Hipkins ChrisGENERAL DEBATERt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the Opposition): I move That the House take note of miscellaneous business.Fundamentally governing is about choices and when it comes to the choices that they are making this Government has its priorities all wrong. One of the first decisions this Government took—not only took but actually found the money to do—was $2.9 billion worth of tax breaks for the country's landlords. They made the decision to prioritise that nearly $3 billion in tax breaks for landlords whilst considering cutting school lunches whilst cutting our defences at the border with cuts to the Ministry for Primary Industries and customs whilst cutting funding for the Ministry of Health whilst cutting support for those with disabilities whilst cutting support for the conservation estate—the list could go on. Every day the list continues to grow and it is because this Government has made the wrong choices and has the wrong priorities.Let's talk about some of those examples in more detail and let's start with the free and healthy school lunches because the kids were here today asking—Hon Nicola Willis: That you left unfunded.Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: —the Government to continue their programme. Nicola Willis says we should have continued to fund it. Well here is an example of where the Government's priorities are simply wrong: for the price of the tax cuts that they have given landlords you could more than double the size of the free and healthy school lunches programme. This Government instead have decided that the landlords need the tax breaks and here's the thing: they won't even guarantee that the benefits of that are going to flow through to the tenants. They think the tenants should be grateful for the fact that the landlords are getting the tax break and in many cases they won't see a cent of that extra money.Let's look at the primary industries and customs and the cuts that the Government are making there. Have they forgotten Mycoplasma bovis—a very good example of why we need a strong and secure border. A biosecurity incursion that had the potential to bring our dairy industry to its knees—that is what we inherited in 2017. We focused on elimination and all evidence to date suggests that we have succeeded in doing that. That is what we get for the extra investment that we made in our border security and that is what this Government is threatening to cut.Let's look at health. They actually think we did a good job of managing smoking and managing down smoking. It's amazing then that they're cutting the funding for the very people who achieved those good outcomes. It is easy to attack public servants because they cannot answer back. When the Government talks about bureaucrats those are people who cannot answer back. But let me give you a really good example. If anyone had said five years ago that there's a team of people working at the Ministry of Health planning for an event that may never happen the members opposite would have said Why are they doing that? That's wasteful spending." until that very thing did happen. It was called a global pandemic and suddenly the members opposite wanted to know why we weren't better prepared for it—why we hadn't had more people working on preparing for the global pandemic—because the reality is that some of the work at the Public Service falls exactly into that category: preparing for a pandemic preparing for a rupture of the Alpine Fault line. These are supposedly faceless bureaucrats that the Government refers to as wasteful spending. They are doing critical work for the benefit of all New Zealanders.But I did note that the Prime Minister finally has found a bit of a vision. He thinks we should be more like Estonia. I was interested in looking at what that might mean: universal free school lunches for every child attending school in Estonia: a light rail system in their largest city in Estonia; heavily subsidised kindergarten education in Estonia; and teachers focused on not just the basics but digital skills on coding and on other skills that their learners are going to need for the 21st century. So I think we should be more like Estonia and I look forward to the Government embracing those very things.Unfortunately though I'm not going to hold my breath because we've got a Government with no vision a Government that has the wrong priorities and that is focused on taking New Zealand backwards rather than leading New Zealand forward and a Government that is focused on managing New Zealand's decline rather than actually leading the country forward. At a time when New Zealanders are looking for hope they're getting nothing from this Government."