Ardern JacindaADJOURNMENTSITTINGS OF THE HOUSESTANDING ORDERSSessionalRt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): I move That the House do now adjourn until 2.00 pm on Tuesday 30 January 2018 and that the sitting programme for 2018 be: January 30 and 31; February 1 13 14 15 20 21 22 27 and 28; March 1 20 21 22 27 28 and 29; April 3 4 5 10 11 and 12; May 1 2 3 8 9 10 15 16 17 22 23 and 24; June 12 13 14 19 20 21 26 27 and 28; July 3 4 5 24 25 26 and 31; August 1 2 7 8 9 14 15 and 16; September 4 5 6 11 12 13 18 19 20 25 26 and 27; October 16 17 18 23 24 25 30 and 31; November 1 6 7 8 27 28 and 29; December 4 5 6 11 12 and 13.I also move on behalf of the Hon Chris Hipkins That the following sessional orders be adopted:Standing Order 47 is suspended and the following order is adopted in its place:47Appointment of Monday Friday or Saturday as sitting day(1)The House may order that a sitting day be held on a Monday Friday or Saturday.(2)The Business Committee may—(a)include a Monday or a Friday in a recommended sitting programme:(b)determine that a Monday or a Friday is to be a sitting day when determining a variation of the sitting programme.(3)On a sitting day held on a Monday a Friday or a Saturday the sitting hours are as for a Tuesday unless the House or the Business Committee decides otherwise.Standing Order 75 applies to any other day appointed by the Business Committee to be a sitting day unless the Business Committee decides otherwise.Standing Order 79(a) is suspended and the following subparagraph is adopted in its place:(a)that the hours of a specified sitting day be adjusted:Standing Order 81(4) is suspended and the following paragraphs are adopted in its place:(4)After being adopted by the House the sitting programme operates subject to—(a)any decision by the House to the contrary:(b)any variation of the sitting programme determined by the Business Committee under paragraph (5).(5)The Business Committee may determine that the sitting programme is to be varied by the addition or omission of one or more sitting days.This is the second adjournment debate this year but those who keep this place running all year round let's be honest deserve our thanks every single day.I will start Mr Speaker with you. There has been no doubt that there has been a change of tone in this House since your arrival. I'll admit that there are days where it feels like a tennis match with the exception that the referee can actually deduct points as they go. But you Mr Speaker have chosen to literally make this a family-friendly House. That is something to be applauded and we acknowledge you for that.We as a Government wish to thank and acknowledge the Clerk's Office the Hansard Office the Bills Office the Table Office the catering staff the security team the messengers and the Library and IT teams for their tireless patience and for their endless smiles in the face of adversity. I thank all of them on behalf of this team for the service that they continue to give this place and for quite frankly the joy that they bring this place when we sometimes lower the tone. I wish on behalf of our team that they all have a restful break free from politics and free from politicians. I wish to briefly indulge and thank my team: the newly established team in the Prime Minister's office. This has been a huge transition and they have worked so hard and I am incredibly grateful for that.Finally we are all representatives that sit here from Tuesdays through Thursdays and while we are here there are individuals who work in our electorate offices on our behalf on a daily basis. They are us when we are not there. They are the face of our representation when we are not there. Their work is hard sometimes difficult and we all I am sure owe them a debt of gratitude. I personally wish to thank the team in my office: Barbara and Therese—Therese is on to her second Prime Minister in her service—and I am very very grateful for the work that they do. I cannot imagine being represented by anyone better.I can say from a personal perspective that I have learnt many many things in 2017. I have learnt the difference when plumbing a toilet between an S trap and a P trap and why I personally should install neither. I learnt that elections in this day and age can be a good clean contest of ideas with the exception of a few holes. And I've learnt that in amongst election periods they are still periods where we are all ultimately human. They're periods that are full of love and hope and sometimes grief.I learnt that if you're ever a deputy to someone like Andrew Little you should prepare for the unexpected and possibly run for the hills. And if you're a deputy to someone like Andrew Little you too will get the opportunity to see what an extraordinary man and politician he is—and one of a kind. I acknowledge him.I learnt that 100 days is not as long as you think. But most of all I have learnt that with an amazing team with a genuine belief that things can and should be better that with support parties who agree that things in New Zealand can and should be better and with an annoying dose of relentless positivity when you say Let's do this." you actually can.So what have we done? What have we done over this short period of time since 26 October? What have we managed to do alongside our coalition partner New Zealand First and with the support of our confidence and supply partner the Greens in that short space of time?We have increased paid parental leave so that we will see families get 26 weeks with their families to spend more time with baby at the most crucial time in a child's life. That is something we should all be proud of. We passed the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2) which makes sure that Kiwis live in a warm dry home and what could be more fundamental and more important than that? Again Andrew Little—I thank him for the work he did getting that bill ready. We've increased student allowances because it was time to acknowledge that those who are investing in their education deserve the ability to be able to afford to live and in places like Wellington and Auckland and in fact everywhere it simply wasn't acceptable to say that roughly $170 on average was sufficient to do that.We made the first year of post-secondary education free and as much as I heard rhetoric from the other side of the House with unambitious statements around why someone who worked in a supermarket wouldn't be interested in this—well I can tell you I worked in a supermarket and this is exactly the kind of policy I would have wanted a caring thoughtful Government who invests in its future to think about. This is what this Government has done.The people who are most likely to access this policy aren't just school leavers; they're people who are already in the workforce who may need to retrain. I met one of them not that long ago. I was at a cafe when a woman said to me that next year she was going to go and train to be a primary school teacher and I thanked her because of the need that we have. I asked her a little bit about her plans: "Have you ever been to university before?" She said "No." She said "One of the reasons I'm going is because of you and your Government." That is the kind of difference that we want to make. We want this to be a productive economy where we train and invest in our people and that is what this policy is all about.Alongside that we've established the Pike River Recovery Agency because we've always believed there was more to be done to support families to see a manned re-entry of Pike River. That is this Government's ambition.We started work on addressing our commitments and obligations when it comes to climate change and Minister James Shaw has done an enormous amount of work to get the Climate Commission a transition body ready to go as well as the consultation on what will be eventually our Zero Carbon Act. I implore all members of this House: we've given that a long lead time because we hope that that will be legislation that will be supported by every member in this place. I have that same ambition for our child poverty legislation. This is a Government that hopes that we will one day be a country that is world leading because of the standards we set ourselves and measure ourselves against and report against to tell New Zealanders how we are progressing. Yes that means a living standards framework it means tracking our progress on environmental degradation and it means reporting on child poverty and when we do all of those things I believe we will be the envy of the world.We delivered the Families Package—384000 families who will see on average an increase in their incomes of $75 a week. That amounts to one of the most significant things in my mind that we've done in these past weeks: a 48 percent decrease in child poverty once that Families Package is fully in place. Nothing makes me more proud than to see us investing in those who carry our future and those are our children.We managed of course to today reiterate our plans to ban the mass sale of Housing New Zealand properties. That felt particularly special to me as the leader of the Labour Party as I stood on the lawn of the home that was built 80 years ago by a Government who knew that housing was the cornerstone the foundation of a future for families in their community. While we are dealing with the other side of the House's legacy—which means we have 5000 fewer Housing New Zealand houses than when they started—we will turn that around.We've also kicked off a ban of overseas buyers. We've kicked off medicinal cannabis legislation and have dumped national standards. We've also restarted contributions to the Superannuation Fund. We have done this in 56 days—56 days.I want to wish everyone in this House a merry Christmas. I want particularly to wish everyone on this side of the House a restful break because we've got a lot of work to do. But to the people of New Zealand: merry merry Christmas and I can assure you there's a lot more to come in the new year."