Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister of Immigration): Anybody believing all of the last 10 minutes of the New Zealand First member Denis O'Rourke's speech would probably be left quivering curled up in the foetal position at the terror the peril of the issues the country is confronting. According to Mr O'Rourke everything can be sheeted home at the feet of immigration and migration. Well I think we need to have a sensible conversation about what is happening right now in migration and immigration but you will not get that from New Zealand First members because they deliberately obfuscate and they change data to suit their rhetoric. It is a rhetoric that has been spouted for—[Interruption]Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The member has only just finished his 10 minutes' worth which was heard largely if not completely in silence. Repeating the same phrase over and over and over and over again does little for his previous speech and will not be permitted in this speech.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: The question really is the degree to which the comments the member makes the drivers of the pressures that we are seeing—pressures on growth; positive pressures; things that need to be dealt with in terms of infrastructure and housing—can be put down to the issue of immigration. Now it is true that some parts of immigration policy do actually contribute to growth. International education is a very good example of that. It generates over $4 billion in export revenue and employs 32000 people in this country. But most of the drivers of growth generate demand for labour. It is not as if there are lots of migrants walking around Blenheim at the moment saying: Gosh we've got them there; we might as well plant some more vines. We might as well milk some more cows." All of those primary industries are going gangbuster right now and that is driving the very high demand in labour which has created over 200000 jobs in the last 4 years.We have an unashamed Kiwis-first approach to migration policy but it is true now and likely for the foreseeable future given the growth projections—including in the construction industry so that we can increase the supply of housing—that it will be necessary to rely on the international labour market. National's policies which I announced in Queenstown last month are sensible pragmatic responses to that growing demand. We do need that temporary labour and those workers need to come in—firstly having tested that there are not New Zealanders available to do the job—and then be clear about the likelihood of their duration of stay and whether or not they can gain residence. The demand is high but the residence programme numbers remain the same and therefore the price of admission has indeed gone up.Now this Budget has been a complex one with many moving parts and if any one or two of the sorts of things that are in this Budget had been announced it would have been considered significant—things like returning tax into the pockets of the hard-working Kiwis who pay that tax; transferring more of that tax paid to the families who need that help with their accommodation support or with the costs of raising children; a really ambitious plan for growing our infrastructure whether it is roads hospitals schools rail and so on; increasing investments in public services; an ambitious and challenging social investment target so that we can assist vulnerable New Zealanders to remain confident independent New Zealanders; and a plan to improve our country's resilience by reducing debt to GDP down to between 10 and 15 percent so that we can continue to cope with the inevitable shocks that living in these shaky islands will produce.Any one or two of those initiatives would have seen this Budget be a significant one but we have put in about six or seven major major Budget initiatives. The reason we can do that is because of very sound sensible fiscal management over the past few years when we had inherited structural deficits projected to be 10 years or more a global financial crisis and two major earthquakes. This Government saw through all of those things and is returning to a 2017-18 projected Budget surplus of $1.8 billion with GDP growth forecast to continue to be above 3 percent on average for the next 5 years peaking at 3.8 percent by 2019. That gives the country and the Government choices and I think those choices have been really well finessed by the finance team supported by Cabinet and its caucus and it has certainly landed extremely well.One of the big choices that we were able to make was to end the problem with very low-paid workers in the aged-care sector and achieve what I believe was an outstanding settlement which was funded mostly by Vote Health but also by a little bit of Vote ACC for which I am responsible. That put more than $2 billion into the pockets of 55000 women who work incredibly hard for our vulnerable elderly and injured with the pay equity settlement that we know as the TerraNova settlement. That is what strong sensible fiscally prudent measures do because despite the comments made during the first reading of the Care and Support Worker (Pay Equity) Settlement Bill after the Budget statement last week—the first reading of that bill to give effect to that settlement—that we were somehow shoehorned into this position nothing could be further from the truth. The Government was not even a party to the proceedings that were before the Employment Court. Those parties could have kicked the can down the road for years but we made a conscious decision that this had to be fixed. It was going to be expensive it was something that we could afford thanks to that prudent fiscal management and I am extremely proud of having done so.As Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety I have been pleased to secure $8.7 million of extra funding for the Mediation Service and the labour inspectorate to ensure that there will be appropriate mediation services available for the raft of pay equity claims that will be made under the new equal pay and pay equity amendment legislation which I hope to introduce to the House later this year and have passaged into law by early next year. I am very impressed to note that the parties that have already made claims under the Equal Pay Act have committed to continuing that conversation using the principles set out by the Joint Working Group on Pay Equity Principles.Another very good joint health and ACC announcement was the $59.2 million to ensure that all road ambulances would be double-crewed over the next 4 years. This is a very very important issue—one that I think will add to not only the quality of the care that is given for emergency management but also the productivity question. It was an interesting conversation I have to say on Q+A on Sunday when the Council of Trade Unions' chief economist Bill Rosenberg pointed out that in his view productivity is not possible in the health sector and that it just is—you have to pour in as much money as it could possibly tolerate but do not expect anything back out of it. Well with respect to Mr Rosenberg—and I do have respect for him—I think that is just quite wrong.One of the best examples of productivity gain albeit it is not financial productivity was in the research that was announced earlier in May that said that the Government's policy of ensuring that patients wait no longer than 6 hours in the emergency department which was introduced in 2009 has saved thousands of lives. Literally thousands of lives have been saved by the simple expectation that people should not wait longer than they need to nor than is clinically appropriate. What that meant was that systems had to change. Yes there was more money for that. Yes for a growing population we have certainly put more money into Vote Health year on year ahead of the rate of inflation. But there was also an expectation that there should be more out of it and the thousands—50000 a year—more elective surgeries the number of immunisations the number of preventable illnesses and the lives that have been saved in the emergency departments around the country are a very direct example of how important investments into health can have a financial and a clinical payback.But really for all the rhetoric that we have had particularly via my friend in New Zealand First about how complex and awful and terrible and worrisome these things are what this is really about is two choices. Do we as a country want to go forward or do we want to go back? Because shutting down the borders sending tens of thousands of people away—as Labour would have you do—and having arbitrary cuts to migration arbitrary cuts for fear of what that might do is a very backward step.This is a confident Government a Government confident in the ability of New Zealanders to understand what is good for them to meet the challenges of infrastructure and growth—and the only parties I have to say talking about 9 long years are the Opposition parties. For me who has been in this caucus for those nearly 9 years those 9 years have flown by. They have absolutely flown by and what we have on this side of the House are fresh faces—and there will be more to come after the election—fresh ideas and amazing new energy. The 9 years have flown by. I look forward frankly to the next 9 years and this Budget is a very important part of it."