Hague Kevin: Address in ReplyText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHague Kevin: Address in Reply[Sitting date: 21 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:66. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green):Thank you very much Mr Deputy Speaker and like others can I begin my contribution by congratulating you and the others in the Speaker’s team: the Rt Hon David Carter Lindsay Tisch and the Hon Trevor Mallard. I also want to congratulate all of the other members in the House both those who are returning and all of the new members. I hope you will enjoy your time in this House and make the contribution that you came here to make. I look forward whichever party you are associated with to working with you to try to achieve good things.Chris Bishop gave his maiden speech earlier this afternoon. Chris and I are I think friends and I appreciated his speech. It was good to hear a speech from a new National member that set out ideas because I look forward to debating ideas against the Government. There was not much in Chris’ speech that I agreed with. I think that the ideas that many of the Government’s policies are based on are the wrong ideas. There is for example the failed ideology of trickle-down—that is by enriching the already wealthy they will somehow lift all boats and wealth will trickle down to those in the greatest need. Actually the reverse has been shown comprehensively to be true.There is also another idea that I think has characterised the past 6 years of National Governments and again it appeared pretty prominent in the Speech from the Throne. It is the simple false dichotomy that says that whatever the private sector does is good; whatever the public sector does is bad. We have seen that again and again in different realms of Government action over the past 6 years. There was for example the privatisation of energy companies. There was the disastrous foray into charter schools which National seems intent on pursuing. Within the conservation portfolio even we have seen conservation activities relying more and more on contributions from the private sector despite that being a core function of the State.In the health sector—an area that I know very well; it is one of my portfolios—in Westport which is in the West Coast region where I live there is to be a new hospital. There is to be a new hospital in Westport but the Government is going to provide absolutely not one dollar for it to be built. There is a new hospital provided that it is entirely privately funded. So in all of these areas of core Government activity the Government has in fact been withdrawing and shrinking and leaving more and more to the private sector and to the community sector.One of my new portfolios is housing and this shrinking of the State is again apparent in housing. National’s strategy appears to be essentially twofold. On the one hand the Government intends essentially a form of deregulation of the housing market apparently having learnt nothing at all from leaky buildings and finance company collapses and the debacle of—Hon David Cunliffe: Victories of the free market.KEVIN HAGUE: Yes exactly—the victories of the free market as David Cunliffe says. The other aspect of the Government’s plan appears to be to actually withdraw from State housing and instead transfer responsibility on to the community sector. That is the very reverse of what needs to occur but it is typical of the Dickensian thinking that says that the role of the Government is smaller and smaller and smaller individual citizens are responsible for meeting their own needs and if they cannot then they must rely on charities. It is a return to the 19th century.What the Green Party stands for instead is a commitment to the ideas that Michael Joseph Savage espoused—that the State is the expression of our collective responsibility to care for each other. Housing health education and conservation—these are core parts of what the New Zealand public seeks and demands from the State and we will hold the Government to account on those fronts.