. As long as the National Party continues to peddle the tired, partial facts around whatever issue it happens to stumble across or drag out of the gutter, the people of this country will not support that party. The people of this country deserve to know the facts, and that is what I plan to help to convey to them this evening.

I spoke earlier about the household labour force survey. I am delighted that the survey shows that the unemployment rate has been under 4 percent for 10 consecutive quarters—it is down again, at 3.7 percent. We have extraordinarily low levels of unemployment in this country. We also have very high numbers of people in actual employment. Annual employment increased by 30,000 people—30,000 individuals—between December 2005 and December 2006, which is the last calendar year in which it was measured. In the past 7 years the total number of people receiving a main benefit has dropped from around 400,000 to fewer than 290,000. That is equivalent to the population of a city like Tauranga coming off benefits. I talked a little while ago about the change between 1999 and now, but what people will not be as clear on is this extraordinary fact. There are now nearly 63,000 fewer children living in households that are getting benefit support than was the case in December 1999. So let us add a little reality to the horror stories, the scare stories, and the fantasy that we have heard in the last little while.

Between December 1999 and December of last year, the number of working-aged people receiving the unemployment benefit for more than a year reduced by 80 percent. We have heard a lot of loose talk in the last little while about long-term beneficiaries. Let me share this fact with the House. When National was in power in 1999, the number of beneficiaries who had been receiving a benefit for longer than 2 years was 27,000. There were 27,000 on the benefit for 2-plus years under National, and what is the figure now? It is 8,000, and that figure is trending downwards. So let us focus on the real issues; let us not do the beneficiary-bashing stuff. Let members opposite not continue, as an Opposition, to scratch at a sore that they think might be yielding some political good for them, because that does not do anything for this country or for its people. Let us focus on the real issues and on providing support for New Zealanders in a way that they require, in a way that they request, and in a way that they deserve.

It is appropriate that I move to another matter, having talked about the support in our community and the way we provide it to people when they need it for as long as they need it, of the way we raise their skills, and of the way we encourage people into jobs and support them there. That record is hard to dispute with any rationality. But I think it is important to focus on another part of the State provision: State housing, which is so key to the reality of what it is to be a New Zealander. We have heard a great deal about Mr Key having been a boy who grew up in a State house. Well, how does this work? That same person is now the leader of a party that sold 13,500 State houses. How does that work? And when will we hear about the National Party’s policy on housing? We have heard a great deal about the Mr Key who grew up in a State house, but that person is now the leader of a party that has not said it will abandon its policy on market rentals. So it would be great if, instead of the flimflam and the blather we heard in his speech earlier, we could hear some policy from that party.

I would like to contribute Mr Key’s own words, as I close my time allocation in this debate. Readers and listeners will be fascinated to hear this comment. Mr Key, in an extraordinary interview with his friend, the dual leader of the party, Mr English—the real puppeteer behind the throne—recently made the following statement: “… while I’ve used a slightly softer tone in the last few weeks than maybe Don did … fundamentally we”—the National Party—“are still going in exactly the same direction with values that line up with where we think New Zealand is heading.” Well, I am pleased to say that most New Zealanders do not think that New Zealand is heading in the way the National Party would have it head, and that is why the Working for Families package has been so extraordinarily successful. Unlike National with the tax cuts we heard of again today, which will be instituted if this country is ever unfortunate enough to return National to Government, this Government is putting in huge amounts of money. As 1 April hits, $1.6 billion will be put annually into families’ pockets, and the bulk of that money is going into working and lower-income families—not people like Mr Key or the other people who sit in this Chamber and earn extraordinarily large salaries. I think that that focus is clear, and I am sure that the flip-flops, the lack of substance, the triviality, and the ego that drips as we watch it in this House are not lost on the people of New Zealand.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) Link to this

First, I start by thanking the National Party whips for giving me this wonderful timeslot at 10 past 5. It is peak drive time in Auckland, my home city. But I want to point out to the National Party whips that they could give me a slot any time from about 3.30 in the afternoon till around 8.30 at night and it would still be a peak drive time slot back in Auckland, because of the congestion issues.

Secondly, I say that it is a great time to be a member of the National Party in this House, because for the first time in a long, long time I saw a leader come to this House and heard that leader give a speech not from a written cue card, or from something prepared by spin doctors along the way, but from the heart. John Key got up and gave a speech from the heart about the things he believed in. What I thought was more incredible about that than anything else was that there was more substance to the speech from the Leader of the Opposition—given that we are still 2 years out from an election and that one thing we must not do is give out too much policy or substance yet; that would be really silly, in the timing of it—than in the speech from the Prime Minister.

As we watch Labour members enact a sort of combination of TV survival programmes—a combination of Lost,, and , or “”—it becomes quite clear that their whole process is based on slogans. Last year Helen Clark’s speeches used the words “economic transformation” over and over again. In fact, she could hardly go through a sentence without “economic transformation” being the key words. But that is so last year! Now “economic transformation” hardly gets a look in. The new design, the new word, is “sustainable”. In the speech today I think it was used 33 times—sustainable, sustainability, and so on. Helen Clark had some crackers in that speech, and I must say that I have never seen Government members look so bored and so flat. I was hoping to be able to say that she did not get a single clap, but, to be fair, I must say that when the 20 hours was mentioned a faint ripple—the “snickometer” they use in cricket would have picked it up—did go through a couple of members, but that was it.

Helen Clark said: “Meeting the challenges our country faces in the 21st century requires substance, not slogans.” Yeah, right! Then I saw some of what she had to say: “Building a sustainable nation requires smart, active Government working with key stakeholders across the economy and society.” Well, what the hell does that mean? Is there any substance to that? Anyone can get up and say that they are going to do that. She said: “That is why I have called for boldness in our approach to these issues.”—and then she said nothing.

Oh, actually, no—we should not be unkind to the Prime Minister; she did have some substance. She is going to make the Ministry for the Environment, the Ministry of Health—remember, that is not the hospitals where all the big stuff goes on—the Ministry of Economic Development, the Inland Revenue Department, and Treasury significantly cut their carbon footprint. What does that mean? Does it mean that they will not use double ribbons in their laser printers, or something? Oh, hang on! And if they do not cut their carbon footprint, they will have to go out to support some tree planting on Crown land. I can just see the Secretary to the Treasury getting in his four-wheel-drive each morning and saying “Bugger! We didn’t meet our targets last week, so we’re off to the East Coast and we’re going to plant some more trees to try to meet them.” What a joke—what an absolute joke!

And she says that they do not run on slogans. Well, anyone who is masochistic enough to sit down and read this speech will find sentence after sentence of nothing but slogans. Can members guess what the Prime Minister says? “I believe we can aspire to be carbon neutral in our economy and way of life.” She did not say that we will be, or that we will have policies that will achieve it, but she said “I believe we can aspire …”. Who does not believe that we could aspire to anything? We could aspire to be the richest nation in the world, but what does that do if there is no substance?

Then I read—and I think this one is probably my personal favourite—“As we reach each goal and target we set in economic and social policy, new ones must be identified and met.” Targets—well, let us go through them. Two sentences before, she had said: “Many more people are in work, incomes are higher,”. Well, I challenge the Prime Minister to find any year, other than possibly the Depression years of the 1920s, when incomes have not gone up. Incomes go up every year, no matter what. That is always so.

She said that “educational achievement is up,”. How does she know that? When you talk to parents about their National Certificate of Educational Achievement stuff, they do not have a clue what their kids are achieving. Parents in my electorate sit there scratching their heads and asking: “What does this mean? There’s pages and pages, but I don’t know. Did Johnny get a pass, or did he not?”.

And “…crime rates are lower.”, she says. Is that not great? Well, is that true, or is it a slogan? [Interruption] Hang on—let me give members the facts. Over the past 12 months crime has increased by 6.9 percent. How can the Prime Minister say, as a slogan, that crime rates are lower when crime has gone up by 6.9 percent. Violent crime is up by 10.2 percent. Grievous assaults are up by 19 percent. Homicides are up by 31 percent. The public do not need to be told all these numbers; they see them every day as they watch the television screen.

But the Prime Minister, so out of touch, is playing her “Survival Labour Party Caucus” show. Members know it: “The tribal council has spoken, Jill Pettis; you’re gone.”, or “The tribal council has spoken, Ann Hartley.” Actually, tribal councillors had spoken with regard to Taito Phillip Field, but he was just not around to hear it when they spoke. But I have to say that there are nothing but slogans.

The purler was when this Government first started off—I love this one. It said—and I thought that this was a superb target—“We will get New Zealand into the top half of the OECD for GDP per capita.” For those who are not really economically literate, that means, basically, the wealth created per person. It measures our ability to buy things. We hear the debate about Herceptin for breast cancer, and the arguments. We debate things like that all the time because we are not a wealthy nation. Those nations who have the wealth can afford to just go out and buy that drug. So Helen Clark set us a goal, do we remember—it was at the very beginning of the term when Labour came in—that we would be in the top half of the OECD within a decade. “That is the goal of my Government.” Do we remember what she said? Now she says that as we set goals and achieve them we move on to the next ones.

Well, how did we go? Labour has been in power since last century—since 1999. Oh, this is not good; this cannot be right. It says to me here that when Labour came to power we were 20th in the OECD for our GDP per capita; now, we are 21st. So rather than getting into the top half of the OECD, we have fallen now into the bottom third. How can that be a goal that was set and measured? And the Labour Party has done this on a regular basis.

If anyone is, again, masochistic enough to go and get a copy of the glorious coloured brochure put out by David Cunliffe, called The Digital Strategy, they will find that it is motherhood and apple pie to everybody. They should go and have a look at it. It would have cost half of a Kaingaroa forest in terms of carbon credits to produce, and it set a goal for broadband penetration: “We will be in the top part of the OECD by 2007.” I do not know whether anybody has noticed—it is probably on a calendar somewhere—but we are there; we are in 2007. But I have forgotten to tell the House that that all changed last year when the broadband paper got leaked and all things turned to custard. One of the things that no one spotted was that that goal had gone out to 2010, and the goal to be in the top quartile had gone out to 2015. So the Prime Minister talks about slogans. Her speech was nothing but slogans, and there was no substance to it.

I finish with one last thing. Phil Goff talked about three things of this Government. He talked about trust, sincerity, and integrity. I want to go on record as saying that I think the behaviour of Taito Phillip Field as a constituent MP has brought the entire profession of politics to an all-time low. What has made it even worse is the fact that not one Labour MP will say publicly—and I do not know whether they believe it, but if they do they should have some guts to say it—that they think his behaviour has been so disgraceful that he should go from the Labour caucus right now. [Interruption] That is right. Let us do a quiz. How many members of the Labour Party think his behaviour has been so unethical that he should go from Labour today? Not one hand is raised.

I have to say that Helen Clark built her reputation around dealing to people. She dealt to Marian Hobbs when she was not sure what house she lived in. She dealt to Ruth Dyson when she was caught drink-driving. She dealt to Lianne Dalziel when she was caught telling lies. But, suddenly, when her skin depends on one vote, she has let a man who has brought the entire integrity of this Parliament down badly go on gardening leave. He is still on full pay, and even his trips to Samoa are subsidised by the taxpayer.

Hon JUDITH TIZARD (Minister of Consumer Affairs) Link to this

I find that the National speakers seem to be suffering from a deep illness. It is the worst case of collective amnesia I have ever seen. Maurice Williamson talks proudly in Auckland drive time, whilst entirely forgetting the fact that he put no investment into that infrastructure in all the time he was Minister of Transport; nor did he put another dollar into public transport. He capped public transport spending at $40 million. What is this Government now spending? It is spending $450 million just on public transport.

I am proud to be part of a Government that remembers the record of that party, unlike John Key, who could not remember what he thought about the Springbok Tour. Obviously he was not here when Ruth Richardson brought in the “mother of all Budgets”. The children who starved then—the children who were forced out of decent homes and out of schools because their parents had to shift, and shift, and shift when benefits were slashed and when health services were slashed—are now the ones whom this Government is putting into training and into work, and whom it is providing family support to so that they can feed their children. How dare those amnesiacs across there talk about an underclass? They are the underclass. They are the people who betrayed New Zealand’s values at every level through the 1990s, which this Government is putting back together.

I am appalled at the dishonesty of people who stand up and talk about an underclass, when they gleefully said, during the 1990s, that only failures live in State houses. John Luxton said that only failures live in State houses. Tell that to John Key as he goes around, beating his breast about what a hard childhood he had. His childhood may have been hard; so are the childhoods of many New Zealanders. But the great gift New Zealand has had since the 1930s is hope, and that is what Ruth Richardson took away. That is what this Government has put back, along with trust. We have carried out our promises, along with sincerity. We are New Zealanders who stay here and believe in every New Zealander being able to contribute, and who have integrity—unlike those hollow men who lied through the last election campaign because they were going to do a Ruth Richardson Mark II. The “mother-in-law of all Budgets” is what we would have been dealing with now. It would have been an appalling state of social services. That is what Don Brash would have done if he had won the last election. They are so under-democratic. They could not accept that their lies were not accepted, and that all that money they put out was not accepted, nor all the nonsense they put on billboards. New Zealanders were not sucked in. Was not that sad? It was. And they are still whimpering. [Interruption] There is Gerry Brownlee, tragically—

KATHERINE RICH (National) Link to this

That demented rant was from Judith Tizard, a member whose key achievements have been to sip champagne at the various functions she attends, consume vast quantities of smoked salmon canapés, and carry the Prime Minister’s handbag. She wants to talk about collective amnesia. I ask her to turn her attention to the discussion about the underclass. Three years ago the Prime Minister stood in this House and spoke about the underclass. Something has happened. Someone has removed that word from her rhetoric. Somehow those people have all disappeared; they no longer exist and that word is out of bounds. How come it is OK for the Prime Minister to talk about the underclass but if John Key talks about the underclass, that is not OK? How come Steve Maharey stood in this House 4 years ago and talked about the underclass but somehow that word is not part of Labour’s rhetoric any longer?

The Prime Minister’s speech to the House today was disappointing. It was boring, it was delivered with all the enthusiasm of a laboratory rat, it contained nothing new, and it was so full of vacuous statements—motherhood and apple pie—that most people who heard that speech, if they stayed awake, would have been disappointed by its lack of content. The only miraculous achievement that the Prime Minister managed to complete was mentioning the word “sustainable” 33 times. I think she should go back and shoot her speech-writer, because he has made her look like a fool. She stood in the House repeating the word “sustainable”—she even said it twice in one sentence. When the country wants to talk about hungry children she wants to make that the key part of her speech. I ask members to guess which one New Zealanders will be interested in. It was disappointing, to say the least. First she stands up and says we want substance, not slogans, and then she has the gall to unravel the longest list of slogans I have heard in a 45-minute speech.

Do any members remember “closing the gaps”? What was that if not a slogan? Last year “economic transformation” were the words in every second sentence. That slogan was mentioned only once this year. “Sustainability”, “sustainable”, and various other “sustaining” words were mentioned nearly 40 times. I think the country was aiming to get more out of the speech than just repetition. There was nothing new.

As National’s education spokeswoman, I was sitting here with my education team, listening with ears pricked to hear of changes in education. We got rosy reports about how the education sector was doing but the Prime Minister had nothing to say about poor achievement in schools. The Prime Minister had nothing to say—no solution—about what she is going to do about poor performing schools in this country. There was no mention of Waverley High School, where last year those kids who sat National Certificate of Educational Achievement are left with a CV worth very little now that the credibility of their marks has been undermined. The New Zealand Qualifications Authority and the Education Review Office have known about those problems since 2002.

She talked about personalised learning plans for students. I hate to break it to the Prime Minister, but that is not a new idea. It has been raised on many occasions, but what we did not hear today was the detail of how it is going to be achieved. There was nothing about teachers’ workloads and how they will be addressed, or ratios of students to teachers. There was nothing about how that kind of idea could be brought to reality. Most teachers I know would love to have personalised plans for each and every student in their schools, but it is a matter of resources and the ability to do that. That was probably one of the most glib slogans that the Prime Minister trotted out today, but, once again, there was nothing to back it up.

She mentioned the 20 free hours. My colleague Maurice Williamson is right. There was a sort of communal grunt, whimper, and whisper, and nobody knew what to say, because what is that, if not a slogan? The Prime Minister knows there is no way that is going to be rolled out. Today she said she hopes there will be major uptake. That is the first confirmation from the Prime Minister that the policy is not going to be the same. When it was rolled out, all guns blazing, it was going to be a policy that, from 1 July, touched on the lives of every 3 and 4-year-old in this country. I think we have seen that that is not going to happen. It is a hoax, and members will hear more from Paula Bennett on that point.

The Prime Minister had nothing to say today about how she is going to deal with the truancy issue. There was some flippant comment about increasing the resource there. It is no surprise that she has mentioned truancy because under the cover of darkness—the Christmas period—the Government released a report about truancy that stated that, on a given Monday, 30,000 New Zealand kids are not at school for no good reason. Truancy figures have gone up under the Labour Government, not down. In fact, every statistic relating to education has deteriorated—not improved—under the Labour Government. Helen Clark knows that but she just glossed over it today in the House.

The number of school-leavers without qualifications is predicted to go up. The Government’s own officials—and they have probably told Helen Clark; they have certainly told Steve Maharey—have predicted that the number of school-leavers without qualifications will increase steadily over the next 20 years, not decline. So much for all the glowing comments about education we had previously from Judith Tizard in her speech. The rhetoric does not match the reality.

The Prime Minister had nothing to say about increasing teacher numbers, because this is the year—supposedly—they are going to increase the ratio of teachers to students in new-entrant classes. That was another bright idea of Trevor Mallard’s that has not come to fruition in any tangible form.

She said nothing about some of the lame Teachers Council decisions that have been made this year. This year the council said that they were happy that a teacher who had hit children, force-fed children until the point of vomiting, and ignored children in an early childhood centre could go back to work. Not one parent in the country would think that was OK. The Minister of Education would not name the early childhood centre; nobody was going to be responsible. The Teachers Council said that that decision had to be seen in context. I would like the Minister of Education, Steve Maharey, to say what context that kind of behaviour can be put in that makes it OK. Over on the Labour benches members think that an early childhood teacher who force-feeds kids to the point of vomiting and ignores kids is OK. Well, on this side of the House we say that someone who thinks that kind of behaviour is OK should be out.

In her speech today, the Prime Minister glossed over most of the education issues. Labour has been on the back foot this year. John Key has run Labour’s political agenda right throughout January by identifying and talking about a problem of a growing underclass. It is a problem Labour will not talk about. In the first instance we saw the Prime Minister deny that the underclass existed. That is funny, when only 3 years earlier she had used the word herself. Then we got into the debate about schoolchildren going hungry at school. We know one thing on this side of the House: if children are hungry and do not have any breakfast in their tummies, they are not going to learn. Teachers tell us that they can identify by about 9.30 kids who have not had breakfast. What was the Prime Minister’s answer? “No problem.” The problem has supposedly improved over the years. Steve Maharey said that 15,000 as a number was wrong. He said it was a guesstimate. He would have just about eaten his words, I think, when the figure came out just after that as 83,000.

This Government had an opportunity today to come up with some new ideas and talk about a new direction in education and a new direction for the country. All we got was the word “sustainable” mentioned 33 times, a speech that would put even the most avid political listener to sleep, and a demonstration that this Government is really suffering from “third term – itis”. We had an opportunity today to hear some answers about how we are going to improve the lives of New Zealanders. From that side of the House the Prime Minister basically delivered a speech that showed she does not have any answers. She is just looking for political points for poll-driven policies that will hopefully get her out of the mire.

On this side of the House we are invigorated. We are looking forward to this year. We have started off this year well, determining the political agenda of this country. We are going to do that—and continue doing that all year—until we win in 2008.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Energy) Link to this

We have heard from the National Party members in recent weeks that they have discovered an underclass. They have discovered that there are disadvantaged people in society. Do they really think that every other political party in this Parliament has not known that? There have always been those less well off in society. There always will be. The difference between us and National is that our record shows that we do something about it.

What have we done about it? Obviously, we have reduced unemployment very substantially to the second-lowest levels of unemployment in the world, and the lowest that this country has experienced for decades. We have much lower taxes for families with children, so that those families have more money in their pockets to pay for food, rent, clothes, entertainment, and their lives—and for the raising of their children. We have more support for early childhood education and after-school care. We know there will always be more to be done, but to suggest that we do not know about and address the problems of those who are less fortunate in society is rubbish. All those who look at the substance of policies will know that that is true. It is yet another example of the National Party trying to scratch an itch.

In the last 6 months we have already seen John Key try to pretend that he is something he is not. On the subject of climate change, in 2005 in this very Parliament he said in respect of the Climate Change Response Amendment Bill, which the National Party subsequently supported unchanged, that it was a load of rubbish and the National Party would not be supporting it for very, very good reasons. Given National’s subsequent change of heart, that seems rather an exaggerated comment on his part. But perhaps of more concern was what he said next: “This is a complete and utter hoax, if I may say so. The impact of the Kyoto Protocol, even if one believes in global warming—and I am somewhat suspicious of it—”

Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (National) Link to this

It was very interesting watching the Government benches this afternoon while the Prime Minister read her statement, or, one might say, while she “monotoned” through her lengthy statement. Her colleagues’ faces showed that they were tired, uninterested, and bored. Many of them had their faces down in their papers. This was the Prime Minister’s statement for the start of the year and all Government members could do was look even more lifeless than I have seen them look before.

Perhaps they were hypnotised by the use of the word “sustainable”, which was used 33 times, as our leader John Key pointed out. That must be a record for the use of one word in a 45-minute speech. One wonders why she had to use it so much. Perhaps she had to convince herself that what she was proposing for the 2 years ahead before the 2008 election were sustainable policies. She certainly did not seem to convince her colleagues, who seemed to realise that she was presenting a statement only when she finished it. They were obviously nudged into standing to clap for it.

I am not surprised and National is not surprised. That Government is not sustainable. It is not sustainable past 2008. In fact, it does not deserve to be there now. Its days are numbered, and members opposite know it. They have a 7-year record of regular stuff-ups. Sacked Ministers have flouted the law and put themselves above it. The public, slowly but surely—or quickly, in the case of some people—are beginning to realise that the days of the minority Labour Government are numbered. We know that and we are ready to take the Government benches just as soon as it is ready to fall. If it does not fall before 2008, it will do so then.

I also watched Parekura Horomia, who is normally pretty much challenged in the House anyway to keep his attention on what is being said. He seemed to be hugely challenged today by the Prime Minister’s speech. There was hardly the flicker of an eyelid, which probably characterises the tenure of his portfolio. Now and again there is a little bit of a burst, but not much else. Yes, he can and does rattle on about more Māori in employment, and that has certainly been a feature of the last 7 years, but none of that is thanks to anything the Government has done. That has come about through the hard yards done in the late 1980s and the 1990s in turning our economy around into a growth economy, and, of course, employment and jobs fall out of that.

However, Māori unemployment is still a scandal. General unemployment has been reduced to 2 to 3 percent, but Māori unemployment is still far too high. The stock reply of the Minister of Māori Affairs that unemployment for Māori has been reduced, therefore everything is fine, is total rubbish. Parekura Horomia does not have any other answer to the failures characterising Labour’s tenure other than that more Māori are in jobs. He has no answer whatsoever for the appalling state of Māori education achievement after 7 years of Labour Government. That was highlighted by the report that came out earlier this week, which stated that 53 percent of Māori boys and 45 percent of Māori girls are leaving school without level 1 National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), compared with a national average of 27 percent. That is an appalling waste of human capacity. Any speeches that the Minister of Māori Affairs or the Prime Minister give in relation to lifting the futures of all New Zealanders must be measured in the light of those appalling statistics.

We have a Ministry of Māori Development, although most of us on the Māori Affairs Committee struggle to see what it does—certainly the National members do. Māori development is about the development of a people and their assets. When 53 percent of Māori boys are leaving school without level 1 NCEA it is trite to talk, as the Prime Minister did this afternoon, about increasing the numbers in work-based training. A significant number of young people fail badly, but there was no mention of those statistics that came out earlier this week. The Prime Minister wants to engage teenagers in education that is meaningful and relevant to their futures. What has she been doing for the future of those 53 percent of Māori boys who do not seem to be engaged at all, let alone engaged in something meaningful? It is not just their future, it is our future—our future as Māori and our future as New Zealanders.

It is an appalling record for a Labour Party that for so long enjoyed the widespread support of Māori people. Labour members took their vote for granted, and they bore the brunt of that at the last election. They will bear the brunt of it again in the coming election because ultimately there comes a time when they cannot take people for granted and treat them in the way that the Labour Government has done. Labour will lose more of that support in 2008, and I say that it serves the Government right.

When I listen to the Prime Minister talking about how we need to lift our education achievement to participate in the global economy, blah, blah, blah, I say to myself that perhaps Māori children are not included in her statement. I do not know how she can talk about that sort of aspiration and not give at least some idea of what she plans to do to lift the achievement of, first, Māori boys, and then of Māori girls. Māori development is about the development of people. He aha te mea nui o te ao? What is the greatest thing in the world? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata. It is people, it is people, it is people. This Government pays scant regard to those people who are not within its sphere of operation.

It was interesting listening to the previous speaker, the Hon David Parker, when he said it was as if we had just discovered the underclass. In fact, one would not be surprised if someone had just discovered it because, frankly, it does not seem to have existed in this Government’s sphere of operation. The Prime Minister says that she does not know where John Key has been and that there is no underclass—give me a break. If people live in areas where there is underachievement in all areas of social policy—in housing, health, and education—they know exactly where their future lies. Unless those people are brave enough, courageous enough, and strong enough to lift themselves out of it, there is no use looking to this Government for help to do so.

The other part of development, of course, is the development of assets.

STEVE CHADWICK (Labour—Rotorua) Link to this

The Prime Minister’s statement today in which she called for sustainability was as visionary for New Zealanders as Norm Kirk’s nuclear-free status two decades ago, and it met with a cynical and hysterical response from the “boys’ own” - type Leader of the Opposition, who was surrounded by men, other than the senior whip. It was a response that was hollow, rhetorical, and lacking in substance. We did not see any policy.

All aspects of this Government’s business will be involved in this long-term strategy that is both compelling and timely. There will be economic management, society will be involved in environment and nationhood, and the three planks of this Government policy—economic transformation, families young and old, and the New Zealand identity—will respond. The carbon footprint reduction will be stamped on our Government policy development, and I find this incredibly exciting and visionary. It is hardly the vision of a worn-out and tired old Government.

The invisible hand of the market did not deliver a sustainable nation in the 1990s, and tax cuts will not deliver a sustainable nation in the 2000s. The Leader of the Opposition was a little too fast and furious today with his reaction, especially at our deputy leader’s tabling of a statement on the mortgage levy discussion held by the co-leaders in his office.

Let us look at other flip-flops of the Leader of the Opposition: on the Department of Corrections, climate change, the Employment Relations Act, Iraq, nukes, and civil unions. It goes on and on. Can this smiling assassin be trusted? It will not be long before we see his true spots and the true colour and cut of his cloth.

I am going to speak on two aspects of this visionary statement from the Prime Minister today: economic transformation and families young and old. In our community we will see Scion in Rotorua, a Crown research institute, pick up the challenge of the biofuels target in looking at alternative fuels. I think it is really exciting. That company will be in there for the research funding that David Parker encouraged Richard Branson to commit to this country. I have been involved in land-use change meetings right through summer with the lakes residents in our community. They are accepting the need to change land use, and they are also confronting the need to retire farms around the lake margins in our community. They are committed to this difference.

Young people and domestic users of electricity will also appreciate the commitment here to energy-wise retrofitting of homes, solar water heating subsidies, etc. It goes on and on. We accept in Government that a highly skilled and educated workforce is the goal with our tertiary education strategy. Our community is mobilising with the Waiariki Institute of Technology and introducing trade training and partnerships with industry training organisations and the previous old private training establishments, which are tired and worn out. I saw in Kawerau just yesterday at the NorskeSkog mill a MaintainNZ engineering apprenticeship involving Fonterra, the enterprise agency, and Kawerau College, and it is so exciting. Every boy and girl who has gone through the engineering apprenticeship at this institution has graduated and gone on to jobs—a great new story.

But we accept that the best form of social security is a job, and figures show that these jobs need to be underpinned by fair labour law, increased wages, good public health-care and education, and affordable housing. We are doing all of that and we have more to do—not just tax cuts and muesli bars seen as candyfloss to the masses by the Opposition.

Charity begins at home, and that leads me to the families young and old. We are investing in young children, making healthy young children, building resilience, and not stigmatising an underclass, which is the terrible cant that the Leader of the Opposition has come out with. We are investing in newborn hearing screening, extended dental care, and obesity prevention. The Leader of the Opposition says that we have a hunger problem. I would suggest that the problem we have is one of eating patterns rather than hunger, especially when we have an obesity epidemic in this country. We need to change the behaviour of eating patterns. From July this year every child in a family on a benefit will be at least a packet of Weet-Bix better off—$10 a week better off—and this Government is aiming to sort out the intrinsic things that make families strong and healthy.

Our Working for Families package will reduce child poverty by 70 percent, and has already helped over 61,000 children. We do not stigmatise those children and those families as being part of an underclass. The women’s caucus of Labour visited Miller Avenue School, a decile 1 school in Paeroa, just last week. The principal there said: “Our kids deserve the best and they’re getting it in terms of standards of education. And thank you for the Fruit in Schools project. It’s fabulous. The kids aren’t chucking their lunches out, they are eating the lot, and toilet paper consumption’s gone up in the school as a measure of how well these children are beginning to eat.”

I just want to close on the issue of family violence, because this is a joined-up approach of this Government. We set up a ministerial taskforce after a 1-day hearing on domestic violence, which no members of the Opposition attended. We are now going to launch a community campaign saying that there is no tolerance of domestic violence. We have SKIP programmes, which help all parents—including grandparents, solo parents, and new parents—to manage their children and suggest strategies to use. We have the police responding more hastily to domestic violence call-outs, and that helps in getting those women moved through benefits and out of dependency. Last Thursday we went to the Bay of Plenty District Health Board and heard that it is one of two boards that are training staff to screen for domestic violence.

Those examples are not rhetoric or hollow promises. They are actions on the ground. The Prime Minister’s statement today about supporting section 59 of the Crimes Act was a wonderful statement for us and for those who believe in ridding this country of domestic violence.

We know that we have a huge work programme ahead of us but we are delivering on the ground, and we are delivering policies of substance, not just hollow rhetoric. I cannot wait to hear the Leader of the Opposition come out with one statement that gives anybody any aspirational help to believe that National intends to really make a difference on the ground for those at the grassroots who build the backbone of this country.

I am proud to be in this Labour Government. The Prime Minister’s statement was aspirational and lofty, and we are going to get on with the policies that will deliver those goals.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) Link to this

The good news is that John Key has identified there is an underclass. That is very, very good news. He is setting himself up to be the champion of the underclass, and that is also good news. But it would pay for Mr Key, and, indeed, his National Party colleagues, to stick to the facts. First of all—and I am not here to defend the Prime Minister—at no time did she deny there was an underclass. She actually said it was getting smaller. I am not in a position to argue about that, but she did not deny there was an underclass. Members opposite have a conscience and are quite interested in the issue, so I ask them who created the underclass. I would not go so far as to say that National created it but I will go so far as to say that the Employment Contracts Act certainly created a significant amount of hardship. It removed security for low-paid people and put downward pressure on wages for unskilled and low-paid people.

Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) Link to this

The Prime Minister commenced her speech this afternoon with reference to the solid achievements made by her administration in 2006. What was notable about her statement, however, was that she gave full credit to the constructive working relationships of her administration with its confidence and supply partners, as well as with the Greens and the Māori Party, for the successful outcomes of 2006. This demonstrated a Prime Minister in touch with MMP. When the people of New Zealand voted for MMP, one of the results they were hoping for was better cross-party working relationships. The current administration has grasped this point, and I would therefore say to John Key that if he ever wishes to sit in the Prime Minister’s chair, not only must he come to grips with the realities of MMP but he must ensure that those who surround him do so, also. In 1996 the likes of Jim Bolger and Wyatt Creech intuitively grasped what MMP was about. Bill Birch, Jenny Shipley, Tony Ryall, and many others never did.

Over the last year the farmers of New Zealand have once again outclassed themselves. However, yet again they have been hamstrung in the potential benefits they could have provided for the nation as a whole, because of the artificially high dollar. It is all very well celebrating Export Year, but if we cannot create an export-friendly financial environment, it will all be for nothing. If New Zealand does not export, we will wither and atrophy, and the vast majority of what is exported will be based on what we produce off the land—hopefully, with higher and higher levels of value added.

It is wonderful that Mr Key has finally discovered, on behalf of the National Party, something that I personally have known to be a reality in New Zealand for more than 25 years—children who come to school without breakfast. I would like to point out that there are also large numbers who come without lunch. It is also exhilarating to know that the leader of the party that brought in savage benefit cuts in the early 1990s has publicly recognised that hungry children find it hard to settle in class, to the detriment not only of their own learning but also to that of others.

I have to say to Mr Key that no MP in this House grew up closer to Wesley School than I did, as we grew up in a State house virtually straight across the road from the school. The father, uncle and aunties, and grandparents of Toa Fraser, who directed the film No. 2, were actually in No. 55, right next door.

If I were principal of a school and some political leader announced to the nation that he had organised, with his mates, to produce a whole pile of muesli bars to be delivered to my school and the kids were going to have to eat them, I can tell him where I would be telling him to shove his muesli bars. That approach is nothing short of fascist. So I support the response of the principal of Wesley School, and I do not believe for a moment that there was any political heavying. This is where John Key got it all wrong. If he had been genuinely interested in the children’s well-being, he would have talked to the principal and the chair of the board outside the public domain, put forward his proposal, accepted counter-proposals that would better meet the needs of the children, then quietly put the programme in place.

Feedback I have received tells me that the Fruit in Schools project is showing positive benefits in terms of children’s concentration spans. I ran breakfast clubs in my own school in the 1990s and know the positive benefits. John Key was not off track with his intention; he was way off track with the manner in which he attempted to implement his initiatives, which came to look like a political stunt.

The Prime Minister made some telling points in her speech, but on two issues I believe that her speechwriters let her down. The first was the reference to 20 free hours of early childhood care. This may have been good election rhetoric, but any attempt to apply the slogan to the for-profit early childhood sector is doomed to failure. Indeed, this whole policy amounts simply to a hospital pass from the previous Minister of Education, Trevor Mallard, to the new Minister, Steve Maharey.

The second issue is the reference to the Young Apprenticeships scheme, the idea of which is very worthy—but I have to mention that we are about 5 years behind the Australians in this regard. Those at-risk students—the tail—do not make it through to years 12 and 13, where they would be able to take up this initiative. In fact, more students every year are getting early leaving approval. The challenge for our system is to ensure that these students can be kept in the system so that they are able to benefit from initiatives such as the Young Apprenticeships scheme. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) Link to this

A singularly strange phenomenon occurred in Parliament this afternoon. As we, Her Majesty’s most loyal Opposition, filed in, re-energised, enthusiastic, and ready to take it to the Government, there was an expectation that Helen Clark and her somewhat tawdry followers would also be re-energised. Instead, there they were, looking tired, disenchanted, and singularly sick. There was a tirade from the Prime Minister—a 35-minute diatribe—and, after that, the Government members continued to look tired, disenchanted, and sick. We now have one glimpse of knowledge as to why they looked so forlorn: finally, after 18 months, they have made up their minds to expel Taito Phillip Field.

Just 8 months ago Helen Clark released the half-million-dollar Ingram report, which had serious allegations about her former Minister Taito Phillip Field. At that time she emphatically stated that no wrong had been done by Mr Field. She actually explicitly stated that no wrong had been done by Mr Field. This afternoon the credibility of the Prime Minister and the credibility of the Government have, literally, gone out of the windows and doors of this Parliament.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Customs) Link to this

Tēnā koe. Ngā mihi nui mō te tauhōu.

[Greetings to you and for the new year.]

If ever there was any evidence of a tired Opposition, we have just heard it. There was no vision and no direction in that speech. In fact, most of that speech—sadly, for the constituents of Port Waikato—was spent criticising but not offering any direction. That is a sad indictment of what we are faced with: an Opposition that spends most of its time criticising but not offering direction. The people of New Zealand really need the opportunity to hear what the Opposition thinks, what policies it has, what ideas it has, and how it will make things better. Did we hear that in the House today? No, we did not. We heard 8 minutes of criticism but no direction.

On the contrary, the Government, through the Prime Minister’s statement, has given a very clear, decisive, strong vision for the future of this country and for all people here in New Zealand. It is about substance; it is about standing on a track record of achievement—7 years of it—unlike the Opposition, which has spent 7 years in Opposition. Opposition members are looking tired. We are only at the beginning of the year, and they have not offered any way forward.

What did the Prime Minister say in her statement? Clearly, a vision for New Zealand must take account of how we are doing as a country in terms of our economic performance. Economic transformation is a critical theme, and it is a work programme for this Government. The other priority area is in terms of our families, young and old, and ensuring that every family has a stake in the future of this country, ensuring that those families are cared for, and ensuring that they can make a contribution to this society. More important, this priority concerns national identity—making sure that every individual in New Zealand contributes to a society that is inclusive, and that every individual respects one another and values the contribution we all make. Today we heard from the Prime Minister that underpinning all of those key themes that the Government has actively worked upon over the last term is the theme of a sustainable future. That is important, because when we look at substance we have to look at the track record of this Government, which has continued to make gains.

Let us look at a couple of those gains and see just how much of an impact we have made. In respect of cheaper doctors’ visits, we started off by making a difference for the under 5s, then we moved to the over-65s, then to the under-18s, then to the over-45s, and this year there will be cheaper doctors’ visits for all people in New Zealand. That is really important, because when people have the ability to have low-cost visits to the doctor, they will go to the doctor when they need to, not when they have to. People will pay only $3 for a prescription, and will go to the doctor because they need to, not to the hospital because they have to. That is the kind of difference that this Government makes. Primary health care is a key strategy in terms of having a sustainable future and a healthy nation. That is what this Government believes in.

Let us take another policy—income-related rentals. The National Party would have had market rentals that would see a whole lot of people spending most of their wages on rent, not being able to pay for food and power. Members can bet their bottom dollar that a lot of our constituency offices, when we were in Opposition, were overwhelmed by the number of people coming for support because they could not pay their power bill. Is that happening now? It is happening less, because income-related rentals have meant that low to moderate income families have been able to pay no more than 25 percent of their wages on rents, so they can buy food, they can pay their power bills, and they can send their kids to school with shoes on their feet. That is the kind of difference that this Government has made.

More than that, it is not just about stopping there but going further and ensuring that New Zealanders have an opportunity to buy their own homes. We are certainly making gains in this area. More can be done—more will be done—but the signal quite clearly here is that the State has a role to play in ensuring that all people have access to affordable housing and can afford to purchase their own homes. That is the kind of difference that a Labour-led Government is making. We have more people in work. In fact, I was quite heartened by the fact that in my own electorate of Tainui, going into the last quarter of last year, the Te Kūiti Work and Income office was able to say that no young people were on the unemployment benefit in Te Kūiti. What a great story that was.

SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) Link to this

That was a very good call. I wish you a happy New Year, Mr Assistant Speaker; this is my first opportunity to say that to you at the beginning of the new sitting.

Last year’s statement from our Prime Minister was all about economic transformation, and we know how that went; we know which way we have been transformed economically. This year is all about sustainability—another slogan. Well, I say: “Yeah, right!”. Just like last year, there was no substance, no depth, and—like the Government—absolutely no sustainability in the speech. The Prime Minister needs to understand what sustainability is about. I can tell members what it is not about. It is not about cutting down more trees than we are planting. For the first time in living memory we are now cutting down more trees than we are planting. It is not about slamming the door shut on our forestry industry.

The Kyoto Forestry Association—which, people will remember, was set up under this Labour Government—when describing this Labour Government, stated: “Imposing massive retrospective taxes on the one industry capable of sequestering carbon is sheer idiocy,”. Who could not agree with that? The work done with this Government has been totally ignored by an arrogant, incompetent Government. As a result, it will have more deforestation, thereby taking us farther away from the Prime Minister’s vision of carbon neutrality.