Goldsmith Paul; Brownlee GerryHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage): Thank you Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I'm just mindful of the fact that we're approaching a time when maiden speeches are coming up. I'm very much looking forward to hearing Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke's speech. Unfortunately you'll have to wait for 10 minutes of my speech beforehand; great to see the media is accumulating for this operation. It does take my mind back—takes me 12 years back to when I gave my maiden speech. I referred to my great grand-daddy Charles George Goldsmith coming out to the Poverty Bay in the 1840s. He was a great lover of the wāhine of the Ngāti Porou. He had many relationships and he had a lot of children. That was the kind of enterprise that founded this nation and I agreed to follow in his footsteps. But of course coming into Parliament the goal of—I'm sure—all MPs over time is to be able to be a part of a Cabinet and a Government that works hard to improve the lives of New Zealanders. So I'm very thankful for the opportunity that the voters gave the National Party and our coalition partners to form a Government and to be a part of a Government that I believe will improve the lives of New Zealanders in many ways. If we go back to what people were focused on during the election campaign; certainly when I was up and down the country talking to people the number one issue was the cost of living. Everywhere you go if you went on to the doorstep and asked people What are you worried about?" immediately they'd be talking about the cost of rents the cost of food and day-to-day articles and how they're going to put together the money that they need in order to feed their family and to get ahead. That is why the overwhelming priority and focus of this Government at the start—under the leadership of Chris Luxon and Nicola Willis—is on trying to push back against the inflation that has dominated over the last couple of years and do what the Government can do to take pressure off households starting off with some tax relief. People think this is an amazing thing. Well because there have not been any adjustments to the tax rates over a long period of time during inflation people are paying more and more tax. It is right and appropriate that the Government adjusts those thresholds so more money isn't being taken out of their pockets at a time when they are struggling to pay the bills. So that's what we will do.Then we'll also bring back and restore some discipline to Government spending so that Government isn't stoking the fire. It's a fair criticism to be made of Grant Robertson the former finance Minister who was stoking the fires of inflation—Chlöe Swarbrick: How much are the name changes costing?Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Thank you very much Chlöe. Very much focused on poor quality spending. So that's going to be a focus for us. Also recognising the impact of ill-conceived regulations in terms of the cost. I was just talking to an architect in Auckland last week who was talking about the latest home insulation requirements in Auckland and the extremely thick insulation required in a pretty warm part of the country and the additional costs that that's adding to building houses and ultimately to the cost of housing which flows through to every household in Auckland trying to get affordable housing. So regulatory side of the State is so important. The second thing that you'd hear on the doorstep after cost of living was law and order. I can remember many times during the campaign trail previous Ministers of Justice who I debated against—there were a number of them—and general academics would say "Oh you're fearmongering when you're talking about crime". Well that I'm afraid is not the truth. People see what's going on in their communities and they raised it with us over and over again. So we all visited shopkeepers all around the country who had been the subject of ram raids and attacks in their workplaces. People could see the impact of gangs in their community and they wanted the Government to do something about it. They were concerned that the only clear target that the previous Government had was to reduce the prison population irrespective of what was going on in our communities and we needed to change that. That's the first thing we've done in Government—change that to show that our focus in justice is upon improving public safety and reducing the number of victims of crime. That's what we're going to be focused on.We'll be restoring real consequences for crime because part of the goal of sentencing people who are convicted of crimes is to denounce the act and to give some succour to victims that there is justice for them. So we're going to be working our way through some changes in the justice area. We're going to be restricting the ability of judges to significantly reduce sentences so that people actually do face real consequences for crime. Then we'll be giving the police the powers that they need in order to deal with gangs in our communities. So whether that's banning gang patches in public places or whether it's giving the police powers to disperse gangs when they're taking over a township like Ōpōtiki as we saw in the past and also dealing with firearms that have become a real issue in our communities.But at the same time we also want to make much better progress in rehabilitating prisoners. So an important part of our overall justice priority is to deal with those—half of the prisoners who are in prison right now are remand prisoners who are awaiting their trial. At the moment they are not eligible to access all the rehabilitation programmes that are available—drug and alcohol relief; a whole bunch of things that are there in order to help them get ahead and get back on track when they leave prison. So one of the things we'll be doing is making sure that all prisoners are eligible for those rehabilitation programmes and we think that will make a big difference.Of course the other area when we talk about youth crime much more significant things are about making sure the kids are at school. After six years where truancy got out of control our Government will be focused on dealing with some of those long-term drivers of crime.I also was very pleased when the Prime Minister Chris Luxon gave me the Treaty negotiations portfolio. I'm very conscious of the fact that I stand in a proud tradition in the National Party of a party that has actually delivered in that space because there's a lot of talk on the other side. But it was Sir Douglas Graham that kicked things off with Prime Minister Jim Bolger who got the Ngāi Tahu settlement sorted and one with Tainui which set the benchmark that that got things going. And then after a long period of drift after Helen Clark Christopher Finlayson turned up and really turbocharged that Treaty settlement process in order to bring some progress.Now not everybody is going to be happy with every outcome but we made progress and certainly my goal is to continue that tradition so that iwi and hapū across the country can reap some compensation for the breaches of the Treaty and get their feet established so that they can do well in the future. So that's something that I'm looking forward to. Obviously we've got big challenges up in the Far North and I'm hoping for goodwill to abide on all those areas.Recognising that we as a country are trying to do something that is quite unique around the world and it is a challenging prospect of how a country recognises the Treaty of Waitangi and honours that Treaty while also stands for those core human rights of equal citizenship and equality before the law. And that I don't for a moment think is an easy discussion but it's one that we're going to carry on with goodwill.The final one I've been given is arts and culture. And I certainly celebrate with all people across the House the magnificent creative industries that we have in this country—our artists our writers our historians our musicians and our photographers and all the many people film makers who contribute to making this such a rich and vibrant culture. I regard that as actually quite an important economic portfolio because the creative sector is significant in our economy. It's actually a big export earner. The film industry is a big export earner. The music industry is a big export owner. So when Todd McClay goes heading off to our places on trade missions as well as the meat workers he should also have some of the musicians and the artists because they are great exporters as well and that's something I'll be championing. Thank you very much for your commentary on that score.So with that I just want to acknowledge the maiden speech coming up and I wish the member Hana-Rawhiti all the very best in Parliament. This is a broad church this Parliament but we all desire to improve the lot of our fellow New Zealanders. And on that basis thank you Mr Speaker.SPEAKER: I call Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke to make her maiden statement."