Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Mr Deputy Speaker can I firstly sir congratulate you on your election to this august office. We in the National Party are looking forward to working with you. This Government has a big mandate—the biggest mandate any Government has ever obtained under MMP. It was once said by Sir Geoffrey Palmer that it would basically be impossible for a Government to ever govern alone under MMP. In fact the system was specifically designed to stop that happening but yet here we are. The Labour Party has 64—it will be 65 once Phil Twyford is sworn in—seats and we find ourselves here in the National Party in Opposition with significantly reduced numbers. And we take that message on board seriously. We do. Because the voters in a democracy are always right. By definition they are always correct and when the voters send a party from 56 seats after the 2017 election to 33 you have to respect that result and you have to take it on board and listen to what the voters are saying.So we respect the mandate of the Government. We respect their big mandate. We respect the fact they have 65 seats and we respect the fact that they've added to that with the Green Party but with a big mandate comes a big responsibility. New Zealanders are not going to accept the politics of excuses that we saw for the last three years. They are not going to accept blaming National for the nine years and the long nine years and all the tired rhetoric about that. They are not going to accept the fact that National was in Government and did or didn't do a good enough job. They are going to expect the Labour Party to lead. They are not going to accept blaming Winston Peters because Winston's gone. He's not in Parliament any more and the Labour Party will not be able to blame New Zealand First for not being able to get through all of the progressive policy they want. They have the numbers. They have the Greens there if they really want to blame really dumb stuff on them but they have the numbers and the mandate. So we will expect as a Parliament action on the things that the Government says it cares about: housing child poverty climate change. They're the things that New Zealanders care about too. No more excuses.The most remarkable thing about the Speech from the Throne was its timidity—its vaulting lack of ambition. It's almost as if the Government has decided it's all too hard. Let me compare the Speech from the Throne in 2017 to 2020. In 2017 the Prime Minister talked about an ambitious programme: In our society today no one should have to live in a car or on the street. No one should have to beg for their next meal. … That kind of inequality is degrading to us all." And then the kicker: "This will be a government of transformation. It will lift up those who have been forgotten or neglected … This will be a government of aspiration." Fine words. What happened in 2020? We need to "do more and go further". We need to "pursue progress". We need to "lay the foundations for a better future". This is all about stability and certainty. It's like a speech written by committee which I suspect it was—written by bureaucrats and not particularly good ones rather than the Prime Minister seeking to lead. A vaulting lack of ambition—no mention of "ambition" in 2020's version of the speech. No mention of "aspiration". The only time "transformation" is mentioned is in the context of these Orwellian industry transformation plans that the Government is going to impose on industries—as if the Government's always had a great idea about how to transform an industry to higher productivity and higher growth. And why has the Government dialled down the rhetoric? Why have they gone from "transformation" to needing to "do more and go further"? It's because well the rhetoric was fine and the intention was good; in the first three years the results were terrible right down the line. One hundred thousand homes—they don't even talk about it any more. KiwiBuild was not even mentioned in the Speech from the Throne. It's not even talked about any more because we know it was a disaster. Sixteen thousand were meant to be done in the first term. In Lower Hutt they promised 400; they didn't do a single one. One billion trees—not mentioned again in the Speech from the Throne—36 million done in the first three years. Light rail was a complete joke: meant to have been rolled out by 2021 finished—complete—from Mount Roskill to the CBD. They do not even have a business case by the end of 2020. No consents no plan no funding no costings—nothing. Not even a completed draft business case. And poor old Michael Wood the new Minister of Transport has inherited a complete lemon from Phil Twyford. Child poverty—the reason the Prime Minister came into Parliament she says—material hardship got worse from 2016-17 to 2018-19. Fees-free gave a lot of money away to kids in tertiary education but the numbers went down rather than up. When they first got in the target was to raise the number of students receiving tertiary education and then the numbers went down. So what did they do? They changed the targets. Instead the target was literally "We will measure success by how much money is spent rather than how many kids actually get into tertiary education." What an indicative sign of the Government's priorities. The Prime Minister says child poverty is why she's in politics. That's why she's here: to eradicate child poverty. And what was the first thing the first multibillion-dollar spending commitment of the last Government? Not child poverty. Not the hard social reforms to end the enduring misery of kids who grow up in appalling State houses in appalling misery. Not any investment into that. Not using data and analytics and the best minds that we developed in National in Government—not that. The first investment was to pay kids from Remuera free money to go to Auckland University and get a law degree for free. The most regressive policy the Government could come up with: that was what they did. And so we are going to expect more over the next three years. So we welcome the departure of New Zealand First from this Parliament and the Government is going to have to dial up the rhetoric and they're going to have to do something about the enduring social problems facing this country. Housing is going to be a major centrepiece of the next three years. We've already seen the numbers on the social housing waiting list—20000—and I think it is appalling that we live in a country where kids grow up in motels. We saw Nicola Willis question the public housing Minister the Minister of Housing on it today.Hon Poto Williams: I think National started that.CHRIS BISHOP: Yeah yeah—absolutely absolutely. Absolutely. It's wrong that kids grow up in motels and it's wrong the Government pays for people to live in motels but what I want to know is: what is the Government doing about it that will make things better? Because I'll tell you what extending the brightline test from five years to 10 years will do nothing to eradicate the social housing waiting list. It will do nothing about lowering rents. In fact it will raise rents. It will send more people into social housing. It will make it harder for people to get on the housing ladder. What will make a difference? Things that the Government has put in the too-hard basket. Things like smashing the Auckland Rural Urban Boundary which the Government said they'd do in 2017 in the Speech from the Throne and never did. Well now you've got the opportunity to do it. Things like strengthening the National Policy Statement on Urban Development which was a good thing the Government did but it comes in too late to grow for density. Bring it forward further. It comes into effect in 2024; start it in 2021 or 2022. Things like working with Kāinga Ora to allow capital for community housing providers and actually funding housing infrastructure both on the edges of our cities and inside our inner cities as well. There's a lot of things the Government has put in the too-hard basket that they could do. So we will be holding them to account on housing we will be holding them to account on child poverty and we'll be holding them to account on education because the interesting thing about education in this country is we've doubled expenditure on education in the last 10 or 12 years and our Programme for International Student Assessment scores have gotten worse. So we are going to be challenging in the National Party some of the long-term issues facing this country over the next three years and the question for this Parliament is: is this Government with its big mandate its big progressive majority up for that challenge?"