Parata Hekia: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Parata Hekia: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 11 May 2011. Volume:672;Page:18568. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister for Ethnic Affairs) 
: 
Tena koe. Tena tatou huri noa i to tatou Whare. I rise with absolute excitement and pride—indeed with energy and resources—to talk about the plan and ambition that this National-led Government has for Aotearoa New Zealand while at the same time observing with despair the margins the Opposition has chosen to occupy. The issues and items the Opposition seems to think are of interest to New Zealanders are completely missing this point. As previous speakers on this side of the House have outlined New Zealanders are concerned about what the economy is doing and how they are affected by it. They are concerned about education for their children. They are concerned about health for themselves their families their friends and their communities. They are concerned about law and order and about the safety of their homes streets workplaces and neighbourhoods. 
What is this Government’s response to that? It has responded in absolutely every area of concern and interest to New Zealanders. Despite having been dealt the most difficult hand that perhaps any Government in a generation has been dealt the Government has responded and it has focused on the systemic and structural because it understands that New Zealanders want long-term sustainability. New Zealanders want to see that they will have strength in their hip pockets as my colleague the Hon Maurice Williamson has described it so matter-of-factly. New Zealanders want to know that they have a Government that is focused on the priorities and on what is important to them.  
Notwithstanding all of those more general national application issues and priorities this Government has also focused on Christchurch and on how we support that wonderful city and that very challenged community to rebuild and recover. That is important not only to Christchurch but to New Zealand. Christchurch is the second biggest economic hub for our country which is why this Government has spared no level of energy commitment and focus to work with the people of Christchurch and Canterbury to help rebuild and recover that centre of activity for its people themselves and for us. 
In the tax area as the Opposition knows and as this House knows we have taken steps to re-engineer the whole tax platform to get the kinds of behaviours that again we know will be sustainable over time. We have tilted the tax platform to ensure that we move away from the behaviour encouraged by the Opposition which was to consume borrow and spend. 
Dr Cam Calder 
: And hope. 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: Not even to hope because under that Opposition the situation was hopeless! Instead we on this side of the House have recognised that New Zealanders are capable of making decisions for themselves. Instead of the Government interfering and intervening in their lives as was characteristic of the previous Government we have said to almost 75 percent of New Zealanders that the tax rate is 17.5 percent so that the general public—at least the 72 percent who are now on that 17.5 percent tax rate—can make their own decisions about how they spend that near to 83 percent. 
We have encouraged investment in savings because we also understand that it is not the Government that creates wealth; it is businesses that create wealth. It is not the Government that should be involved in make-work schemes for employment; it is businesses that should be employing people. We understand that we need to support businesses to take risks on young people Maori Pacific Island people and on all kinds of people in New Zealand to give them the opportunity to secure employment and to make decisions for their families. 
We understand that health is important. We have heard the Minister of Health speaking in the House today about the kinds of investments that this Government has made notwithstanding the difficult—difficult—economic context in which we are operating. We have focused on education too because unlike that Opposition we are not prepared to consign one in five students to some sort of scrapheap of dependence on the State. 
We want New Zealanders to be resilient and self-determining; we do not want them to be reliant on Uncle Trevor or Auntie Helen—or on Uncle Parekura for that matter. We want them to be reliant on themselves. We want the Government out of the lives of New Zealanders. We want to support New Zealanders’ independence. Nevertheless we have done very practical things. We have put 300 more police on the streets. We have done so much for this country.