Volume 707 Week 25 - Tuesday 18 August 2015Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeVolume 707 Week 25 - Tuesday 18 August 2015[Sitting date: 18 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5837. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Tuesday 18 August 2015Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.Prayers.MotionsSilver Ferns—2015 Netball World CupHon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister for Sport and Recreation): I seek leave to move a motion without notice and without debate to congratulate the Silver Ferns on their performance at the Netball World Cup.Mr SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that course of action? There is none.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I move That this House note the achievements of our national netball team the Silver Ferns who delighted us all during the World Cup most notably in the victory over the Australian Diamonds during the preliminary round and put on record how proud the country is of the way the team fought back during Sunday’s final after a very difficult first quarter to finish within three goals of Australia;and congratulate the New Zealand Parliamentary Netball Team on their victory over the Australians in the Diggeress Cup. They are fine representatives of New Zealand both on and off the court.Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): On behalf of—Mr SPEAKER: Order! It is a motion without debate so if the member seeks leave I am sure—Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Can I seek leave to reply—Mr SPEAKER: That would be the best way forward. Leave is sought for the Hon Trevor Mallard to briefly respond. Is there any objection? There is not.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Can I add the Opposition’s congratulations to the team in particular to the coach Wai Taumāunu who took a high proportion of untested players; and to Casey Kōpua who recovered from what we thought was a career-ending injury to lead the team. I think that many New Zealanders felt despair after the first quarter and some hope if not expectation later on. This is a team for the future and I think we are well placed for the next Netball World Cup.Motion agreed to.Points of OrderSpeakers and Presiding Officers—Treatment of New Zealand FirstRt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I seek to raise a point of order at the first available opportunity to me. It concerns a comment made in this House on 29 July that was unparliamentary and requires an apology. The comment said was recorded on the parliamentary tape. I have heard it and I seek an apology from you for the comments that you made.Mr SPEAKER: The only trouble is that the comment was not made by me. These microphones that I operate with are live microphones. I assured the House at the time that I never made that comment and I stand by that statement again today.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Perhaps then you could tell me who it was who made the comment: “Oh shut up Winston.”Mr SPEAKER: No I do not intend to but if the member takes time to think about the seating in the House—[Interruption] Order! If the member takes time to think about the seating in the House and listens very carefully to the transcript he has recorded I am sure he will come up with the correct answer.Questions to MinistersEconomy—Unemployment and Dairy IndustryANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition): My question is to the Prime Minister—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! I now require some settling in this House.1.ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his statement that “New Zealand has a diversified economy” given that 82 percent of the growth in exports since the beginning of 2009 has been in dairy and wood while manufactured exports have fallen by $1.3 billion?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Official data from Statistics New Zealand shows that between January 2009 and June 2015 New Zealand exports grew by just over $1 billion but I have news for the member: I am advised that it is not the case that 82 percent of this growth in exports has been in dairy and wood. In fact the real number is 20 percent and I am advised that it is not the case that manufactured exports have fallen by $1.3 billion. In fact they have increased by $138 million or 13 percent over the period that the member refers to. So I would say yes New Zealand has a diversified economy and I would also say that like always we should never believe the dodgy statistics that Labour brings to the House.Andrew Little: Why has he failed to invest in diversifying the country over the past 7 years by backing research and development investing in rural transport and improving training for our young people; and why did he increase irrigation subsidies that encouraged more milk production instead?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Despite what the member says in fact every single year that this Government has been in office it has invested more money in science and innovation. We have a highly diversified economy and that is one of the reasons why it is doing well.Andrew Little: Given the 500 jobs lost at Fonterra the 1100 lost so far at Solid Energy and the now 7.5 percent unemployment rate in Taranaki—the highest in 21 years—was it a good idea for his Government to concentrate regional economies on just a few basic commodities?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well I reject the proposition that we have done that. In fact what we have done is enable the regions to diversify and they have done that. The member might want to go around and ask the tourism operators around the region whether they are having a record time. The member might want to go out and look at information and communications technology businesses around being supported by the roll-out of ultra-fast broadband and the Rural Broadband Initiative. The member might want to look at the science and innovation that has been rolled out around the country. The food industry—there are many parts of the economy that are diversified. What is not diversified is the Labour Party which has a one-track mind and thinks that everything is either dairy or housing. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! The level of interjection is now unacceptable.Andrew Little: With unemployment rising for the last three quarters and 50000 more people unemployed today than when the member became Prime Minister when will unemployment return to pre - John Key levels and where will the jobs come from?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do not have the numbers with me but I know that over the past couple of years the number of jobs created in New Zealand is well in excess of 100000. There are more people in work under this Government than there has ever been in the history of New Zealand.Andrew Little: Given that dairy prices are so low that manufactured exports are well below the level that he inherited that the Canterbury rebuild has peaked and that retail sales have stalled how can he seriously regret the view of the leading bank economist that there will be no job growth in the second half of this year and that growth will slow below 2 percent?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: If the member came to the House with the correct facts we could take him seriously. The BNZ-BusinessNZ Performance of Manufacturing Index has increased 33 months in a row—[Interruption] It is 34 months; I stand corrected—34 months in a row. I know that the member wants to talk the New Zealand economy down because he somehow thinks the doom and gloom is going to help his failing prospects but I can assure the member that it will not—it will not—and that is why in the “Mood of the Boardroom” they did not rate him very highly.Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! Now the noise is coming from my left rather than the right but it still must settle.Andrew Little: When he says that beef fruit wine and tourism are growing why does he not be straight with New Zealand and admit that growth across all those sectors is just $2.3 billion while the collapse in dairy will cost the economy $8 billion? Tell the truth—he has put all the eggs in one basket and I am not talking about the poultry industry either.Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Again the member comes up with dodgy statistics one more time and that is why it is very hard to take him seriously. But yes actually lots of other parts of the economy are doing very well. The member gets up on his feet and says that because international dairy prices are down—something that the Government cannot control—it is our fault but because international beef prices are up that is nothing to do with us. Well he cannot have it both ways. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! Would the two front-benchers—at the second request—please settle.Future Investment Fund—Investments2.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Does he stand by his statement of October 2011 that the proceeds of selling public assets like Air New Zealand and power generators will go in his words “into a new Fund called the Future Investment Fund.”?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can the Prime Minister confirm that his asset sales fund is being used to buy “assets that are long-lived are here in New Zealand and are owned by the Crown on behalf of all taxpayers.”?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: As a general characterisation I would say that is correct.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Well then how does he reconcile the two answers he has just given when the Government’s contribution to the Chinese-led offshore Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank of $140 million—New Zealand dollars—is coming from his Future Investment Fund?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: New Zealand has long been a participant in putting capital into bodies like this and actually that is a very good thing to do because that collective capital will be used to build infrastructure projects right across the Asian region which actually New Zealand companies may well also get an opportunity to participate in. The capital is used to support those projects and one day it will probably be returned to New Zealand taxpayers.Rt Hon Winston Peters: If that is the case then why did the Prime Minister not give the right answer the first two times and more important will he confirm to hard-working New Zealand taxpayers that another $561 million is now by underwriting having to be put against the Crown accounts for that purchase?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do not think that the member really understands basic accounting. To be blunt we put money into ACC and the Superannuation Fund and that is also equity in those entities. We are putting equity into the Asian bank that is owned by New Zealand taxpayers who own that equity.Rt Hon Winston Peters: If that is true why did he not tell the public the truth when he made those statements about it being all here in New Zealand and with provincial New Zealand—indeed much of New Zealand—struggling does he not feel that like with charity nigh on $700 million ought to be spent at home in this country?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: For a start off there is no guarantee that the additional capital that is ever drawn on New Zealand would actually come out of the Future Investment Fund. That should probably strongly suggest that it probably would not given the fund is starting to run down. But this is an asset held on the New Zealand balance sheet. That is at home.Economic Outlook—Reports3.JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth) to the Minister of Finance: How is the Government supporting the economy’s resilience and long-term economic outlook?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): Lower dairy prices and ongoing uncertainty in some global markets underlines the importance of New Zealand’s economic resilience which has increased in recent years. Household savings have lifted. More households have been more focused on paying down debt. New Zealand’s banks are well capitalised. New Zealand’s net international investment position which measures our international indebtedness has strengthened from 85 percent of GDP in 2009 to 64 percent of GDP today a significant reduction in our international indebtedness. The Government of course is supporting this resilience through responsible fiscal management.Jonathan Young: What recent reports has he received on the outlook for the New Zealand economy particularly in the banking sector?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Rating agency Standard and Poor’s released a ratings update for New Zealand financial institutions last week. It affirmed the issuer credit ratings of 11 financial institutions and lowered its credit ratings on 13 financial institutions. Standard and Poor’s said these changes reflected increased risks from rising house prices in Auckland and were not due—not due—to risks specific to any institution. It said that although rising housing prices in Auckland meant higher risks of a house price correction this increase is off a low base and a sharp correction remains unlikely. Standard and Poor’s pointed to New Zealand’s resilient economy and banking regulation as supporting a banking system that is low risk by global standards.Jonathan Young: What do other international ratings agencies say about New Zealand’s economic outlook?Hon BILL ENGLISH: There have been a number of reports from other rating agencies recently. Moody’s affirmed its AAA rating of New Zealand banks and said its outlook for the New Zealand banking system is stable based on banks’ healthy capitalisation strong asset quality and stable profits. Last week Fitch Ratings affirmed its AA sovereign credit rating with a positive outlook noting that the New Zealand economy and banking sector are relatively well positioned to weather a cyclical downturn in the dairy market. Later this month Standard and Poor’s is expected to update its sovereign ratings for New Zealand.Jonathan Young: What recent reports has he received showing continuing moderate growth over the next few years?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Most forecasters are going through a re-rating of the economic outlook because it is softer. Today the ASB bank issued its forecast of growth at 2 percent for this year 2015 rising to 2.9 percent in 2016. It points to the widely recognised challenges in some parts of the economy including positives such as a rapid improvement in export-sector competitiveness expanding tourism strong employment growth and lower interest rates. The ASB’s outlook is broadly consistent with Treasury and the Reserve Bank which forecast growth of 2 to 2.5 percent for 2015.Workplace Health and Safety—Progress4.ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his statement made after the Pike River disaster that “We’re doing everything we can to make sure this tragedy isn’t repeated”; if so does he agree with Olivia Monk sister of Michael Monk who was killed at Pike River that “there have been 291 deaths since Pike River in New Zealand within the workplace and that is unacceptable”?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes; and yes that it is unacceptable. That is why the Government has conducted the most significant review of workplace health and safety in more than two decades. However it should be noted that I am advised by WorkSafe New Zealand that since Pike River the number of fatalities has been 233. I am further advised that in the 5 years prior to Pike River there were 331 fatalities so the number is trending down.Andrew Little: In light of the presence around Parliament today of some of the families of the Pike River victims is the real reason for the delay in the passage of the Health and Safety Reform Bill that there are internal divisions in the National Government and difficulties with support parties?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No. There is a genuine desire and also a need to work with our support partners to actually get the legislation correct. Actually I stand by the Government’s record in health and safety which has been to set up the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy to establish the High Hazards Unit and to establish the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety. We have introduced new underground mining regulations we set up WorkSafe as a single-focus independent health regulator we provided $35 million of additional funding and we have boosted up to 167 the total number of health and safety inspectors.Andrew Little: Does he stand by his statement that “There have been too many deaths on farms for there not to be changes.”; if so would he guarantee that agriculture will be included as a high-risk industry under the Health and Safety Reform Bill?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes I stand by my statement. No I would not guarantee that agriculture with 20 or fewer employees would be deemed high risk. What the Government will do is take the best advice and the Minister will be introducing that tomorrow.Andrew Little: How many deaths have there been in the agriculture sector since 2010 and what is that as a proportion of the workforce in that industry?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do not have that information with me. The member would need to put it down in writing and I am more than happy to get the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety to give it to him.Andrew Little: Given that around 290 more New Zealanders have died at work since the 29 deaths at Pike River despite his promise of better laws—Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Obviously it is important that the House is not misled—Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! That is not going to help the order of the House. I heard the answer that the Prime Minister gave. The Leader of the Opposition is now quoting another figure. It is in order for the Leader of the Opposition to do so but I imagine that the response will be fairly robust when the question is completed. I invite Andrew Little to complete his question.Andrew Little: Given that around 290 more New Zealanders have died at work since the 29 deaths at Pike River despite his promise of better laws does he seriously think that he has done enough to protect Kiwis at work?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I think the member is deliberately misleading the House. The correct number is 233.Andrew Little: Will he come to the workplace safety meeting today at 6 o’clock in the Legislative Council Chamber and will he look the Pike River families in the eye and tell them that he has done all he can to prevent other families from suffering losses like theirs?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I have met with the families on many many occasions. I would be simply more than happy to reaffirm to the families that this Government has utterly stood behind the commitments that it has made and I personally have utterly stood behind those commitments. They include setting up the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy and establishing the High Hazards Unit with 17 specialist inspectors to oversee the safety of our mining and petroleum sectors. We have established the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety. We have introduced new underground mining regulations. We have set up WorkSafe as the single-focus independent health and safety regulator. We have provided $35 million of additional funding for the regulator bringing total resourcing to $80 million per year. We have boosted the number of health and safety inspectors to 167. We have developed the health and safety charter in Christchurch to assist the Canterbury rebuild. We have introduced a safety assurance regime for adventure activity operators. We have supported the industry-led Forest Industry Safety Council. We have worked with industry to introduce the Safer Farms initiative to—Mr SPEAKER: Order! Bring the answer to a conclusion.Regional Economies—Development5.JOANNE HAYES (National) to the Minister for Economic Development: What progress is the Government making in its regional development programme?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development): Very good progress. The recent household labour force survey highlights that the economy is continuing to diversify and grow jobs in many regions over the past year despite sharply lower dairy prices and other international uncertainties. There are 69000 more New Zealanders working than a year ago including 2000 more jobs in Otago and Southland; 9000 more in the Waikato and 3900 in Manawatū-Wanganui with strong growth in the red meat sector for example including the value of beef exports up around 35 percent in a year; 11000 more in the Bay of Plenty on the back of a strong rebound in the Kiwifruit industry; and 3300 more in Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay partly due to a strong and growing wine industry and also a strong and growing fruit industry. There has also been good growth in other industries with tourism up 7 percent on the year 24500 more people in manufacturing and international education up to now $2.85 billion.Joanne Hayes: What is the Government doing to encourage growth in the regions?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: We are doing a range of things. For example we are investing in critical infrastructure like the regional roading programme the roads of national significance and ultra-fast and rural broadband to connect our regions with the rest of New Zealand and with the world. We are updating the regional business partner network and introducing regional business hubs to make it easier for businesses to access what they need to grow nationally and internationally. We are establishing regional research institutes. We are working closely with a number of regions to help them make the most of their opportunities and attract more investment for more growth and more jobs.Joanne Hayes: What has been the response from regions on their opportunity for growth?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: A very good response including in the Manawatū-Wanganui. We had a very good turnout from local leaders to endorse the regional growth opportunities report in that region. Last month I was down on the West Coast—of course they have their own examples of diversification like the $120 million nutritionals plant currently being built by Westland Milk Products. We are investing in a range of infrastructure projects like the Taramakau bridge and the ultra-fast broadband in Greymouth and soon in places like Westport. I am working closely with the Buller mayor on a range of projects to attract new investment opportunities there. Also last Friday I was in Hawke’s Bay. The feedback there was very strongly in favour of regional development. They are very focused on the Ruataniwha dam project and the Trans-Pacific Partnership so they were a little surprised when their local MP was coming out and marching against the Trans-Pacific Partnership last weekend.Child Poverty—Household incomes in New Zealand Report6.METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes.Metiria Turei: Does he stand by his statement to this House that Bryan Perry’s inequality report Household incomes in New Zealand is “the definitive study in this area and it is correct”?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes.Metiria Turei: Does the Prime Minister agree with the report’s finding that 45000 more children are living below the 60 percent after - housing costs standard poverty line?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I agree that Mr Perry has put out the latest report. It does show that increase. It also shows a plethora of different measures for poverty. He also goes on in the report to say that there is no evidence yet to support the view that inequality is widening out.Metiria Turei: So is the Prime Minister suggesting that the fact of 45000 more children living in poverty in just 1 year does not matter?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No.Metiria Turei: Beyond the hardship measures that the Prime Minister is concerned with is he saying to this House that he is committed to resolving the poverty suffered by those additional 45000 children as set out in Bryan Perry’s report?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I think it is worthy of noting that there are literally hundreds of measures in the report. The member has quoted one and that in part is because the median income has risen. But yes the Government remains committed to helping all New Zealand children.Metiria Turei: Does the Prime Minister agree with the author of this report the most definitive study in this area that because the incomes of the bottom third of New Zealand families have not moved but housing costs for those families have increased substantially there are now 45000 more children living in poverty than before?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: As I said before there are many many different measures in the report. There are many different ways of looking at it and cutting the numbers in different reports that are in there. What is clear and what the report says is that it is not clear yet that there is a trend of rising income inequality in New Zealand. Some of the data that the member mentions is a result of the median income rising.Metiria Turei: Given that the Prime Minister’s economic plan has failed to prevent 45000 more children now living in poverty will he consider working with me and others on a cross-party consensus on child poverty alleviation policies?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No. I am happy to stick with the plan that the Government has got which is actually working in my view. This is increasing benefits—the first time a Government has done that for 43 years. It is also around measures for a strong economy because actually as we know when people ultimately can find employment and can move into employment their average household income rises. It is one of the reasons why through a strong economy and the welfare reform measures this Government has undertaken we now have the lowest number of people on the equivalent of the old DPB since 1988. The measures are working. There are many ways of cutting the numbers in Bryan Perry’s report.Irrigation—Central Plains Water Irrigation SchemeMATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): My question is to the Minister for Primary Industries—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I am going to invite the member to start the question again once the interchange has finished between the two front rows.7.MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri) to the Minister for Primary Industries: How is the Government supporting irrigation in the Canterbury region?Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister for Primary Industries): Last Friday I attended with the Prime Minister and many other supporters the opening of stage 1 of the Central Plains Water irrigation scheme in Canterbury. This scheme has the potential to create more than $1 billion in new economic activity. When all stages are complete the scheme will irrigate about 60000 hectares of dairying arable horticultural and other livestock finishing land as well. The Government has supported this project through Crown Irrigation Investments which has invested $6.5 million in stage 1 of the Central Plains Water scheme and the Irrigation Acceleration Fund which invested $5.3 million in the early stages.Matt Doocey: Why is supporting irrigation so important for our region?Hon NATHAN GUY: A very good question. The need for new irrigation and water storage has been highlighted recently by several droughts over the past couple of summers. I have seen for myself what a positive difference irrigation makes to rural communities and rural towns. It revitalises schools and is a huge economic driver as well. There is the potential for an extra 420000 hectares of land across New Zealand to be irrigated by 2025 and that will create thousands of new jobs and boost exports by $4 billion a year.Andrew Little: I seek leave to table a report from WorkSafe New Zealand confirming that there have been a total of 299 workplace deaths in New Zealandsince 2010.Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that particular document. Is there any objection? There is none. It can be tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Tim Macindoe: What are some of the environmental benefits of the Central Plains Water irrigation scheme?Hon NATHAN GUY: That is a very good question. Water storage infrastructure often has real environmental benefits because it means more consistent river flows in summer and it reduces the pressure on groundwater aquifers. In this particular scheme 75 to 80 percent of the current groundwater takes will be replaced by surface or river flows and of course that has a benefit to the tune of 15 to 20 percent of that water being estimated to flow into Lake Ellesmere/Te Waihora. So there are numerous environmental social and economic benefits from water storage projects in New Zealand.Economic Programme—Performance8.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Finance: Does his plan A for the economy include negative per capita growth rising rates of unemployment credit downgrades for New Zealand banks and the lowest levels of business confidence in 6 years; if so why is he rejecting the call from 75 percent of business leaders in a recent survey for a plan B for the economy?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): No the Government’s economic plan is based on an economy that is resilient and adaptive to the pressures of the global economy and it is continuing to deliver higher wages increasing employment and a growing economy. If the business leaders did have a plan B we would know because Labour would have plagiarised it by now.Mr SPEAKER: Order!Grant Robertson: How can plan A be working when there are 146000 people unemployed today—11000 more than at this time last year—and the unemployment rate is knocking on 6 percent and forecast to go higher or is higher unemployment really part of plan A?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The plan is working because the economy is quite rapidly making the adjustments it needs to make to the change in the global markets that we deal with. Dairy prices have dropped sharply the exchange rate has quite quickly dropped by almost 20 percent against the US dollar and interest rates are now falling—not rising as we expected them to—and this is going to flow through to stronger export performance particularly in those markets like tourism where demand is strong and continued growth in jobs and investment. The adjustments that one would expect to occur are occurring and the Government should make sure that it does not get in the way of sensible New Zealanders doing the right thing under the pressure that they feel.Grant Robertson: In light of the rosy picture that the Minister has just painted how does he explain a string of business confidence surveys that show the lowest levels of business confidence in 6 years the latest of which being from the Auckland Chamber of Commerce which shows that only 15 percent of its members actually think that things will get better in the next year? How does he explain that if everything—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The question has been asked.Hon BILL ENGLISH: If the member had been listening to my last answer he would have heard that I was not painting a rosy picture; I was painting a picture of an economy adapting to global forces that are impacting on us—the same as business confidence is. It was at a very high level and the world outlook has softened for New Zealand and so business confidence is adjusting to that pretty quickly. But I can tell you that that confidence would certainly erode further if the Government followed that member’s advice and panicked about low dairy prices.Grant Robertson: Can he confirm his statement in this House—which he also repeated at the “Mood of the Boardroom” last week—that the only plan B for the diversification of the economy he has is for it to occur as a result of falling dairy prices?Hon BILL ENGLISH: As has been rehearsed many times in this House the New Zealand economy has been diversifying for some time but I would have to say that if the member does understand the economy he would understand that when prices drop in one sector and effectively go up in another like tourism investment is going to shift from one sector to another. That is not an original idea; that is one I have plagiarised from the economists.Grant Robertson: Having failed to find a plan B for the economy is he now on to plan C which is to break his promise about asset sales and begin to hock off what is left of our State-owned enterprises?Hon BILL ENGLISH: I can assure the member that plan A is not copying and pasting other people’s policies. It is to stick to our policy for an adaptive and resilient economy and of course we will be adjusting to circumstances in exactly the same way that businesses and households today particularly in some of our dairy-intensive provincial areas are having to adapt very quickly to the changing circumstances.Grant Robertson: Has he instructed boards of State-owned enterprises other than Landcorp to investigate selling down capital; if so which ones?Hon BILL ENGLISH: No we have not instructed boards to sell down capital. We have instructed them to show respect for the capital they have which is hard-earned from New Zealanders who pay their taxes their rail fares or their postage and make sure that they are using it very carefully. We have also instructed them that if they have spare capital—that is unutilised land for instance—they should sell it because they are wasting it and that is hard-earned cash. It is hard-earned capital funded by New Zealanders’ cash.Grant Robertson: In light of that answer can the Minister of Finance confirm that he has just told the House that he is breaking the National Party’s promise to not sell any more assets?Hon BILL ENGLISH: No and we disagree with that member’s irresponsible policy that if for instance a Government-owned business has land it no longer needs then it must hold on to it for ever because that is the policy. If it no longer needs land for instance in Auckland we would rather it sells the land in Auckland so we can build houses on it and that is exactly what we are going to do.Rt Hon John Key: Can the Minister of Finance confirm that if Meridian were to sell an asset it held in Australia called Southern Hydro that would be an asset sale?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Yes I can. Having listened to this line of questioning for some time I went back to see whether under the previous Labour Government any assets were sold. I found out much to my surprise that it had sold $600 million of electricity assets in Australia—and apparently that broke its policy.Superannuation—Residency Requirements9.DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First) to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: Does he have confidence in the Government-appointed Retirement Commissioner Diane Maxwell?Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Yes.Denis O’Rourke: Does the Minister agree with the Retirement Commissioner’s comment that New Zealand should be lifting the bar for immigrants on their entitlement to full New Zealand superannuation and that “uncomfortable difficult things” have to be discussed?Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I am not responsible for policy on New Zealand superannuation. The commissioner has an independent role to comment on all sorts of things. I disagree with some and I agree with others but I retain confidence in her.Denis O’Rourke: Is the Minister concerned that in the last 15 years almost 80000 immigrants over the age of 50 years have been granted permanent residence and that the proportion of older immigrants is steadily increasing each year?Mr SPEAKER: I call the Hon Paul Goldsmith in so far as he has ministerial responsibility.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I suggest he refers that question to the relevant portfolio Minister but I would say that the Retirement Commissioner’s work is very important. Raising the capability of New Zealanders’ financial understanding will make a big difference to this country.Denis O’Rourke: Does the Minister think that the minimum residency requirement of only 10 years for entitlement to full New Zealand superannuation is still appropriate or would he be willing to consider changing it for a fairer and more appropriate alternative?Mr SPEAKER: Again in so far as there is ministerial responsibility the Hon Paul Goldsmith.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I would be happy to send that member a list of ministerial responsibilities. Which letterbox would he like me to send it to?Health Services—Surgical Specialist Assessments10.BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country) to the Minister of Health: Can he confirm that the number of patients benefiting from first surgical assessments has increased from 261226 in 2008-09 to 322196 in 2014-15 and that this is an increase of over 60000 more patients now receiving first surgical assessments each year?Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Yes I can. When National was elected in 2008 increasing the number of surgical specialist assessments every year was a top Government priority. Now new official figures show that a record 322196 New Zealanders received their surgical first specialist assessments in 2014-15. This is a remarkable increase of 60000 or 23 percent on 2007-08. This is in part achieved by the over $500 million a year average increase in the health budget under this Government.Barbara Kuriger: Can the Minister advise whether this positive growth of surgical specialist assessments is across the main specialties and does he expect to continue to deliver further increases in the number of patients receiving these assessments?Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: This growth in surgical specialist assessments has been spread across the specialties including ear nose and throat; ophthalmology; and cardio-thoracic specialist assessments. It also includes an increase in orthopaedic specialist assessments from 43200 in the 2008-09 year to 55526 being assessed in 2014-15. That is 12000 or 28 percent more being done. It is my expectation that district health boards will continue to deliver increases in specialist assessments and that is supported by the extra $92 million the Government has invested for elective surgeries in the Budget.Overseas Investment—Farm and Forestry Land11.STUART NASH (Labour—Napier) to the Minister for Land Information: How many hectares of New Zealand agricultural and forestry land are owned or controlled by foreign interests?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development) on behalf of theMinister for Land Information: It is not possible to give an answer to that for a number of reasons and let me take the House through them. Firstly often overseas owners sell land back to New Zealanders. Consent is not needed to do this and no record is kept. Secondly overseas owners can change their status—for example they can become New Zealand citizens or permanent residents. Thirdly overseas owners sell land to each other. Fourthly the Overseas Investment Office records grants of consent; it does not necessarily mean—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The Minister will resume his seat.Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. If you look at the question it required a simple answer not a long obtuse—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seatimmediately. I will be the adjudicator of how long a question is to be answered for and that will be greatly determined by the measure of interjections that are coming from areas in this House. If there are interjections then a Minister will certainly be given more latitude in responding to those.Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: Order! Would the member please resume his seat. I have ruled on this matter but I just want to give the member a warning that might be of some relevance to him. If he continues to relitigate that point of order that is seriously disorderly and I will deal with it appropriately. If the member wishes to raise a separate point of order I am happy to hear it.Rt Hon Winston Peters: I am not contesting what you have just said. What I want to know is: could I have some prior Speakers’ rulings or Standing Orders that reference the right of a Minister to go on and on on the basis of—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member is in serious risk of being thrown out of the House on a second occasion for exactly the same reason. I have ruled that I will adjudicate the length of the answer and that will be determined by the level of interjection that I perceive to be coming from any area of the House. Would the Minister like to complete his answer.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The fifth reason is that the Overseas Investment Office has records dating back to 1998only as prior to that time consents were granted by the Land Valuation Tribunal which kept no data. So for those five reasons and more it is not possible to provide an answer to the member.Stuart Nash: Does the Minister for Land Information think it is acceptable that she can approve sales of New Zealand’s agricultural and forestry land without ever knowing the total number of hectares of New Zealand productive land that is going into foreign ownership or control?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The point is that we actually test every single transaction. In fact this Government tightened up the Overseas Investment Office consent process by increasing New Zealand participation protecting New Zealand’s economic interests and limiting vertical integration. If the member would like to go over the history of some of these transactions and which Government sold what to whom I am more than happy to indulge him.Mr SPEAKER: No that will not be necessary.Stuart Nash: In light of the answer that the Government tests every sale how many jobs have the 716 overseas investors who promised to create jobs actually created; if the Minister for Land Information does not know why not?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I do not have the total but I can give him an example that I think is an important example because one of the transactions relates to a purchase of Carter Holt Harvey’s forestry assets. This is an important example of—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! If I hear interjections of that level coming from two particular New Zealand First members they will be leaving the House immediately.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: So one example is the Carter Holt Harvey forestry assets which included 3380 hectares of freehold land that was purchased by Oji Paper Co Ltd which the member may be aware is the operator of the Pan Pac Forest Products Ltd mill in Whirinaki. It employs very many New Zealanders and is developing those assets so if he wants to continue down that line of attack—Stuart Nash: Point of order—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! I have a point of order from Stuart Nash and I certainly hope that it is not attempting to relitigate on the length of this answer.Stuart Nash: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Not at all Mr Speaker. It was a very clear question. I had the answer within 2 seconds. Can I please ask—Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is relitigating exactly what I have already handled. The member is very much in danger of having the same treatment as the others. Does he have further supplementary questions?Stuart Nash: Does New Zealand not need a publicly accessible register listing foreign ownership and control of our agricultural and forestry land?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: No I do not believe so. What New Zealand needs is the ability to vet each transaction which this Government does just as other Governments did before it to ensure that there is economic benefit for New Zealand. And the member knows from his own electorate that there are some very good examples of foreign investment in New Zealand and the Pan Pac Forest Products Ltd mill at Whirinaki is exactly one of those examples. It also owns foreign land for forestry purposes.Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] No I think that on this occasion the answer is certainly long enough.Stuart Nash: Will the Minister for Land Information approve the sale to foreign interests of any of Landcorp’s 160000 hectares of farms and forests; if so why?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: She cannot make hypothetical decisions on individual pieces of land but she would probably be more careful than the Labour Government from back in 2004 which sold 170000 hectares of the Kaingaroa Forest to a Harvard pension fund and that particular transaction was authorised by one David Parker.No. 4 to MinisterRt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): I seek leave to table a WorkSafe New Zealand report that shows quite clearly that since the Pike River mine disaster there have been 233 fatalities—Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that particular document. Is there any objection? There is none. It can be tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.No. 2 to MinisterRt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): I seek leave to table an answer to an Official Information Act request setting out that the Government is using the fund that was for only New Zealand asset purchases to buy assets offshore. It is all here.Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am not sure what I am seeking leave to table to be honest.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well I will explain it again.Mr SPEAKER: Please explain it briefly.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Once more very slowly it is an Official Information Act answer demonstrating that the Government—Mr SPEAKER: Order! Can I have it—[Interruption] Order! This is a particular response as a result of an Official Information Act request. Leave is sought. Can I just have the date of the document?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: 11 August.Mr SPEAKER: 11 August I presume of this year.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Take a wild guess. Yes this year Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: Thank you very much. Leave is sought to table that particular document from 11 August 2015. Is there any objection to that document being tabled in this House today? There is none. It can be tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Landcorp—Dairy Conversions12.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) to the Minister for State Owned Enterprises: Is he comfortable with Landcorp’s large-scale dairy conversions in the Waikato?Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister for State Owned Enterprises): In general yes although I would note that Landcorp continues to consider a number of uses for that land including dairy. However fluctuations in international commodity prices are likely to impact on its financial performance like many dairy farmers in New Zealand. Investment in dairy is generally undertaken on the basis of a long-term view on average dairy prices through time. The contractual agreement signed by Landcorp in 2004 means that Landcorp is contractually obliged to undertake land conversion activity on the Wairākei estate until 2049.Catherine Delahunty: In the light of that answer will this Government review the contract between Landcorp and Wairākei Pastoral and tell the public what options there are to stop the conversions which will not only undermine farmers downstream and pollute the environment but also impact on Landcorp’s balance sheet?Hon TODD McCLAY: That is an issue for the Landcorp board. It is the one that entered into that obligation and it is the one that has the obligation through that contract. But I would say to the member that the time for a Government to visit that contract was in 2004 before it was signed. I do understand the Government at the time was consulted and the Ministers gave their assent to that contract that has entered into force and will be in place until 2049.Catherine Delahunty: What will it take for the Government to place a moratorium on Landcorp dairy conversions given the overwhelming evidence they are economically risky and environmentally irresponsible?Hon TODD McCLAY: Again it is not for the Government to make that decision. As Minister I expect Landcorp to meet all of its environmental obligations anywhere it farms in New Zealand including in the Waikato. We expect it to meet the full requirements of the Resource Management Act. This is a discussion I have had with the Landcorp board on a number of occasions. To the best of my knowledge it meets those obligations and requirements.David Seymour: Is it not a conflict of interest for the Government to be both the owner of a dairy-oriented company and the regulator of the environmental impacts of dairying?Hon TODD McCLAY: No it is not although I would say to the member that this is not a dairy company; it is a farming organisation that has diverse farming interests across a spectrum of farming operations within New Zealand. Secondly though when it comes to the operation of Landcorp or any other farming entity in New Zealand the Resource Management Act suggests—or dictates—that it is regional councils that have the competence that he is speaking of.Catherine Delahunty: Is the Government ruling out selling off Landcorp farms to foreign owners rather than keeping this strategically important farmland in New Zealand hands?Hon TODD McCLAY: Landcorp buys and sells farms all of the time—indeed it has almost always done so. The Government expects it to manage its business well. We want to see a reasonable fair return to the taxpayer. We do not want it to have unnecessarily high levels of debt that could put its business into some form of peril. This is again a conversation I have been having for a period of time with the Landcorp board.David Seymour: Are there good reasons for the Government to be in the business of farming and if there are why stop there?Hon TODD McCLAY: There are many reasons why the Government is involved in Landcorp. Some of them are good.Imprest Supply (Second for 2015/16) BillFirst ReadingHon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): I move That the Imprest Supply (Second for 2015/16) Bill be now read a first time.A party vote was called for on the question That the Imprest Supply (Second for 2015/16) Bill be now read a first time.Ayes 63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 58New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12.Bill read a first time.Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) BillThird ReadingImprest Supply DebateHon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): I move That the Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill be now read a third time and the Imprest Supply (Second for 2015/16) Bill be now read a second time. This third reading brings to an end the debate on Budget 2015. I want to take this opportunity to remind the House that the fundamental job of the Budget is to raise taxes and distribute the expenditure—that is it is focused primarily on the business of the Government. I want to acknowledge all those public servants who apply themselves with dedication and professionalism every day. There has been something of a trend in recent years to acknowledge our front-line public servants and also those who work for other organisations funded by the Government and I want to do that today because we rely on their efforts to meet the needs not only of New Zealand’s most vulnerable citizens but also of every New Zealander often in their time of greatest need.I also want to acknowledge the back-office public servants because putting together a better kind of Budget that focuses on having more impact on the lives of New Zealanders is proving to be an intensive exercise—resource intensive intellectually intensive and challenging. Over the last few years many public servants have provided a great deal of professional support for the Government’s objective of doing more for less—that is putting together a Budget that has new spending at levels that are lower even now than at any time since the late 1990s and yet year on year the Government along with the Public Service is producing more services and better services even though the finances have been tight.This Budget which we are debating today is the second one to show some signs of the impact of the Government taking a broader view of how to support individual New Zealanders to succeed. At the heart of this Budget was of course the hardship package—the first increase in benefit levels for families beyond the Consumers Price Index for 43 years. [Interruption] And I am not surprised that Labour did not like it. In fact as I recall the record of this House will show that the Labour Party voted against the first increasein 43 years over and above inflationfor New Zealand’s hardest-up families.Alongside that increase in this Budget we are also starting to see the impact of the Government’s social investment approach. There has been a lot of discussion in the Public Service—less in the public—about what this amounts to but it has got some pretty simple principles and they will certainly be features of the next Budget of the John Key - led National Government. Probably as its first principle it has a focus on the customer. I use that word deliberately because it makes people feel uncomfortable but actually we should treat every single New Zealander who is in need no matter how difficult or challenging their life is as someone who is capable of being hopeful about their future capable of following their own aspirations from wherever they start and capable of exercising preferences about how we offer support to them.I know that it has been profoundly motivating for Ministers public servants and politicians to see some of the analysis that shows what happens for children in New Zealand—the 1 percent of them—who are born into the most vulnerable and challenging households where we know that we will spend up to $1 million in today’s dollars during the lifetime of that child. Of course that leads to the obvious question: what are we doing now spending so much money that is not making much difference? How could we do better to change the pretty predictable life course for that young New Zealander or other groups? There are 50000 New Zealanders who basically have bad backs or mental health problems and whose average length of stay on benefits is 20 years. Can you imagine that: being on New Zealand’s lowest income and having musculoskeletal problems or carrying the burden of mental illness. Historically what we have done is send them to the doctor give them a certificate that says that they cannot do anything and then send them home and that is it.The lazy welfare State—that is what it has done and we do not think that that is good enough. So our Ministers have devised a whole new way of bringing up the information about those 20 years and of giving us the tools to enable us to decide what can be done with a 23-year-old with significant depression—Tim Macindoe: Give them hope.Hon BILL ENGLISH: —give them hope—so that they do not find themselves on an invalid’s benefit until they turn 65 when they go on to New Zealand superannuation because we believe that that is not good enough for those New Zealanders. So that is what we are seeing the first signs of in this Budget and that is what the next Budget will certainly focus on.This is all happening in the context of a softening economy but the good news for those who do depend on the Government Budget for their welfare is this: we have an adaptable resilient economy that will enable the Government to sustain the income support and the programmes that get them through day to day and week to week because in the broader economy New Zealanders are adapting quickly to events like the sharp drop in dairy prices. They are not sitting around like the Opposition with their head in their hands crying “Panic—where’s the Government?”; they are out there on the dairy farms in the mud in the toughest part of the year getting on with changing what they do where they can change it and working out how to get through one or two tough years because they have long-term confidence. That is where Labour members failed the test. At the first sign of a softening in the economy did they show long-term confidence in the New Zealand economy and the New Zealanders who make it work? No they said “Crisis.” they said “Panic.” and they said “Where’s the Government?”. Well no one else in New Zealand is doing that; they are getting on with the job.The Labour Party used to be a sensible middle-of-the-road party as exemplified apparently by Stuart Nash. He is meant to be the sensible centre but he is out there marching against free trade. I never thought that I would see the day when I would see the sensible centre of the Labour Party marching against free trade because if there is one thing that we used to all agree was at the core of New Zealand’s prospects in the world as a small trading economy it was free trade. And now the right wing of the Labour Party is against it. In some respects I should not be surprised. It withdrew from the bipartisan consensus on the Reserve Bank legislation. The Reserve Bank legislation is gone free trade is gone and fiscal discipline will certainly go under Grant Robertson the spokesman for student unions from the 1980s. In case Labour is not aware he is still doing it like he was then. He is still doing it except that students used to be against plagiarism. That was a fundamental principle of university life: do not plagiarise other people’s ideas. Well I just wish that the Labour Party would plagiarise ours because then New Zealanders would think that they could support the Labour Party but instead the Labour Party is getting increasingly dragged to the left opposing free trade opposing the Reserve Bank legislation and oddly enough also opposing increases in benefits for New Zealanders—increases in the benefit level.I have asked the question before and Labour has not answered it: if it opposes increases in benefits what is the Labour Party for? Increasingly what it is for is rent-a-crowd for the Greens.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry to interrupt the member—[Interruption] I am sorry to interrupt the member but his time has expired.ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition): I begin with a very solemn duty to the people of New Zealand and principally to those many people from overseas who may be interested in investing in New Zealand which is to point out that that believe it or not was the nation’s Minister of Finance and that is the best he could do. If there is one thing that has become patently obvious in this Budget which was obsolete on the day it was delivered it is that this Government does not have a plan. It has nothing to say to the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who are doing it tough who have been squeezed and who are looking for a future. Well they will not find it on that side of the House and they will not find it in that person who parades as the Minister of Finance because the Government has no plan. Actually that is not quite correct. We have discovered in today’s question time and in that speech that there is one plan emerging and it is all around tourism.We have not heard about tourism for most of the last 7 years but now a new tourist opportunity has opened up. It is going to involve weekly visits to the Cabinet room and the Government is going to call it “Fantasyland Tours” because that is all it has got left. Government members have lived for the last 7 years with their heads buried firmly in the sand with a rising tide of indebtedness by the Government concern by the people and falling dairy prices and they have nothing to say about any of it. It was a Budget as I said that was obsolete on the day it was delivered.The Government’s sole claim to fame is that on 1 April next year after years of poverty by those who are doing it the toughest those who are dependent on a benefit to get by it is going to increase benefits by $25 a week—well some of them anyway. This follows its great strategic decision in 1991 to slash benefits harshly and it now claims credit for half undoing what it did wrong 20 years ago. That is its plan. That is all it amounts to. There is no morality no principle and no real looking after of those who are doing it the toughest. That is all the Government has to say and do.Just remember what the underpinning of the expectation of this Budget was: that unemployment would fall to 5.6 percent by March. What is happening now? It is rising. Government members said that unemployment would be 5.1 percent by next March. Westpac is now saying it is going to be 6.5 percent. The Budget forecast the milk price to be over $3000 a tonne by now and now it is less than half that. This is the Budget that got it all wrong. This is the Government that is getting it wrong for New Zealanders every day. There is no plan there is no idea and the Government does not know what it is doing. There is spin there is rhetoric there is dissembling and there is obfuscation. That is all it has got left—and Mike Hosking. That is the other part of the plan. It has got him as well. He will look after those members for a while. He will look after them for a while but it will not last. The truth is this: New Zealanders are far too canny for that. They know a dead man walking when they see one. They see it in that Minister of Finance and they see it in this Government.We know that Government members are desperate because all of a sudden 7 years into their Government when they have stood on the sidelines cheering on dairy cheering on wood prices and cheering on the things that they have had absolutely nothing to do with—reducing interest rates a stratospheric exchange rate and high dollar—they have started talking about diversification but they talk about it only when they get the patsy questions in Parliament. They talk about it around here for the first time only because they have not done a thing about it. They have ignored it. They have ignored what has been happening in New Zealand.They have ignored for far too long what has been happening around the world and the impact that those things have been having on the New Zealand economy and now the chickens are coming home to roost. Hard-working New Zealanders are now paying the price. They are losing their jobs. They are losing their jobs in the hundreds and Solid Energy workers are just the latest. Who knows what is going to happen to Landcorp workers when the Government starts flogging off bits of that successful enterprise.The truth is this: when this Government took office it had the strongest balance sheet in the OECD. That is what it had in 2008—zero net debt and the lowest unemployment in the OECD. My how things have changed. It has been a long 7 years—a long 7 years. The Government has not diversified the economy. It promised that it would lift the proportion of the economy given to exports; it has gone down. The Government cannot even get that right. The Government has scrapped research and development tax credits. It introduced unaffordable tax cuts. It has made housing unaffordable for more people and property speculation is now running rampant. This is the legacy of Bill English. This is the legacy of the most ideological Minister of Finance we have had since Ruth Richardson and he was around at that time as well. He obviously learnt a thing or two.The Government ignored the Goldman Sachs reports last year that predicted a dairy glut that would last the next 5 years. Steven Joyce dismissed it because the Government just does not want to face up to the truth and now we have had a collapsing dairy price and nothing else to show for it. Well I can tell you this: what has become very clear in the last few weeks and the last few months is that New Zealanders are sick and tired of the spin and the obfuscation. They are sick and tired of the Government trying to put them off the scent. They do not want a flag referendum. They do not want to spend $26 million on a distraction; they want a Government that is going to deal with the answers to the economy today. They want a Government that is going to stand up for the people who are doing it tough who now include a large number of dairy farmers who traditionally voted for National. They are the ones who are looking for answers. They are the ones who are looking for the leadership that this Government has proven incapable of providing.I want to say this also. I want to tell members what the people of New Zealand are also sick and tired of. They are sick and tired of Government support parties that parade around the country criticising a Government that they are part of telling people that they can do better criticising it for all manner of things moralising proselytising and saying that it would never happen with them but then going ahead and supporting the Government. So the challenge is very clear to the support parties to this Government: stick to your own word. Stick behind your words. Vote against this Budget. Show this Government that you stand for something. Do not say one thing to the people of New Zealand and then come around here and slink around and do a different thing in this House. Think very carefully because New Zealanders are looking for leadership and most important they are looking for honesty. They want an honest picture about where things are at. They want an honest picture about their prospects and their hopes because they are not getting it from here.The country is calling for a different path. People are calling for a different approach and they do not want State houses—which are there for the most vulnerable for those who are doing it the toughest—sold off. They do not want Landcorp sold off. They do not want Crown business after Crown business run into the ground by negligent reckless Ministers who are asleep at the wheel turn up and get the salaries and drive the cars but do nothing for it.New Zealanders are looking for something different. They want a Government that cares about this country and its economic prospects. They want a Government that is thinking about the future the future of work and where those work opportunities are going to come from. They want a Government that is thinking about future investment opportunities. They want a Government that cares about job generation and new investment and investment that generates new wealth. They want a Government that cares about the incomes that New Zealanders are on. They want incomes that mean they can live in dignity and fulfil their dreams and aspirations because for far too many people that is slipping by.There are so many New Zealanders now thousands of them who cannot afford to buy a house in the city in which they live and work—Auckland—and that is a disgrace. What do Government members do? They bury their heads in the sand: “Not our problem; we do not have an answer.” Actually what they are saying is that they just do not care. New Zealanders are sick and tired of being treated by this Government as though they do not matter. New Zealand needs a better job. It needs a better Government and it is on its way.DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Better government is here and it will not be coming from that man Andrew Little who is the only dead man walking in this House. The best part of his speech was when he mentioned Mike Hosking. It was the only time that his members actually supported him during his speech. What a pathetic speech by someone who is attempting to lead what was but is no longer the biggest Opposition party in this House because the Labour Party does not stand for what the Labour Party should stand for. It does not stand for those things that the member tried to talk about at the end of his speech. What the Labour Party stands for is division. It is a party of division that wants to pit New Zealanders against each other. It is a party that does not want to see people who do not have English surnamescoming to this country. It is a party that does not believe in a free and open New Zealand that can go forward and take its rightful place in the Asia-Pacific region. It is a party of Opposition that has no plan.That member’s whole speech was about the plan of the National Government and we will come to that in this Budget debate.Hon Annette King: What plan?DAVID BENNETT: OK we will come to that Annette King. The party opposite gave no plan. It had no plan and it had no direction but I will tell you what the plan of the Labour Party is. The plan of the Labour Party is to put taxes up. It wants to put taxes up for hard-working New Zealanders. So for those young children out there who are going to school in New Zealand there is no incentive to get a better educationunder the Labour Party. There is no incentive to go out there and get a good degree at a university. There is no incentive to become the best you can be in your work. There is no incentive to start your own business. There is no incentive to go out there and make something of your own life because under the Labour Party everybody will be taxed at the highest levels. That is what the Labour Party stands for. It is a redistribution party. It is not an aspirational party. It is not a party that actually backs people and New Zealanders. It is a party of pain and it is a party of failure and the public knows that and understands that.When we look at the plan for New Zealand I want to take you to Hamilton and show you the plan that is working in that great city. That great city which is a young city with one of the youngest populations in New Zealand—40 percent of the population is under 25. Those people see a vision for New Zealand. They see a country that is moving ahead. They see electoral responsibility. They see a Government that has delivered for them the greatest infrastructure investment in the Waikato for two generations. They see for the first time that roads that were promised for many generations have actually been built. They see new schools going up in their electorate. They see a hospital that is being redeveloped. They see that there are opportunities in work and employment in that city. They see a plan that is working so that every young child in Hamilton now knows that if they go to school they are going to get the best education we can deliver. They know that they are going to get the opportunity to go on to tertiary education. They know that through tertiary education at our fine university the University of Waikato they can come out as a graduate and get a job in an area that will be part of the progressive economy of New Zealand. And that is what this Budget delivers. Then they know that they can actually build their own businesses their own jobs and their own communities around that hard work. That is what we are doing in this Government.We are supporting the vision and the intellect of our people. We are supporting the ability of New Zealanders to make the right choices and to deliver the right results. We are not a party of division like you see on the other side of the House where the Labour Party does not know what it stands for and is trying to be everything to everybody but is being nothing to anybody in the process. We see a Green Party that is the far left of communism in the modern society and the Labour Party is trying to be part of that as well. We see a New Zealand First Party that is against immigration of any sort and its nationalist approach to this country would be to the detriment of this country going forward. The Labour Party has grasped on to both of those things. It has taken the far-left agenda that the Green Party is talking about and has taken the anti-immigration approach of New Zealand First. That is the Labour Party of new. The Labour Party of old would never have protested about free-trade agreements as Bill English just said. The Labour Party of old would have been standing up for international arrangements because it knew that those are the things that are in the best interests of all New Zealanders going forward. The Labour Party of old would not have voted against the welfare reform that was in this Budget—the first time in 43 years that a Government has delivered through that part of the system for those people most in need. And the Labour Party had to vote against it. That is a shame on the Labour Party and that is not the case of the real and true vision that that party should be engaging in.I say to you members of this House: look at those hard-working students out there. Look at those people who want to have a future in this country. Look at those people who want to make New Zealand their home and let us welcome them. Let us put the mat out. Let us say: “If you want to make New Zealand your home we will enable you to do that. If you want to stay in New Zealand we will make that happen for you and if you want to build a more prosperous and dynamic country we have got a plan. We have got a plan that is working. Come to Hamilton and you will see that plan and you will see that it is working.” The Labour Party members over there know it and they will not come to Hamilton because they know it is working and that there is no chance for them there at this stage.Hon Annette King: Some of us were there long before you were.DAVID BENNETT: Oh “Some of us were there long before you were.” Oh Annette King—well she did nothing for Hamilton. She never has and never will so good on you. A long time and no achievement—that is Annette King for you. We all know about Annette King do we not?When we look at those initiatives in the Budget—a $790 million package to reduce hardship amongst children.Hon Trevor Mallard: Did you take your drill to him Annette?DAVID BENNETT: Oh there is another member over there who at one stage thought that he came from Hamilton. He lasted one term I think and got chucked out. He was a great help to Hamilton was he not? Then he left. He left—he left when got he voted out. He could not handle it. He did not actually believe in the city. He came down to Wellington to try to get a safe seat. That is what happened to Trevor Mallard. When it got tough for him he left Hamilton behind. He did not think about the people of Hamilton. I imagine that in 1970 he was going around the streets of Hamilton West saying: “Oh I’m going to do everything for you. I’ll be there representing you. Vote for me. I’m Trevor Mallard. I’m the bright new face of the Labour Party. I’ll be there.” As soon as he lost he was out of there. He was gone. He came down to Wainuiōmata did he not? Yes. What did you do for Hamilton Trevor Mallard? Nothing. He probably closed a few schools while he was the Minister. That is about all he would have done. [Interruption] Yes I want to hear from you again Trevor. That would be great to see.There is a $790 million package in this Budget to reduce hardship among children living in New Zealand’s poorest families. That is a big attempt in very difficult times to do something for the next generation of New Zealanders. It is about finding out the people who need the Government’s assistance and delivering it to them. That is what this Government is about. We have got a plan. We are looking at what is actually needed for our country and our people and we are then delivering that kind of careful management of public spending which goes hand in hand with investment in public services and support for the country’s most vulnerable. That is the difference between this side and the Opposition. This is a Budget that has delivered in difficult times. There is no other way that you can look at it. These are very delicate economic times around the world and we have—Hon Damien O’Connor: Rock star economy we were told.DAVID BENNETT: Pardon? What does this member—Hon Damien O’Connor: Rock star economy—rock bottom.DAVID BENNETT: Mr O’Connor tries to talk about the dairy industry but he has not milked a cow a day in his life. He would not know what a cow was.When we look at this the world economic situation is a delicate situation. We cannot go out there and make wild promises as the Labour Party would like to do. We have got to be reasonable and rational and do what is right and that is what this Budget does. It actually enables New Zealanders to have some comfort that this Government is looking after those who are most in need. It is a pleasure to be part of the National Government that has delivered this Budget a Budget that is fair and that is open. I see that the New Zealand First leader has walked into the room and I guess we will hear all through his speech about his anti-immigration anti-people coming into this country approach. That is the typical approach that we would get from that member. It is about all he is worth. Half of his caucus came in on the ticket and I would like to see how they all react now.We know what the Opposition is going to say. We are going to have the far left saying that we should go back to the Stone Age; we are going to have New Zealand First not wanting anybody in New Zealand apart from those who were here in 1950; and we are going to have the Labour Party which does not really know and which just wants to be in between the two of them. That is the Opposition whereas on this side we have got a plan—a plan that is working a plan that has delivered and if you want to go and see where it is working come to Hamilton any day.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): For those who did not know the previous speaker David Bennett is actually the chair of Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee—a frightening thought. He said that there are things that are working in Hamilton. Well I can tell you this: the statue of Riff Raff which stands in the main street of Hamilton is working harder for Hamilton than the member for Hamilton West is.Tim Macindoe: I take great exception to that Grant.GRANT ROBERTSON: Sorry—that is not true; Hamilton East. I apologise to Mr Macindoe. The member for Hamilton East stands up to take a call in the Budget debate to tell New Zealanders what great plans the National Government has for the New Zealand economy and how it will lift New Zealand out of an economic downturn. But instead we have a speech from the member for Hamilton East about the fact that he cannot understand the policies of other parties and that he is unable to articulate what this Budget will do to drive New Zealand’s economy forward. That unfortunately is the story of this Budget.It is very important when we look at the Budget to take a look at the downside scenarios. These are the things that Treasury and the Minister of Finance tell New Zealanders are unlikely to happen—the worst possible outcome of this Budget. If we look at those downside scenarios we see GDP of 3.3 percent in 2015 and 2.4 percent in 2016. Already the Government has had to admit that the worst possible outcome of this Budget is not even going to be the best possible outcome actually. The Government’s forecast is telling it that it will scrape towards 2 percent growth in 2015 and 2016. Westpac economist Dominick Stephens has said that it will not even get up to 2 percent in that 2016 year. So the worst-case scenario in the Budget is the very one that is now playing out and the reaction of the Government and of Bill English is to sit on their hands and to say: “It’s all fine. Watch out for those automatic stabilisers; they’ll sort everything out.” Well the reality is that they are not sorting everything out. Indicator after indicator in our economy is showing that this Budget is a failure. It is big on politics and big on spin but very very small on the policies that will actually grow the New Zealand economy.We look again at the downside scenario of the Budget. Unemployment is forecast to go down to 5.6 percent in 2015 and to 5.1 percent in 2016. The latest household labour force survey says that we are up to 5.9 percent—146000 New Zealanders are out of work. Eleven thousand more New Zealanders are out of work at this time this year than there were at the same time last year. Then there is the forecast of 5.1 percent in 2016. Again commentators right across the spectrum are forecasting unemployment to keep rising. The Westpac survey last week said that the unemployment rate will be 6.5 percent. That is worse than the worst-case scenario in this Budget. So for speakers on the National Government side of the House to stand up and proclaim that this Budget is somehow going to lead New Zealand into a strong economic future simply is not backed up by the facts. They are now going to have to look at all of those forecast scenarios and bring in the downside scenario. That is the story of this Government. That is the story of this Budget.We were told by the Prime Minister that we were on the cusp of something special and that we were on the cusp of an economy that was going to deliver for New Zealanders. The reality is that that has not happened. There are three legs to the stool of this National Government’s economic approach. The first of those legs has already been kicked out—that was the dairy boom. Make no mistake; the National Government was fully prepared to take credit when dairy prices went up. Day after day Bill English would come into this House and tell us how well the economy was doing when farmers were getting payouts at the $8.40 level. But now when those payouts are forecast to go down to $3.85 it is everybody else’s faultall of a sudden. All of a sudden it is nothing that the Government could have foreseen. Well that is simply untrue. A Goldman Sachs report that came out in June last year warned of a 5-year global dairy glut. When that was raised with Steven Joyce he laughed. He laughed at the prospect that the one thing that was truly propping up the New Zealand economy was on its way down. And now when the chickens have come home to roost—or the cows have come back into the yard—Steven Joyce has no plan B.That key leg of the economic stool is gone and all the talk is about the fact that suddenly we have found a tourism industry. Suddenly the wine industry and information and communications technology are the answer. Put together all of those things will not match what is being lost in terms of dairy. And that is because after 7 years the word “diversification” has finally left Bill English’s lips. Finally he is saying that that is what the economy should be about and it has not happened. That is why not only the Opposition parties but also groups like Federated Farmers and 75 percent of the chief executive officers in the Mood of the Boardroom survey are calling for a plan B for the economy. They are saying that plan A is not working and are asking where plan B is and we see none of that from the Government.That is because the other two legs of the stool still make Government members believe that there is something happening in the economy. There is the Canterbury rebuild. What is now quite clear about the Canterbury rebuild is that it will stop adding to the growth story this year if it has not already. It does not mean that there are not projects happening in Canterbury. What it means is that new activity is not going to be coming on stream and economists are now telling us that by the end of 2017 the Canterbury rebuild will actually be a drag on the New Zealand economy because we have not seen from this Government a proper plan for economic development in Canterbury. The rebuild is not a plan; it is coming to an end and there is no sign from this Government that it has got any replacement for it. The Canterbury rebuild has been responsible for about one-third of the growth rate in the past few years and it has gone—and so has the second leg of the stool.The third leg of the stool of the National Government’s approach to the economy is the one that is remaining and that is the Auckland housing bubble. In this Budget we looked for the answers from the Government—that it could respond to the huge supply and demand problem in Auckland housing—and the answers were not there. What we got were half-baked ideas from Nick Smith to build on power stations and in cemeteries but we saw nothing real in terms of getting the supply of housing that Aucklanders need or dealing with the 20000 house deficit that Auckland already has—plus the 10000 a year that it needs to build. There is no sign of that.The Government could have picked up some ideas from Labour. Government members have talked about plagiarism a lot on that side of the House today. Well they have plagiarised Labour’s ideas for years: Working for Families interest-free student loans and early childhood education and we had the immigration policy just the other day. Well I invite them to plagiarise the KiwiBuild policy because that would actually get some housebuilding going that would actually stimulate the economy and that would actually start to deal with the Auckland housing crisis. But instead Nick Smith is keeping his head in the sand.On the demand side is the Government’s great idea of having a register of foreign buyers—except that it is not really a register—and when we come to debate that bill in the House we will see all of the holes in it. There is no real plan to crack down on the speculators who are driving up Auckland housing prices and that bubble will burst at some point. It will happen and that is the final leg of the stool in terms of the National Government’s approach to the economy. So this Budget is not about a plan for New Zealand’s future. It is not about making sure that we build the skills that we need that we get the technology that we need and that we have the infrastructure that we need. It is a piece of political spin and of clever politics to be able to stand up here and say “We’ve increased benefits for the first time in 43 years.” even though that is not true and despite the fact that those on the lowest incomes in New Zealand benefited from Working for Families—that was a significant increase denied. But that is what this Budget is about. It is about spin.New Zealanders deserve better than this. New Zealanders deserve a Government that will not sit on its hands that will not sit on the sidelines and that will actually work as a partner. This is starting to happen in the regions. Every time Labour MPs go out into the regions now what we hear is: “We don’t want you to come and tell us what to do. We want to work with central government local government and businesses in the regions to grow the jobs that New Zealanders want and to grow the jobs that will deliver sustainable wages to New Zealanders.” And that plea falls on deaf ears on that side of the House. All of the mayors and all of the business leaders in the regions—their message is consistent: they want the Government to be a partner. They do not have that from the National Government; they will have that from the Labour Government.We need a Budget that has a plan to diversify the economy to grow the regions to build housing to build skills and to prepare New Zealanders for the future of work. None of those things are in this Budget. This is a wasted opportunity from a Government that is out of ideas.JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I rise to speak on the third and final reading of the Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill the final reading in the Budget debate.The Budget is all about priorities. It tells us what the Government really values and what it thinks is important. The Green Party believes that this Budget is very much one of missed opportunity. It is the National Government’s seventh Budget and it demonstrates that what it really values is protecting the status quo.There are three big economic challenges that are facing us in the long term and they are what the Green Party wants to prioritise: climate change growing inequality—that is the gap between those who have and those who do not—and rebalancing the economy so that New Zealand is actually earning its way in the world. I know that New Zealanders care about all of these and in particular in climate change they are already taking actions in their own lives but unfortunately the Government is failing to make it easier for them to make the changes that need to be made for us to respond to climate change in the long term.I know that New Zealanders want to live in a country that is fair where everyone has the same opportunities and where we do not have a growing number of children growing up in poverty which means that they have fewer opportunities. They end up costing us more in the long run because they are not able to fully participate in society and we have higher health costs and higher costs in terms in crime. So there are many many reasons to address inequality. I know that New Zealanders value living in a fair country and unfortunately our country is becoming less fair.Finally rebalancing the economy is something that the National Government has already promised to do. Bill English used to talk about it when National was first elected. It has completely failed to do that. Not only has the share of the economy that is exports failed to increase; it has actually fallen. We have seen the largest gap ever between growth in the non-tradable sector versus growth in the tradable sector—it is the largest gap since 2000. The current account deficit is still at over $8 billion and is forecast to increase in the coming years.These are all things that I know New Zealanders care about—and the Green Party has a clear plan and a set of solutions that would address all of these issues—but the National Government has failed to address these issues. I realise that all three of these challenges were problems when National was elected. We had growing carbon pollution emissions back in 2008 we have had a huge growth in inequality in the past few decades and of course we had an even larger current account deficit when National was elected. But what it has failed to do is make progress on any of these issues and that is because ultimately it is a Government that is very much focused on protecting and preserving the status quo not one that is actually going to respond to the challenges and create a cleaner greener fairer New Zealand in the long term. It is a very short-term focus.What are the Green Party’s solutions which were not included in this Budget? Firstly to deal with climate change we have a really clear set of solutions because we know that we cannot continue to grow our carbon pollution for ever we are not going to be able to have an economy that thrives in the long term if we do not respond to climate change and most of all I know that New Zealanders care about their children and their grandchildren. They want them to live in a world with a stable climate one where our economy can actually thrive even when we have a carbon-constrained world. In the talks in Paris that are coming up at the end of this year unfortunately New Zealanders are not going to have a target that we can be proud of but most of all we do not have a plan in this Budget for how we would actually reduce emissions.So how could we reduce emissions? Transport spending is a first and obvious one. Without increasing the amount we are spending on transport and simply by redirecting it to the most productive efficient projects we can massively reduce our carbon emissions for transport. We could also reduce the cost to households and businesses of getting around the country. We could also reduce our current account deficit because at the moment we are spending over $13 billion on importing vehicles and the oil to run them. If we had a more balanced transport system in our major towns and cities and between our cities and if we actually invested in the smart rail projects and busway projects—safe walking and cycling. I know that finally the Government is doing a little bit on cycling but if we actually invested in those smart projects we would save households and businesses money we would save the Government money we would reduce carbon pollution and we would reduce the amount that we need to sell overseas in order to pay for getting around. It just makes sense. It is a smart Green solution.In energy we could have and should have a target of 100 percent renewable electricity generation in this country. It is entirely achievable and we showed a fully costed plan in the run-up to the election last year as to how we could do that. Very small investments by the Government in electric car charging infrastructure for example could help to facilitate the switch to electric vehicles where appropriate. Our climate tax cut was the first change in tax structure that would start to put a price on pollution and return the revenue of that to households and businesses in the form of a tax cut. It makes sense to tax pollution so that we get less of it and we can return that revenue to households so that they actually get a tax cut. It is just common-sense stuff that this Government could be doing and yet it is failing to do it.The next big challenge—also related and the solutions are related—that the Green Party has proposed specific solutions to is inequality. We found out last week that 45000 more children are living in poverty. That is an economic and moral failure on the part of this country and there are some simple practical solutions we could take that would help to reduce the gap in inequality. One of those is dealing with the housing problem in Auckland by putting in place a capital gains tax. We would start to address the imbalance. Right now there is a loophole and we want to close the tax loophole on housing so that we get investment in the productive sectors of the economy rather than just in housing but that would also help to achieve more affordable housing.That is not the silver bullet. There are a lot of other things that we have to do. Introducing protection for tenants and renters is something that we are very far behind on in this country and it makes sense to look after tenants. That also helps address the housing affordability issue from the perspective of both the renters and those who are looking to buy and it ensures that people have access to warm dry secure housing which surely is a human right and is one that makes economic sense.We also proposed our school hubs plan which looked at ensuring there was a nurse in decile 1 schools and low-decile schools would all get a coordinator to ensure that kids are receiving the social assistance they have a right to receive. It would put kids at the heart of not only our education policy but also our social policy in creating a hub which has been demonstrated overseas to work really well. It does not cost a lot of money and it has huge social benefits. Ensuring that children in low-decile schools have enough to eat and that they are not going hungry—not only do we want breakfasts in low-decile schools but hot lunches. It makes sense because kids will learn better when they have access to food and really it is something that all of our children should have a right to. Additional things to deal with inequality would include raising the minimum wage. We would start subsidising low-wage employers and would extend the in-work tax credit to beneficiaries because every kid deserves to have that right whether their parents are in work or not in work.By addressing the housing issue and by looking at the form of urban development in the cities that have the most growth going on which are Christchurch and Auckland we could kill—well not kill; we could address multiple challenges with a few win-win solutions. We could reduce pollution and reduce emissions and we can reduce inequality through some of these practical proven policies that are being implemented in successful economies overseas. We would be looking after our people and looking after our environment but most of all it just makes economic sense.All of the policies that I have just cited do go quite a long way to helping with the rebalancing of the economy so that we are not so overly invested in just a few simple commodities and that ultimately we are not on this rollercoaster as we are right now with the slump in dairy prices. Having a more diverse economy—additional policies that help with that are investment in research and development as we are very very under-invested in this country in research and development and putting a price on pollution as part of taking that first step toward ensuring that we have a balanced cleaner greener future that polluters are paying the cost of the pollution they are putting out there and that households and businesses are better off and have more opportunities to thrive in the long term.The Green Party has a very practical costed vision and we are giving voice to those New Zealanders who are already making changes in their own lives to deal with the long-term challenges that the National Government is absolutely failing to deal with. We want to see action on climate change we want a fairer New Zealand with reduced inequality and ultimately if we address those issues we are going to have an economy that is thriving globally. Thank you.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): The National Government’s claim for some time has been that it is a wise economic manager.Alastair Scott: That’s right—that’s right.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh “That’s right.”? I know that is right. We do not get up and say things that are false. Those members have claimed that they are wise economic managers that they know what they are doing and above all that they can be trusted. Now all their windy rhetoric has blown away we have found out about this rock star economy they campaigned on in 2014. They went up and down the country talking about a rock star economy and others in the political hemisphere namely New Zealand First said: “This is no rock star economy. This economy is heading on to the rocks.”We had the courage of our convictions to go down and tell Federated Farmers before the last election precisely what was going to happen. Their leadership sat there and against the mass interests of their membership decided to ignore us. So may I ask my friends in the National Party: who was right then and who is right now? That party is New Zealand First. We are not late on to the scene and we know a darned sight more about the fundamentals of this economy than any of that bunch of newcomers over there being misled by their leadership.The member for Invercargill the centre of a farming electorate part of a province that is the biggest exporter per capita in the country smiles and laughs at the demise of so many people in that part of the world. All those farmers who have engaged in the dairy conversions are now in deep and big trouble. They were in big trouble in that electorate in the first place but now they are in deeper trouble. It is no laughing matter for those members around the country—Palmerston North Taranaki Whanganui and the Wairarapa—who all swore: “Put me in Parliament and I’ll be your voice.” Oh really—their voice? We have not heard a mutter nor a syllable nor a sound or a murmur from these people about provincial and rural New Zealand.When its windy rhetoric is blown away you will see a Government of spin and drift. Now more and more National Party people—and they are becoming legion—realise that John Key is no economic genius. Oh no! They realise that the best training to run an agrarian developed export-dependent economy is not the Wall Street Journal or Merrill Lynch and it is not speculating against your own country’s economy and calling yourself some sort of banking genius—no sirree. More and more people out on the farm because they are hard up against it are realising that a party with a name called New Zealand First has got it right.Look manufacturing the critical thing for employment is down against GDP from 33 to 26 percent and all they do over there is laugh and scoff. I mean these are jobs this is employment this is how local regions build up—how towns and cities in the countryside and the rural and provincial New Zealand areas have a chance of surviving.Take for example exports as a percentage of GDP. Is it up?Hon Members: No.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No sirree it is down. And then you have debt. Well is it down? No it is up eight times from what John Key and that fiscal genius from Dipton inherited. When he came here it was $10 billion; now it is heading towards $80 billion and if any other party in this Parliament ever tried that they would be jeered and scoffed at.So New Zealand First’s message to the so-called power elite of this country those who have got wealthier and wealthier while the mass majority have got poorer is that you are not going to get away with this con anymore. We are going to expose you for what you are.Is homelessness down or up?Ron Mark: It’s gone up.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: It has gone up. Worse than that you have middle-class people who cannot buy a home. They have got the background the training and the employment they have worked for decades and they cannot buy a home.Unemployment—Mr Key in the House today got up and he said: “We employ more people now than we ever have.” What a genius—what a genius! Since 1938 every Government has been able to make that claim. Here is the worst thing: our population is massively growing not from natural growth of our population—no—but from mass immigration. Unemployment is going up and do not forget that the National Government has the most nakedly hypocritical measurement. One hour of work a week takes you off the unemployment register—just 1 hour a week. There is not one person over there who could survive on that.Those members are so heartless and they have so forgotten the principles of that once-great party National when the word was spelt with a capital “N” and not the small “n” as it is now that they think this is OK. They know that the day will come that New Zealanders discover in enough numbers the truth of the way they have mishandled the economy then they will all be gone—like lightning—in Whangarei and the Manawatū.Ron Mark: And the Wairarapa.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: And the Wairarapa.They have already gone in Northland of course. They went down in a screaming heap in Northland and do you know why? We went up and told them the truth and people said: “Well I thought there was something wrong but now I know—we’ve got an authority. Now we’ve got an authority who’s saying it.”Tim Macindoe: The vanity the conceit—unbelievable.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No it is not vanity. Vanity is the member from Hamilton West sitting there and shouting out when he cannot point to one thing he has done since he has been in Parliament. Just name one thing.Tim Macindoe: Oh I can tell you plenty.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Look I will give you half a minute. I will come back in half a minute’s time. Please find in half a minute’s time just one thing that member has done—Tim Macindoe: Mr Deputy Speaker I am happy to take the call.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: He clearly has not studied points of order either.Tim Macindoe: I’m happy to take the call. Am I being given the call?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No he has not been given the call.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: You have not been called for anything. The Rt Hon Winston Peters has got the call.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No sit down sunshine. Sit down—there is a good chap.Tim Macindoe: The member said he’d give me half a minute and I was happy to take longer.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Sit down.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Here is this former teacher. He is now a whip and he does not even know how the timing system works for parliamentary speeches. He gets up and asks Mr Deputy Speaker who seriously understands the law here this innocent question.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Please do not bring me into this.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: But then again I suppose he got his job as the National Party’s whipin a raffle—1 hour a week.Ron Mark: 1 hour a week.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: 1 hour a week—exactly. Is unemployment down? No it is up and 1 hour a week gets you off the register. So our true unemployment if you look at the people who want more work who want more than 10 hours 15 hours or 20 hours a week to try to help their family to survive—that is all increasing.That does not stop the National Government. If it does not turn off the immigration tap it can carry on with this consumptive economy but we all know it is a bubble and it is going to blow and it is going to blow in the Auckland housing market. Why when you are confronted with such a housing crisis in Auckland would you not stop artificial demand? The reason is that National’s shallow venal egregious policy is all based on consumption. It is not based on exporting. It is not based on manufacturing.Ron Mark: Donations.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh yeah and massive donations from foreigners.Ron Mark: Oravida.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Yeah Oravida—massive donations from foreigners hundreds of thousands of dollars. National members go into a campaign dripping with money promising the ordinary people they will look after them and they do not give a damn. Rock star economy? No just a lousy one-night stand. A lousy one-night stand. More and more New Zealanders are coming to understand that.Let me just tell you this: a former US President George W Bush said this about this sort of economics. He called it voodoo economics—voodoo economics—and voodoo it is. What have those members done since they have come into power? They cannot talk about anything they have done other than bail out their mates in South Canterbury Finance and they were so duplicitous about that. They never capped the underwriting—it blew out by $800 million.The member for Hamilton West is shouting out there. He is typically making a fool of himself. You know what the English say of course. The English say: “The malady of the ignorant is to be ignorant without knowing it.” He is a prize example. No wonder after all this time on the backbench no one is going to promote him to the most junior job as a junior Minister. He should be in Cabinet. If he were any good he would have been in Cabinet a long time ago. I want to say to that member that if he is not making any progress he should not blame his colleagues. Look in the mirror. Walking incompetence does not cut it. Walking incompetence does not cut it and shouting out unrestrained unrefined without any class is not what the National Party used to do.Now I come back to my point. Which party said that our dollar was massively overvalued? Only one party said that. Which party said that we are not going to allow our land to be sold to foreigners? And we want a land register and a home register so we will know what we are talking about and not get up like Steven Joyce today. He gets up and he—[Interruption] What is the problem?Tim Macindoe: Your time has expired.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): About 3 seconds ago.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I did not get a bell.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I heard the bell Mr Peters because I was out there at the time.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well everybody is having so much fun we forgot. But I want to close by saying this: this Government should stop trying to pass the buck and for the first time for a long time own up to just how incompetent it is.MELISSA LEE (National): Just commenting on the member Winston Peters who has just resumed his seat I think some of the words that he used quite often were words like “hypocrite” and “duplicitous”. I am just—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I did not hear a member use those words. At least one of them if referring to a member of Parliament is out of order. The member is not allowed to repeat them. Either she has to take a point of order at the time or she has got to let it go. She cannot repeat them.MELISSA LEE: Thank you for that Mr Assistant Speaker. I just wanted to remind the House that Winston Peters is the member who used to be the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He actually went overseas under the Labour Government touting foreign investment—actually selling New Zealand goods overseas. I have to give him one thing though. He is consistent—he is just anti-everyone. On that note and just commenting about that member who has just sat down I am reminded of a lesson that my mother taught me a long long time ago. It is a proverb in Korean that says “Bin KKangtong E Si kkeu reop da” and I think there is actually an English version which says “An empty vessel makes the most noise”.I am happy to rise in support of and to praise the excellent excellent work of the Minister of Finance the Hon Bill English. The Budget he presented this year will give relief and support to thousands of Kiwi-owned businesses and workers right around New Zealand. It is a great pleasure to speak in support of this aspiration and the needs of New Zealanders.It was a pleasure also to work with the Minister caucus colleagues and my fellow committee members on the Commerce Committee which is a fabulous committee. I do not know whether you have actually noticed but we work together very well. We even bring baking to our select committee. It is a very work-conducive and very happy—Scott Simpson: Collegial.MELISSA LEE: Collegial—that is right Mr Simpson. It is a collegial committee. We work very well together. We worked very hard to pass the estimates vote for the issues that my select committee had oversight of. In the Commerce Committee we discussed a wide range of important areas that were being funded through the estimates legislation which I am sure all members of this House have taken time to read. The appropriation for 2015-16 will give strong backing to the ongoing work of our John Key - led National Government.The estimates for Vote Commerce are impressive. They see $153 million going into the commerce and consumer affairs sector to support enterprise small business and investment.There will be $250 million for communication innovations in the mobile and broadband sectors and that is very very important because most of us tend to use our phones not just for telephone calls but also for broadband for the internet for social media and also for watching television or YouTube and lots of other entertainment as well as using them for information gathering.There will be $456 million for economic development. Economic development is the keystone issue for our party.Also there is $139 million for the tourism sector. Hot off the press I saw in the press release from the Hon Paula Bennett that 1.4 million visitors—these are overseas visitors—have visited the Otago region. I am sure my colleague Jacqui Dean will be very happy about this.Hon Member: How many?MELISSA LEE: 1.4 million international visitors just to the Otago region and that means they have spent $1.3 billion—not million mind you but billion. That is an increase in economic growth in the Otago region of 6.3 percent. That is well above other areas. I think that has to be growth. Someone commented earlier about a rock star economy. Well I am very jealous that Otago has a rock star economy. Well done you Jacqui Dean.The appropriations are sound and reasonable and are putting more workers in the workplace and businesses into profitable gain. This Government has worked well to support families who are working hard and to support businesses that are working hard and importantly they in turn support the Government to work hard. It is almost a full circle.I know that Julie Anne Genter talked earlier about the vulnerable people in this country. I think that all of us right across this House want to make sure that we provide for the people who are vulnerable.I am reminded of a comment that the Prime Minister made. He said that to grow our economy we are never ever going to get rich by selling to ourselves. We have to actually go out there and sell New Zealand produce New Zealand products and New Zealand technology to the rest of the world. We have to bring in foreign currency in order to actually grow the economy.Tim Macindoe: That’s why the South Korean deal was such a good one.MELISSA LEE: The free-trade agreement with South Korea is a fantastic one Mr Macindoe—thank you very much for that—and I am just surprised that we actually had a bipartisan agreement across the House where Labour was supportive of our free-trade agreement.I know that Mr Phil Goff has worked very hard to promote that. I see him at ethnic events promoting the fact that Labour actually supports ethnic communities. But I am very surprised that Labour actually supports members within its own caucus who promote Sino-phobia almost. National was the first party in New Zealand to elect a Chinese member of Parliament back in 1996. Opposition members seem somehow to make “ethnic” and “Kiwi” mutually exclusive so that they do not actually go together. It is sort of like water and oil. It is as though ethnic New Zealanders do not actually belong in this country. Whenever those members talk about these things it seems to bring out that racism actually exists in New Zealand and it brings it to the fore.Recently we talked about the fact that the biggest investor in New Zealand came from Canada but nobody on that side of the House is actually talking about banning Canadian-sounding names. It is easier to just say: “Let’s just ban people with Chinese-sounding names from investing in New Zealand.” It is very irresponsible of those members to say these things and I fret for the children who are growing up in this country who see that we as role models in this House of Representatives are acting in this way—that we are being exclusionary.People who look like me and maybe sound like me—maybe that is not an excuse—[Interruption] Ha ha! Although I am not Chinese often when I walk down the street people assume that I am Chinese and they make racist comments like: “Gosh you speak good English for a Chinese person.” I mean that is racist. That is unacceptable in this day and age in this country in which we celebrate multiculturalism. We celebrate the diversity that we have in this country and it is unacceptable that members of Parliament would actually act in that way.We are doing a fantastic job as a Government. I look back to when Labour left the Treasury benches in 2008 and I remember having to pay double figures in interest rates for my mortgage. You know for most New Zealand households the biggest outgoing is their mortgage repayments. Just on that note our mortgage interest rates are now almost half—or I think it is bigger than half is it not? We have actually had a major cut in interest rates and what that really means is that every household that pays a mortgage is now paying half what it used to pay back in 2008. That is a gain.This National-led Government is making sure that we actually are trading with our neighbours we are not being racist we are actually open to the world and we are welcoming trade from overseas. We are welcoming investment from overseas. We are welcoming the growth of this nation and this economy for the benefit of all New Zealanders because having a better-performing economy means having better-performing families. It means healthier and more wealthy families and that is the outcome that this Government is working towards. I think we should definitely congratulate the Minister of Finance on providing that and on the leadership that he has actually shown on that.As a National member of Parliament it is always a privilege to represent New Zealanders from all walks of life and to be able to speak to the advancement of our economy and social interests. I will always be grateful for that opportunity as I believe that it is actually for the greater New Zealand good. I commend it.JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany): I was waiting for someone from the Labour Party to stand up but they appear to be asleep today.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): The member will resume his seat. The member knows that there was confusion earlier when other members did not take their call. If the member wants to go right through that in the House we will but I think he is aware that it is his call. He was relatively slow to get up and call but I gave it to him notwithstanding a call from my left. He will now leave it.JAMI-LEE ROSS: I am looking forward to speaking on this Budget because this is another Budget that has been led and delivered by Bill English the Minister of Finance in this country who is highlighted around the world as the Minister of Finance who is leading this nation through some difficult times but is leading it exceptionally well.We have a Budget that again delivers greater growth for New Zealanders. We have a Budget that again delivers more jobs for New Zealanders. We have a Budget that again delivers relatively low interest rates for New Zealanders compared with where they have been in previous years. And we have a Budget that again delivers greater prosperity for New Zealanders. This side of the House is incredibly proud to be supporting this Budget; we just wish that the Opposition would see the good news and come across and support it as well.The Minister of Finance highlighted during his speech in this debate the incredibly important Budget package that has been put together for families. At the end of the day everything that we do in this House—everything that Governments do—is about supporting New Zealanders. The thing that New Zealanders expect most from Governments is support for those who are in need and support for those who are experiencing hardship. For the first time in decades a Government is putting more money into and extending benefits for New Zealanders and it is a shame that other members on the other side of the House are not willing to support more money in the pockets of hard-working New Zealanders who need the assistance most.Those families—the 160000 families—will now have $25 a week more in their pockets. I say to them that they should be thankful that there is support out there and they should ask themselves as well why the Labour Party is not prepared to support a Budget that does that. To all of the children and their parents out there who are seeing more access to early childhood education because of the hundreds of millions of dollars more that this Government is putting into early childhood education I say ask why the Labour Party is not prepared to support more money in the Budget in that area either.I say to the New Zealanders who are getting access to more elective surgeries under a health budget that that is now at $15.9 billion where we are seeing 50000 more New Zealanders getting access to elective surgeries—ask yourselves why the Labour Party is not prepared to support a Budget that delivers this for them. That is a 42 percent increase on elective surgeries something that New Zealanders are demanding and are proud of.In the education sector I say to those parents out there who are seeing their children getting better-quality education through the lifting of standards in the education system; ask also why the Labour Party and the Opposition are not prepared to support this Budget which delivers more money for education and is seeing education standards lifting around the country. This is a Budget with positive economic news. It is a Budget that leads to more jobs and greater growth and overall New Zealanders have been better off in the 7 years that this Government has been in office.When we listen to the speeches from the other side you could be led to believe that the economy is going down that the economy is in trouble and that New Zealand is one of the countries around the world that is struggling. That is absolutely false. I think we should remind ourselves of all of the good economic news that has come out in recent times. We have seen 11 straight quarters of job growth. We have seen 69000 more people with jobs compared with last year. We have got a stable economic outlook with growth expected to be between 2 percent and 2.5 percent. This is still one of the fastest-growing economies in the OECD. There are low increases in the cost of living. Wages are rising faster than inflation. We have high labour market participation. These are all good things that New Zealanders are seeing these are all good things that New Zealanders are experiencing and although there is difficulty for some sectors in the economy New Zealanders overall are far better off than they were 7 years ago.We know that the dairy industry which is a cyclical sector that goes through ups and downs and peaks and troughs is experiencing some difficult timesat the moment but there is still good news on the horizon. Having said that we should not just believe as the Opposition likes to portray that the whole New Zealand economy is based around dairying because it is not. It is not and there are sectors in this economy that are doing exceptionally well. Let us take for example the information and communications technology sector which has been growing at the rate of 9 percent a year since 2008. It now contributes 1.7 percent of GDP.Let us hear stories from that sector. Our international education is now worth $2.85 billion or around 1.3 percent of GDP. That sector supports 30000 Kiwi jobs. That is a good thing for New Zealanders. Wine industry exports were around $1.4 billion in 2014 up 8.2 percent on 2013. I could go through more on this list such as high-tech manufacturing which has grown from being a $139 million industry in 1991 to a $1.4 billion industry in 2012. Tourism is again another good story for this country. Overall tourism is now worth 7 percent of GDP and is growing strongly up 7 percent on last year. These are good-news stories about New Zealanders who are achieving; about New Zealanders who are seeing the rewards of a fast-growing economy—one of the fastest-growing economies in the OECD. These are stories of industries that are employing New Zealanders. More New Zealanders are getting jobs through these industries and through these sectors and New Zealanders are proud of that.This Government is here because we believe in New Zealanders. We believe in supporting New Zealanders we believe in the economic prosperity of New Zealanders and we are seeing the rewards of that growth. Let us not listen to the doomsayers over on the other side. Let us not listen to the people who now no longer support free trade who now no longer support taking a bipartisan approach to the Reserve Bank and who now no longer support good fiscal discipline because they are opposed to all of those things that we support and are implementing through this Budget.I have to say that when one looks at the track record of the 2000s and compares it with the track record of this Government over the past 7 years the contrasts are staggering. For example when we talk about housing affordability let us remind ourselves and always remember that interest rates were 11 percent in 2008. If we want to talk about an export sector going into recession or having difficulties let us remember that under Labour the export sector went into recession in 2005 during a global boom. Let us remember that before the rest of the world suffered the global financial crisis this country went into recession—in 2007 a year before the global financial crisis. So when we have Andrew Little and Grant Robertson on their hind legs saying that they would do so much better than Bill English and that they would do so much better than John Key the track record of Labour is not successful. The track record of Labour pales in comparison with that of this Government.Scott Simpson: An appalling record.JAMI-LEE ROSS: As my colleague Scott Simpson says it is appalling compared with the great results that we are seeing delivered under this Government.Finally I just want to touch on trade a bit further because it is something that was considered during the estimates process. It is something that has been considered by this House during this Budget debate. I have to say that it saddens me to see that there are parties on the other side that have been marching on the weekend that have been opposed to trade and that are no longer prepared to support free trade. There are thousands of New Zealanders who in the future will gain jobs under greater free-trade opportunities just as in the past thousands—tens of thousands or probably hundreds of thousands—have gained greater jobs through greater free-trade opportunities. They were greater free-trade opportunities that the Labour Party supported and implemented in the past.Hon Annette King: Tell us what’s in the deal—tell us.JAMI-LEE ROSS: So I say to people like Annette King and I say to people like Fletcher Tabuteau do not do the wrong thing. Do not start to become opposed to free trade. With greater access to markets abroad economic opportunities for New Zealanders await. That is a good thing for New Zealand. This Budget is a good thing for New Zealand and that is why this side of the House supports it.Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): It is a pleasure to speak in this Budget debate in its third reading but I do want to correct before I get into my speech the malicious fabrication from National members today. I want to tell them that Labour voted for the Support for Children in Hardship Bill; they keep saying we did not. So can we just put that on the record once and for all.I want to talk about the health budget for 2015-16. I am going to call it the big con job because we were proudly told by the Minister that this is the most money there has ever been in the health budget. Well if the Government had put $1 more in it would have been more than it was last year. The questions that have to be asked however are: was it what was expected is it what is needed and is it what was promised before the last election? I have to tell you that the answer to those three questions is no. It is not what was expected it is not what is needed and it is not what was promised. The district health boards got a $300 million increase; they asked for $320 million. They are now required to make $141 million in savings in this year—goodness knows where from. The Ministry of Health asked for $150 million. It got $74 million. It needs to make $30 million in savings this year. So what we have really got on the health budget is a lot of rhetoric and spin.If you do not believe what I have said about the Budget what have some other people said about it? Let us have a look at what the Salaried Medical Specialists said. For those who are listening and do not know who they are they are the specialists in our hospitals who do your operations and checks to make sure you can have an operation so they are pretty highly regarded. What did they say? They said: “The Government has failed yet again to use its Budget to invest in the health workforce …”. They said the Treasury figures that they have received show that total health spending as a proportion of GDP has gone down and is not keeping up with the cost or population growth.What did Phil Bagshaw a highly respected person who runs the charity hospital in Christchurch say? He said the Government’s good news announcements are more like smoke and mirrors and “that despite more operations there is a burgeoning backlog of unmet need in our health system.” He said: “It seems like the spin machine [is] going in to overdrive again. Well we’re all adults now we can cope with the truth.”We also wanted to know what this Government’s legacy has been in health since National became the Government almost 7 years ago. We knew that the Government would not believe any figures the Council of Trade Unions put out because Jonathan Coleman said that it is the political enemy—a funny thing to say about an organisation but that is what he said. So in fact we got Infometrics—of course National members believe Infometrics when it suits them—to have an independent look at the funding using Treasury’s own health figures. Infometrics looked at the core Crown expenditure. What did it see over four of the six Budgets of this Government? It found that there is $1.7 billion missing from the health budget since National became the Government. Four of the six Budgets have seen a cut. The Government has put in money for population growth but it has not put in money for cost. What the Minister did in this House only 3 weeks ago was admit that it has not kept up with inflation in the health budget. It has not put enough in to cover costs in the health budget.So what does that mean when it comes to health? Well the Minister needed to disguise pretty much what he was doing so he made big announcements. He put out 20 separate press releases last week about the number of operations that have been done since National became the Government. I am glad more operations are being done. As Phil Bagshaw said we need to do more. The population is ageing. We have more need. We have to be doing more. But what I did object to was the Minister using selective figures to make his case. He did not need to. He used 2007-08 figures and then compared them with 2014-15. The new members opposite may not know but the 2008-09 Budget was the Labour Government’s Budget. It was the Labour Government’s Budget of 2008-09 brought in by Michael Cullen. It was our appropriations—Labour’s appropriation for health—that followed in 2008-09 not the National Government’s.In 2008-09 there were 136194 operations carried out under Labour so what does the Minister do? He takes a figure from the 2007-08 year which was 115000 and then adds it up extrapolates it over a number of years and says: “Look how good am I?”. Well let us have some honesty in the figures. We got another lot of dishonesty today on figures in health. The Minister has put out a statement. We had the very good member Barbara Kuriger asking a question in the House today. What the member did not ask was how many people have not got a first specialist assessment—how many have not even got through the door to see the specialist and had in fact been sent back to their GP without an appointment?The Minister in this House when I asked questions about the Waitematā District Health Board about 4 weeks ago said that no such figures had ever been collected. That is what the Minister said. I was appalled that a Minister of Health does not know what figures are collected. Since 2010 the number of people being sent back from the specialist to their GP has been counted. I took the trouble of asking every single district health board how many they had sent back without an appointment. The Minister did not know and said that the figures have never been collected—he repeated it. So what do we find? In fact I have got only 15 district health boards that have replied in time but of those we find 140000 New Zealanders are not getting the specialist appointments that they need. They are being sent there by their GP and they are being sent back. They are being played ping-pong with as they go from their GP for an appointment that they never get and back to the GP who refers them back for another appointment.You needed only to see this tragic story on the Sunday news on Television One about Graham from Kaikohe who had been waiting for a specialist appointment at Whangarei Hospital. He could not get an appointment. He was told by Whangarei Hospital to try Kaitāia Hospital. So he tried Kaitāia Hospital. An appointment became available—he was going to have to wait yet another month after waiting almost 6 months for an appointment. He finally got an appointment only to be told that it was too late—he had terminal cancer. So it is all very well to crow about the number of people getting first specialist assessments when there are so many who are not.What do they get from the district health boards which are struggling to provide within 4 months what the Government wants? They get a letter like this—thousands of them sent out every week. The letter says: “You were recently assessed for surgery. The specialist recommends that you have surgery. However your current condition falls below the level at which we are able to give you surgery.”—it does not say that you do need it but it says that they are not able to give it to you—“You could benefit from it at a later date if we have the capacity.” The capacity goes back to the financial threshold that they are operating under.So when this Government crows about how great it is at health just have a look at the 2000 replies I have had to emails to people asking what is happening to them in the health sector and you will get an idea of what is happening to thousands of New Zealanders when they are one not getting a first specialist assessment and two when they do they are getting the letter saying that they would benefit from one—“You need one but we can’t do it for you.”Then you get headlines like this. This is not the Labour Party putting out these headlines; these are surgeons—surgeons there for service.Andrew Bayly: That’s the media.Hon ANNETTE KING: You can laugh at it Mr Bayly but this comes out of Dunedin. It comes from an ear nose and throat specialist. What does he say? He says that a quarter of ear nose and throat patients are being turned away from Dunedin Hospital. I have got many of those. If members want to stick their heads in the sand and pretend it is all OK then that is all right by me because the public are certainly telling the Labour Party and they are certainly telling the Opposition that in the health sector there is a looming problem. You can call it doomsaying if you like. I believe the people because the people are not wrong. They know exactly what is happening.We now have a picture emerging of a health sector that has been denied enough money to cover its costs—admitted by the Minister himself—and out of that come the problems that occur. And whom do they occur for? They occur for the New Zealanders who are most in need of health services.ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): It is a pleasure to be talking about this Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill. Of course there are so many good things that we could talk about but I have chosen to talk about three of them today. I want to focus on the Budget outlook looking after New Zealand families and the issue of diversification of our economy which we hear a lot about.The 2015 Budget builds on an improving economic outlook of sustained growth rising wages more jobs lower inflation and of course lower interest rates. This Government is focused on delivering a financial package and an economic outlook that all New Zealanders can be proud of. In the latest Reserve Bank forecast the economy grew by just under 3.3 percent and for the next 3 years it is forecast to grow at roughly 2.5 percent. This rate compares very favourably of course with our international trading partners. Just to put it into context Australia is currently growing at about 2.3 percent which is close to America’s growth rate of about 2.5 percent and of course Europe being in the state in which it is at the moment is growing a bit slower than that at less than 2 percent.What is more we may even achieve our Budget surplus which all the naysayers have been going on about and saying: “No we won’t.” In the 11-month period to 31 May we had achieved a Budget surplus of $1.2 billion. It is not completely assured that we will get a Budget surplus for the financial year just ended but it would be a fantastic outcome if we did and one that all New Zealanders could be proud of.In terms of the financial position of this country I think it is worthwhile just having a look at our debt figures. As at 31 May 2015 New Zealand’s net Crown debt stood at just at $60 billion which represented about 25 percent of GDP. I think many of us are aware that this Government is focused on getting our net debt to GDP ratio down to 20 percent by 2020. Interestingly again if we do a little bit of a comparison the Australian debt position at the moment is just slightly higher than our 25 percent but by the year 2020 when we will be at 20 percent it is projected to be at 40 percent—i.e. double our debt ratio.When you turn to the UK it is currently at 90 percent and will decline over the 5-year period to 2020 to about 80 percent—i.e. four times the rate that New Zealand’s debt is when we look at that same period. If we go to America it is currently sitting at about 110 percent and in 5 years’ time it will still be greater than its combined GDP for that period. So thankfully through good fiscal management we have got a growing economy with relatively low debt figures and it is heading in the right direction.The other thing is that we have got a robust banking structure and of course we heard a little bit about that today with some reviews of our banking structure going on. As some of the more attentive members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee will be aware last year the Reserve Bank undertook some very detailed modelling of our banking system just to see how robust it actually was. It assumed two scenarios. The first scenario assumed that a sharp decline in growth rates would bring about a catastrophic change in the Chinese market which would trigger—this is the assumption—a real GDP decline of about 4 percent unemployment peaking at 13 percent housing declining by 40 percent nationally and the agricultural sector falling by about 40 percent. Even for some of our Opposition members I know that sounds pretty optimistic but for most of us that is a fairly gloomy outlook. In the second scenario the Reserve Bank assumed even more significant increases in interest rates.What was apparent from the financial modelling that this group did was that the loan ratios increased to about 1.3 to 1.5 percent of banks’ total loans but because of the existing profitability in the banking system the banks could withstand these shocks. Also through the good prudential management of those banks they were able to be in a position where our banking system even under those extreme pressures was in a position where it could withstand the shocks and that shows what a robust banking sector we have which is important to us all.The second area that I want to talk about today is families.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Who?ANDREW BAYLY: Families—families. We are determined to implement measures that look after and protect our families. Of course the standout in the Budget was the $790 million package for our families. It is a balanced package because what it does is increase the benefit rates for families with children. It also increases the childcare arrangements for low-income families and there is also an obligation on beneficiary parents to enter the workforce when it gets apparent that they can and it is appropriate that they should. That $790 million is focused on the 160000 families with 300000 children earning less than $36350.Not only did we spend the $790 million but we also put more money into important areas. The previous speaker Annette King was talking about health of course. A record amount went into health. There is $15.9 billion now being spent on health in New Zealand. Another substantial amount went into education. We are now spending a record $10.8 billion in education. There are the announcements around special housing areas partly to do with allowing first-home buyers to get into the market so we have—Phil Twyford: Special housing areas—what a joke.ANDREW BAYLY: Yes and even in my electorate Mr Twyford we announced one very recently—Glenbrook Beach. There are another 800 houses going in there and 200 of them will be low-cost housing for people on top of the 4500 going into Wesley and Pukekohe and the 700 new houses going into Belmont probably about 3 kilometres away from Wesley. All are going to generate new low-cost housing for those first-home buyers whom we are keen to get into the market. The other thing in the Budget was the $500 million that we have committed over the next 3 years from savings in ACC—the fantastic job that the board has been doing there.The last thing that I want to turn my mind to is the diversification of the economy. And gee do we not hear a lot about that from lots of people particularly from the other side of the House? For some reason—and I do not know why—Labour in particular wants to myopically focus on the dairy industry. I have got to say to you that the dairy industry is important and we all know that but it is not fatal. We want to make sure that we have a viable dairy industry but it is not fatal. It represents only 5 percent of our economy.So what I thought I would just do is set out some of the breakdown of the New Zealand economy just to demonstrate that diversification. The total primary industry represents about 7.4 percent. People love to hit on and say horrible things about the manufacturing industry but the National Government does not have that view. We think it is a viable industry. It represents 11 percent. Construction is 7 percent.Services make up 64 percent of this economy. So all the good things—information and communications technology the smallest at 3 percent or roughly a billion dollars’ worth of earnings; education 4 percent; and health 6 percent. You keep going up to tourism which of course is the largest of the services sector at 7 percent. What is more we are also getting good growth rates across all the regions. So we have talked about some of the regions—Bay of Plenty has 4.4 percent Canterbury has a similar amount and Auckland has 4.3 percent. But even in the smaller regions there is good viable growth including in the region of the member sitting beside me. Sarah Dowie’s region of Southland is at 4 percent—a dynamic economy.But I also like the recent announcement around the new immigration changes that are going to make sure some of the new immigrants coming into this country move to the regions. So we have got two categories. First of all is the skilled migrants category where we have said: “We’re going to give you an extra 20 points if you move to a region and get work out of Auckland.”The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!ANDREW BAYLY: Then of course we have got the entrepreneurs category which means that we are going to give an additional 20 points out of the total of 120 so that if these entrepreneurs coming into New Zealand with good skills and with money want to set up businesses out of Auckland then they can do so. They will be asked to move to those regions and help create new jobs for New Zealanders. Thank you very much.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I understand that the next call is a split call.JAN LOGIE (Green): I am pleased to take a short call on this for the Green Party and to follow on from my colleague Julie Anne Genter who spoke previously and outlined what our alternative vision would have been for this Budget—a mixture of incredibly practical measures to raise revenue to save money and to more fairly share the resources that we have. But tonight I would like to focus on one aspect of this Budget and our vision for this society and that is equality.I remember on election night that John Key in front of the nation was saying that he would lead a Government that would govern for all New Zealanders. Well this is the first Budget since the election and it is our chance to assess whether he is delivering on that promise to the country. Is this a Budget for all New Zealanders? My premise this evening is that it is not.New Zealand has had one of the highest increases in inequality in the OECD since 1985. This has resulted in the greatest loss of growth in the OECD. Inequality in this country is estimated to have knocked off more than 20 percentage points of growth in this country. The biggest factor for the impact of inequality on growth is the gap between lower-income households and the rest of the population. We are not talking about just the bottom 10 percent but the bottom 40 percent of this country.The household income survey that came out last week showed us that this gap in some ways is widening. There are 45000 more children this year living in poverty whose family incomes after housing are 60 percent below the median wage. This is showing clearly that the economic gains post-global financial crisis are not being evenly shared. That report also showed that after housing costs income poverty rates for older working New Zealanders—those aged between 45 and 64 living on their own—have trebled between 1984 and 2007. Those rates since then have remained high and that group is second only to sole parents in terms of poverty rates in this country. This points to the number of vulnerable older New Zealanders increasing into our future as we have an ageing economy. Significantly this is about housing and access to being able to buy houses in this country and we know the Government has not addressed that problem in this Budget.Also we see the counterbalance of this struggle for the bottom 40 percent of the country when last year the average salary for big business chief executive officers grew to an average of $1.645 million a year being earned by the top chief executive officers. At least 11 executives in this country are now earning over $2 million a year. So we have a group of New Zealanders who earn more in an hour than full-time minimum wage workers can earn in a week and a half. And now in this country 50 percent of New Zealanders own less than 5 percent of the wealth.Average debt per household in this country is massively increasing. I have been hearing the Government saying that it is pulling that back. Well actually it has increased by over $100000 per household since 1992. That is a phenomenal increase—up from $20000 to over $120000 of debt per household. Net public debt has also been increasing since this Government came to power. It has increased from $3000 per capita to $14000 significantly because of its investment in job-poor expressway projects that have negative cost-benefit ratios. So it is investing in things that are bad for our climate bad for our people and bad for the books. And yet Government members stand in front of us and tell us: “Everything is OK. Don’t worry. This is as good as it gets pretty much.” Well I do not think New Zealanders believe that.When we know that our current top income tax rate of 33 percent is the fourth-lowest in the OECD that we have no tax-free threshold for people on low incomes and that we have no inheritance tax no gift tax no general capital gains tax to tax wealth and that on top of that we are one of the only OECD countries where GST is levied on all domestic products at a flat rate—including food which the Government is now looking to extend—we know the Government is not taking up even a smidgeon of the options open to it to be able to reduce inequality. There is an alternative to this agenda.EUGENIE SAGE (Green):Tēnā koe. As my colleague Jan Logie said this is not a Budget for all New Zealanders and it shows how much National has lost touch with everyday New Zealanders. It is building an economy that works for people who already have a lot. In my comments today I would like to focus on the primary sector because the National Government has really bet the farm on high international prices for dairy continuing rather than building a diversified and a research and development focused export sector. What we have seen with the slump in global dairy prices is that it has highlighted the major pitfalls in putting so many bottles in the dairy basket because we have seen farmers chasing after those high boom-time prices in 2007 and 2013 and we have seen the Government encouraging that with its very generous subsidies for irrigation in Vote Primary Industries. It is encouraging much more intensification and much more irrigation which leads to less resilience and more vulnerability to changes in world commodity prices. We see in Vote Primary Industries that some $142 million is allocated in 2015-16 to Crown Irrigation Investments and the Irrigation Acceleration Fund to subsidise irrigation. That compares with the just $70 million in 2015-16 allocated to the Primary Growth Partnership which is about promoting research and development product and market development and technology transfer.So what the Government is identifying as a priority in the primary industries vote is not what should be the priority for our primary sector because it focuses on a major sector of the economy being a price taker rather than a price maker and because it increases this drive towards a less resilient more intensive dairy sector that is very vulnerable to changes in world commodity prices. What we have seen is farmers go chasing after those boom prices and to do that they have piled on land they have got more cows they have piled on debt and they have got more irrigation. That means now that when the prices are slumped the rural communities are hurting hard. Yet what did the Minister of Finance say? What did he say in the House today? All he could say was that dairy-intensive provinces have to adapt quickly to market signals—completely overlooking the major hurt that rural communities are feeling in having to make that adjustment.What the Green Party would do would be to invest much more in research and development through a big package of tax credits and grants for research and development so that we look at increasing value in our primary sector and at diversifying and getting away from this reliance on dairy away from this reliance on China as the major market and away from Fonterra just thinking that it can continue to increase milk supply regardless of the cost that that has to our waterways and regardless of the unnatural focus that that is creating. This Government thinks in its economic plan that dairy prices are going to bounce back and everything will be fine. It has not got a plan B. It seems to think that we can just grin and bear it and wait for those prices to go back up again but it fails to recognise that there have been some quite significant policy changes internationally both to the production quotas in the EU and to domestic subsidies in the United States. That means that things may never be the same again for New Zealand dairy prices and that means that this hurt that we are seeing at the moment is likely to continue. It means major problems for the economy. The Reserve Bank has highlighted that when we have got 20 to 30 percent of dairy farms so heavily indebted it is potentially a significant problem for our economic stability. It is a major concern.The Government needs to step up and accept some accountability and responsibility. Sure it cannot control export prices but where it invests money through the Budget helps to grow sectors or it makes them decline. It should be investing much more in added value—that is not just investing in new products but in making sure that our products have a reputation overseas for coming from a clean green country for giving some integrity to that “clean green” brand and for marketing products that have a provenance and are products of integrity. That is not what we are seeing in this Budget when the Government is investing more in resource management yet proposing to gut the Resource Management Act proposing to weaken our regulatory framework and proposing to allow more water pollution by its permissive national policy statement. We need a strong regulatory framework to provide a strong environmental credibility to the products that we are marketing overseas and we need much more diversification in our primary sector and much more of a focus on value rather than volume and on increasing the range of products that we market. Thank you.ALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): I would like to focus on a couple of things initially—export markets and the dairy sector—and to pose a couple of questions. Who is the friend of the primary sector? Who understands the primary producer and the export markets? Who amongst us here has experience in farming or experience in exporting? Across that side of the House there is not one—not one—farmer.Hon Member: Yeah there is.ALASTAIR SCOTT: On this side there is—I have got to admit that Mr Browning has been a farmer of organic produce but other than that there is not one farmer on that side of the House. On this side of the House to name a few we have Ian McKelvie David Bennett Amy Adams Nathan Guy Stuart Smith and Barbara Kuriger who are all involved in producing primary sector products.Kelvin Davis: Come on! I’ve driven my uncle’s tractor.ALASTAIR SCOTT: And then there is—you have driven a tractor did you say Mr Davis?Kelvin Davis: Yeah once.ALASTAIR SCOTT: But what about exporting? How many have been involved in exporting? How many have got on a plane and tried to sell the product that we derive from New Zealand? How many of them have made phone calls talking to buyers offshore? How many of them in this House have run an export business? On that side of the House it is none—none. There is not one who is currently running an export business. So it is not a surprise in a way that none of them can support free trade because we are a trading nation and free trade is the key to the success of this little nation that we are.The Opposition does not understand that the leveraging of an advantage in a competitive environment is what we must do. We must have access to our products in order to enable our economy to grow to enable higher-paid jobs to eventuate and to increase the standard of living for all New Zealanders. It is quite sad in a way that you have New Zealand First Party people protesting on the steps of Parliament with anti - free-trade people when they profess to support the primary industries. They call themselves friends of the farmer but their actions speak louder than their words.The Greens are the same. They do not want trade. They do not want us to grow the economy—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! This is a very broad-ranging debate on the Budget and the Imprest Supply (Second for 2015/16) Bill. The member has now been going for 3 minutes and I think if he could draw his remarks into the debate which is not particularly hard then I would not interrupt him again.ALASTAIR SCOTT: In the Budget we have demonstrated that we are friends of the primary producer because we have not introduced a capital gains tax we do not support a controlled foreign exchange market—in fact quite the opposite—and we have not introduced agriculture into the emissions trading scheme which is all possible in any Budget and of course we support the free-trade agreements.The economy is tracking well. It is forecast to grow between 2 percent and 2.5 percent over the next number of years. We understand that dairy prices have in fact fallen below the cost of production and that enables the global market to re-establish itself and to weed out those inefficient producers of dairy product and in time the maths tells you that the price must come up to above the cost of production. What the Government has done in these tough times for the dairy industry is support them by spending or investing another half a million dollars on rural mental health professionals and that is appreciated in the rural sector.Despite the rhetoric around dairy prices we know the economy is diversified and we know it is tracking well. We also know that the safety valves are working. The currency has reduced by around 20 percent. And those in the House who have a mind to think about exporters or who may have exported in the past will know that that brings a 20 percent devaluation. It brings a 20 percent increase in New Zealand dollar terms to the revenue the top line of the exporter.We have talked about tourism increasing 7 percent year on year. Wine is increasing. Kiwifruit is having a fantastic year. Information and communication technology services and international students are all on the up and will all benefit from the weaker currency and of course the lower interest rates—another safety valve in the economy that is functioning exactly as it should. But the long-term prospects are good for dairy. The long-term prospects in the Asian market will continue to be positive based on the ever-increasing demand for high-quality safe protein. That has not gone away. That is there and it will continue to be there.The regions are doing well. Anecdotally at least I hear of Aucklanders looking around interested in purchasing housesin my electorate from Dannevirke to Featherston because you can live anywhere in this day and age. Broadband allows accountants in my electorate to service Shanghai customers. Broadband allows rural towns to be connected to the rest of the planet to sell their services—designers with customers in Los Angeles. The world is your oyster as we roll out the ultra-fast broadband. The plan continues to work and as the economy grows this gives us a choice.The well-managed economy allows better investment into the health systems the education systems and as we have already touched on the social programmes that we are investing in. There is $790 million invested in the most vulnerable and that is all about nipping it in the bud nipping it in the bud where we know that statistically it is likely to cause misery and problems down the track. That is what social investment is all about and that is a fantastic initiative of this last Budget.Investing in warmer homes is also an investment in the future. Our Warm Homes programme combined with the minimum housing insulation standards that will be implemented will be affecting half a million homes—half a million homes—which reduces the risk of health issues and increases education outcomes because kids are warmer and in a healthier condition when they go to school. These are all good things and part of the social investment programme that we have implemented.Plan A is in progress. Plan A is working. It is creating a framework for Kiwis to decide for themselves how to invest their time and their energy. It is not a patronising policy as the Opposition dictates. It is a positive programme that is laid out in the Budget and I commend it to the House.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): The previous speaker Alastair Scott was not so much pedestrian as—well actually I think that if he had been any more comatose he would have fallen over at his desk. I want to correct one thing that that speaker said. He claimed that Gerry Brownlee was a farmer. Gerry Brownlee—he is no farmer. He might be a grazer but he is certainly no farmer.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: You saved my life then.PHIL TWYFORD: Thank you Clayton Cosgrove. I want to talk about this Government’s housing policies because in the Budget it made two announcements that are typical in so many ways of this Government’s housing policy. The first was Nick Smith’s nowinfamous Crown land fiasco in Auckland where he tried to flog off patches of land that the Government does not even own and claimed that the local iwi had no right of first refusal—and it turns out that they actually did—and he is in court defending the Government’s policy against legal action by Ngāti Whātua.The second Budget housing policy that the Government announced after having denied and denied for the last 3 years that property speculators are even a problem in Auckland was the so-called 2-year test designed to catch a few property speculators. Flying in the face of all the evidence the Government denied that property speculation is a problem yet it announced in the Budget the 2-year test which is basically an invitation to property speculators in Auckland to hold on to their properties for 2 years and a day and then flick them off. Why are this Government’s housing policies so token so superficial and so ineffective? That is the question that everybody in Auckland is asking because basically this is the “seenoevil hearnoevil” housing policy and it is obvious that this Government is in denial. It is complacent and in denial that there is a housing crisis in Auckland.The housing market in Auckland is obviously completely out of control. The average house price in Auckland in the last 12 months went up $135000—18.8 percent. That is the average and yet this Government says that there is no housing crisis. Generation Rent is locked out of the housing market—it is obvious for anybody to see. It is impossible for that generation except for young people who were born with a silver spoon in their mouths to ever hope realistically of owning their own home in Auckland. We have a rise in homelessness across the city. There are people living in cars in garages and in camp grounds. There is ballooning inequality between the young and the old between people who own property and people who are landless and between people who live in Auckland and the rest of the country.You would think that Government members would be worried. In fact it is hard to find anyone who thinks that this is not a major social and economic crisis in Auckland. The OECD has told us that Auckland housing is among the most overvalued in the world. The Reserve Bank has repeatedly cautioned this Government and said that the Auckland housing crisis is a threat to financial stability. It embarrassed the Government by saying that it had not done enough and that it needed to do more to increase supply and to deal with property speculation. Chris Parker the chief economist at Auckland Council said in the last few days that Auckland’s housing market was not far away from being a bubble.He cited independent research by the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research that showed that Auckland’s house prices were one-third overvalued compared with future rental incomes—one-third overvalued. Chris Parker of Auckland Council says that we are not far away from it being a bubble.Then there was the final indignity for this Government’s housing policy. Standard and Poor’s the international credit rating agency on Friday afternoon downgraded the credit rating of all the major banks in New Zealand—the six largest banks. It cited the increased risks from Auckland’s housing boom. It left its issuer credit ratings at AA- but it lowered the stand-alone credit profiles by one notch for each of the four major banks.It said that the actions “reflect our view that New Zealand financial institutions face heightened risks because of an increase in the country’s overall level of economic imbalances over the past 3 years. In particular we believe the rapid rise in house prices in Auckland during this period has amplified the risk of a sharp correction in [the housing market]”.Standard and Poor’s is one of the leading international credit agencies. It has said that the housing crisis in Auckland is posing a significant risk to our banking system. It is plain; everybody can see it. Aucklanders know what is going on. But why is this Government in denial? Well the answer was revealed inadvertently in an interview that the Prime Minister gave on Newstalk ZB a week and a half ago where he said that Aucklanders are happy because they are getting wealthier because their house prices are going up. It was the most candid this Prime Minister has been in the last few years about why it is a do-nothing Government when it comes to housing policy.The Prime Minister revealed that he is comfortable with Auckland house prices going up on average $135000 in the last 12 months. He is comfortable with that because he has made the cynical political calculation that he can harvest enough votes from homeowners who are watching their paper wealth increasing by the year by the week and by the day and he is willing to throw under the bus the more than half of all Aucklanders who actually live in rented accommodation and a generation of young Aucklanders who under this Government’s housing policies face no prospect of ever owning their own home. That is why—it is that level of political cynicism by the National Party—this Prime Minister has condemned a whole generation of young New Zealanders to being Generation Rent. In his words they are becoming landless tenants in their own land and this National Party is happy to stand by and watch that happen. That is why Nick Smith is the worst Minister for Building and Housing in living memory. He is the Minister of photo ops of stunts and grudging half-measures.I come now to Nick Smith’s Crown land fiasco. He promised 500 hectares of new land for housing development. Where is that now? Where is that land? Where are the houses? Where are the thousands of houses that were promised in his special housing areas in Auckland? At last count the Auckland Council—18 months after it announced the housing accord in Auckland—confirmed 300 houses. Three hundred. Auckland needs 13000 houses just to stand still just to keep up with population growth. Yet as the Productivity Commissionthis Government’s pet thinktank pointed out at current build rates Auckland is slipping behind by 5000 houses every year. There is a shortfall of 32000 houses at the moment in Auckland. That shortage is one of the main reasons why house prices continue to go through the roof. Yet under National we are 5000 short every year and the Productivity Commission predicted that by 2020 that 32000 shortfall will have blown out to 60000.The housing crisis is getting worse by the day in Auckland and this Government does nothing effective about it. It is in denial about the rampant property speculation that is driving house prices higher and higher. According to Quotable Value 45 percent of all property transactions in Auckland are to investors with multiple properties and yet the best that this Government can do is that grudging half-measure that 2-year test which its own most respected tax adviser John Shewan said will do nothing to rein in house prices. It will do nothing to deter house speculators. It is a housing crisis that is having huge economic and social consequences for this country but this Government is out of touch with what people want and it is refusing to listen to the demands of the public of New Zealand for serious action on the housing crisis.Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): I would like to thank the member who has resumed his seat Phil Twyford for reminding me of why the last time I voted Labour was 1984. He has reminded me of 1984 when Labour was in Government and what happened when there was the last housing crisis in Auckland. That is when the house prices plummeted people ended up with negative equity and interest rates were at 28 percent. That is in fact exactly what would happen if a Labour Government gets to the Treasury benches again. You need to be sensible about this issue and the issue is the matter of supply and demand.The fact is that in 1984 people left this country in droves to get away from a Labour Government—and a very sensible move it was for them too. Some of us who stuck it out were grateful for a National Government coming in in 1990. But what has happened is that the metropolitan urban limit in Auckland under a Labour-led Auckland Regional Council headed by Mike Lee put in place an artificial limit on the growth of Auckland and that was in the late 1990s. That has been the major issue around what has happened in Auckland—that and the fact that Aucklanders are no longer leaving Auckland. They are staying put and people are coming to Auckland because Auckland is a great place to live if you can get around the transport issues which I hope will start to be alleviated once the expansion of the southern motorway starts in October this year—right through my electorate.I have to say that in speaking about this particular issue and the measures in the Budget—as I think the Budget is a very measured response—the last thing we want to do is to actually end up with a situation where Aucklanders cannot afford their homes any more and their interest rates go up which is what happened under a Labour Government. It is really important to think about a balanced Budget. It is a bit like balancing the budget of a household actually. Most of us know we can spend only what we have. We cannot go off spending money we do not have and if we continue to do that we are going to end up in a very difficult position.In this particular case one of the things that having a balanced Budget does for the economy is that it actually keeps interest rates low. The Government is not competing so much with private enterprise or business to actually take money to get money to spend on schemes. The Government is actually not playing a part in putting up interest rates. Interest rates are now the lowest that they have been in 60 years. So what that actually means is that despite the doom and gloom from those who want to talk down our economy—despite that—we have actually seen households in New Zealand Kiwi households saving every single year in the last 5 years. The last time that happened was in 1995—it was before the Labour Government—and that actually tells me that this Government is balancing its Budget not overspending and leaving more money with people which means that people can actually afford to keep paying their bills and we are not getting into debt like we used to.When I look at some of the very smart things in this Budget one of the smartest things I think was actually giving a $25-a-week increase in benefit rates for families with children realising that people on benefits with children are the most vulnerable people we have in this country. It is not the children’s fault that their parents are on benefits and what that measure is doing is giving people just a little bit more help at the same time putting huge measures and effort and funding into helping parents get to work and getting off benefits because work as we know is actually the secret to getting ahead in life.I listened to some of the discussions this afternoon and particularly one from Mrs Eugenie Sage. She says she wants more exports. Well unfortunately she does not believe in free trade so unfortunately that is not going to work. She also said that prices will never get better in dairying. Well I beg to differ. I look at the world’s population. Is it getting smaller? No it is getting bigger. Guess what? People like protein and the richer that countries get and the richer that people get the more protein they want. Yes dairying is going through a difficult time at the moment but actually those of us who come from the dairying industry know that that happens in the dairying industry every 10 years or so anyway.Farmers are incredibly resilient. They are however not supermen or women. We have to give as much help as we can and one of the best things we can do for these farmers is to keep interest rates low. That is the biggest thing we can do because many of them will have expanded bought the neighbour’s property and they will have been thinking about the prices that they were then at that stage getting for their product.I listened to all the rhetoric around trade and exports and I have heard the New Zealand First people talk about exports. Apparently they like exports. I just do not know who they want to export to because they are certainly against the Trans-Pacific Trade agreement. So let us have a look at that as a free-trade agreement just on the basis of the Budget and why it is important for this Budget and for those coming forward.This is a free-trade agreement with the No. 1 economy in the world: the United States. That is actually the reason why a lot of the people are against the Trans-Pacific Trade agreement—the people like dear Professor Jane Kelsey whom I know from my university days. We get on very well personally but are on completely opposite sides of this. I do not hate the United States; I am really grateful for the United States in this world. As I said there is the United States and New Zealand—obviously. There is Australia—oh well Australia—Brunei Chile Malaysia Peru Singapore Viet Nam Japan Canada and Mexico.Really would we seriously contemplate not being part of that sort of agreement with the biggest economy in the world and with Japan the fourth-largest economy in the world? Would we really not be part of that? Would we in fact be like those people in the UK who suddenly think that they do not want to be in the European Union now? I mean really? Do we really want to be there? Do we really want to be selling all these products to ourselves? Would we get rid of the free-trade agreement we currently have—CER—with Australia? Would we get rid of the one with China? What about the one with Korea? If we are going to be principled about it would we not get rid of them all? The fact is that none of those members would really want to do that. They say: “Oh well we don’t know what’s in it”. Well actually we did not know what was in those other agreements either until they were signed because that strangely enough is how negotiations are undertaken.It is so good to be able to speak about some of the positive things in this Budget because when I listen to the Opposition members—and I have been listening very carefully—it has been very disappointing except as I say to remind me about why I should never vote for that lot. I have been thinking about things that we have been able to deliver—$1.5 billion in ACC cuts in levies for businesses and for individuals. So everybody who is working for a living gets a cut in their ACC levy. I am really pleased to see that that work is continuing. We fought very hard to make that happen.But when you are looking at things like for instance how we can make business cheaper better and more efficient with more jobs and better use of money let us have a look at the Resource Management Act. The National Party went into the last election on a platform of reforming the Resource Management Act and we would as a party like to see that happen. Unfortunately the balance of power on the Resource Management Act these days is held by a party run by Mr Winston Peters. The members of that party travelled all around Northland saying what they would do for farmers but not once did they tell them they would never do a thing would not lift a finger and would never once give us one vote to help bring about reform in the Resource Management Act—not once.Nobody expects the Labour Party to because after all the Resource Management Act was its stupid baby. No one expects the Greens to because we all know where they are. But not once will a party that makes out that it likes small business—well it does really does it not? It wants them to get smaller. Not once would that party help out this party to bring through Resource Management Act reform which is something that would help Northland and the very people whom those members supposedly represent. Not once would they go off to Tauranga not once would they go to Napier and not once would they go to Palmerston North and to all these provincial areas and tell people about their laziness and their absolute lack of fortitude in getting up and supporting Resource Management Act reform.So if you want to see change in this country if you want a Budget that is even better than the fabulous Budget we have got then bring about reform in the Resource Management Act. Bring about hope for farmers bring about hope for businesses and stop being against everything.FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): I would just like to start by saying that these Budget and appropriations are based on principles coming straight out of “Planet Key”. The Budget has no bearing on reality; the appropriations were assigned based on assumptions made when National was wearing those rose-tinted glasses. The Budget claimed at the time—actually quite wisely Mr English did not claim that this Budget would do anything in particular; its byline was simply “Aplan that’s working”. There was no actual plan but we were told that the “no plan” was working. Without doubt there is nothing in this Budget that will fix this Government’s finances and secure New Zealand’s economic prosperity and security. What was one of the main cornerstones of this Budget? Higher commodity prices. Not stable or slightly decreased commodity prices but higher commodity prices—that is what the Budget was based on. Fonterra has slashed its forecast payout for milksolids for this season to $3.85 a kilo—far below the break-even point for many farmers—and it will continue to decrease. New Zealand First warned this National Government back when the Budget was released that it was living in a dream world. We warned this Government then that milksolids prices would decrease significantly. Back in the original Budget debates New Zealand First said that this Government had its head buried in the sand and had no plan or idea for any other quite plausible eventualities arising here in New Zealand or around the world. We said that there was a real world that needed to be taken account of.Here we are today in the real world quite distinct and quite different from the Budget that was presented to us a while ago with appropriations that now have no bearing in reality. Now because of this Government’s ineptitude this country is suffering with Ministers stumbling along making up policy on the fly. I say that but it actually probably will not pan out to be policy because this Government and its leader are particularly skilled at smiling in sympathy with the people of New Zealand agreeing that there is a problem and then going away and doing absolutely nothing about it. This Government was sent a message from the regions. One of those regions in particular sent a powerful message that the previous speaker Judith Collins has chosen to ignore. It changed the very composition of this Parliament because Government Ministers were not listening to the people of New Zealand—the heartland and the working backbone of this country creating the majority of this country’s wealth. This Government is still not listening. Ministers bob up here and they bob up there telling everyone how wonderful things are. The people have been ignored and now it has been put right in the collective Government’s face. Ministers go around bobbing their heads up in places talking about the regions. It is talk talk talk—managing a media crisis and not dealing with the real crisis facing New Zealand.I do not think that most New Zealanders believe this Government when they are told that Mr English has a plan that is working. Firstly they will ask “What plan was it that you were actually talking about?” and secondly “If you had a plan surely it was a plan to create wealth and boost incomes for all New Zealanders. Was that the plan?”. Mr English everyday New Zealanders cannot see what you are forcing down their throats right now but they are absolutely choking on it. What are the consequences of having “A plan that’s working”? They are $3.85 a kilo for milksolids—far below the break-even point as I said earlier. This puts a huge question mark on New Zealand’s dairy industry and its ability to handle its debt which has trebled to $34.5 billion in the last 10 years and the National Government made it worse.This Government with its support parties such as ACT sent out signals and distorted the market which ACT rails against and now all of us have hell to pay. It will be real farmers though—real men and women—who will be faced with the devastating loss of their farms because the banks will come to collect. We now have mortgagee sales as evidence of that. They have jumped nationwide in the past quarter as lower dairy prices have already hit provincial New Zealand. Support industries are already shutting down. They are shutting up shop and laying off staff in the hope of seeing this cyclical or structural downturn through.The member before spoke about how they saw it coming—that it happens every 10 years. So why are our farmers suffering through it now? Where was the plan? What did this National Government do about it? We were just told that they saw it coming. Now the number of mortgagee sales has jumped nationwide. Experts are warning of more foreclosures outside of Auckland’s surging property market as financially strapped homeowners in regional New Zealand start defaulting on their mortgages. Where are the appropriations and where is the policy to deal with the loss of our New Zealand assets? What will it serve us if reluctant—and they are reluctant; they have told us—cash-strapped farm owners pushed to the wall by their banks sell their farms to cash-rich but asset-poor overseas investors?The National Government has been selling the line about being aspirational supposedly meaning that selling our assets to overseas investors will create jobs—or save them as the case may now be. How is simply having a job aspirational? How is this Government policy to sell our productive assets and all of our productive land to foreigners—not new New Zealanders but foreign investors—aspirational? The National Government is telling the people of New Zealand that National’s definition of “aspirational” is to just be content and consider yourself lucky that you have got a job. How can the Government call the sale of New Zealand assets to foreign investors an investment? It is for the overseas investors but then the profits all go offshore. How can that be an investment for New Zealanders? How is it aspirational to be lowly paid serfs in our land?The Budget denied the facts when it was written. Most of what we are seeing today was a very real probability on the horizon and New Zealand First spoke about it then. National did not account for today’s reality in the Budget and so the estimates for the appropriations are an absolute farce. All the while National Ministers bob their heads up telling New Zealanders how wonderful they have it. All the while unemployment continues to grow in real terms despite protestations from the other side of the House. Real unemployment is increasing and we are seeing it in our regions. Regional economies are going to be shutting up shop if we do not do something about it and more important if this Government does not take ownership of the problem stop living in denial and actually do something meaningful. Get off “Planet Key” with your “plan that is working” and come back to the real world. Start listening to New Zealanders instead of talking at them. After 7 years of doing nothing surely even your media spin doctors are asking you: “Is it not time for you to do your job?”. Thank you.CHRIS BISHOP (National): I am not sure I will be taking economics advice from “the Professor” any time soon. I am just going to throw that one out there for the House. This Budget that we are debating this afternoon coming to the final stages of the debate was a confident Budget delivered by a confident Government in charge of an increasingly confident country.In my contribution to the debate I want to focus on the three major themes that I see coming through from the Budget: firstly the continuation of a sustainable economic plan that is working; secondly the continuation of the Government’s focus on creating an outward-looking confident country that is connected to international markets and is welcoming and accepting of migrants both foreign capital and labour; and thirdly the thing that the Opposition does not want to talk about which is the social investment approach at the heart of this Budget.On this first theme the sustainable economic plan that is working this Budget builds on the hard work of previous years. It locks in and continues to lock in a sustainable programme that is growing the New Zealand economy creating wages that are rising faster than inflation and creating jobs. It locks in things like ACC levies falling by $1.5 billion a year overseen by my good colleague Nikki Kaye—[Interruption] That is right. It locks in extending ultra-fast broadband to over 80 percent of Kiwis. It locks in building skills for industry—things like the ICT Graduate Schools which I know are going to be very important for our very fast-growing information and communications technology sector. It locks in increased innovation funding through Callaghan Innovation based in my neck of the woods in the Hutt Valley which I am very pleased about.In short this is a confident Budget that does all the things that New Zealand needs to grow and get ahead in the 21st century. Also it locks in things like a fast-growing economy wages rising faster than inflation and over 200000 jobs created since 2011. As my good colleague Judith Collins pointed out just a few moments ago we have positive household savings in New Zealand. We have had those for 5 years now and the last time we had a rate like that was in 1995.So what has been the response of the Labour Party and members opposite to this very good Budget? Well the first response which came right at the start of the Budget debate all those months ago was Andrew Little’s pitiful response speech. I know it was a long time ago but it really was absolutely pitiful. It was just hilarious to sit there on this side of the House and see Labour members opposite. They realised I reckon about 5½ minutes into the speech that it was going to be probably the worst Budget reply speech since David Shearer’s speech 2 years before. I reckon they realised about 5½ minutes in. I think he realised it too actually to be honest. I reckon Andrew realised it was going to go pretty badly and that is when we got the references to Gene Simmons the constituent—you know the terrible joke that annoyed Young Labour and everybody else about “fiscal gender-reassignment” surgery and all of those lame attempts at humour. So that was the first response from the Labour Party.Then in the weeks afterwards we had the obsession with the surplus. You will note that members opposite stopped talking about the surplus but for the initial weeks following the Budget there was this obsession with the surplus and that the previous Budget in 2014 had forecast a very small surplus and then Budget 2015 comes along and it forecasts a slightly small deficit. That is absolutely hilarious because the Labour Party has spent 7 years opposing every piece of fiscal restraint that this Government has enacted. It opposed every cut even of things like Moroccan cooking courses and subsidised macramé classes—all of those very sensible and prudent things that the National Government has done. Sue Moroney tweets away about how it is a human rights violation to stop somebody from having a $3-a-week macramé class or a Moroccan cooking class. Members opposite have opposed every single cut and then they turn up and say “Oh well you should have got back into surplus. I mean tut tut tut! Naughty you National Government. You really should have got there sooner.” Right?Also members opposite spent the first year after the 2008 election calling for fiscal stimulus. David Cunliffe used to issue very serious press releases about the global financial crisis that was happening in the world and that the National Government must respond in a resolute and forthright manner and immediately massively increase deficit spending. If we had followed that path—and we did run a deficit; we have run a deficit for a number of years—and massively increased spending we would be in far more of a hole.Of course we should never forget that it was the Labour Party’s reckless fiscal mismanagement of the economy that caused us to go into recession before the rest of the world before the global financial crisis. Its mismanagement pushed up Government spending pushed up interest rates and pushed up inflation and caused us to go into a recession before the rest of the world caused us to have 11 percent mortgage interest rates and 5 percent inflation in 2008 and caused the tradable sector of the economy to be in recession for 5 years. Having caused the problem in the first place the Labour Party then has the temerity to turn round and complain about the measures we put in place to try to tackle that deficit. Then it has the temerity to turn round and complain that we should have got there sooner. So I think that was a pretty silly response. But it quickly realised that was not a good idea.Then we moved on to the diversification argument. Labour became obsessed with diversification ignoring the fact that this Budget like Budgets previously has been precisely about diversifying the New Zealand economy. That is why we have been investing in things like research and development—and those members often complain about that. This panacea of the New Zealand economy is research and development tax credits. Well there is more spending on research and development and science and innovation by the Government than ever before. It has increased at a rapid rate under this Government—a 70 percent increase since 2008. So we are doing that and that is why things like the kiwifruit industry are doing well. That is why things like the information and communications technology sector are doing well. That is why the red meat sector is doing well. That is why tourism is doing very well. This economy is diversified.Then we have the argument that it is all about dairy. So along come some price shocks in the dairy industry and then the Labour Party goes: “Well you’ve gotta do something—you’ve gotta do something. We don’t know what—we don’t know exactly what but you must do something.” This is the classic response of social democrats everywhere of socialists and of left-wing parties: “The Government must do something. You have to do something. We don’t know what. We need a plan B. We don’t know what that plan B might be but you must do something.” So now the Labour Party is obsessed with dairy and forgetting about the diversification argument.Then we get Andrew Little saying that we need foreign investment in New Zealand literally an hour after railing against foreigners investing in New Zealand. I mean these guys seriously do not know what they believe any more. They really do not. So the Labour Party has not very much to say about one of the central themes of the Budget. That brings me very nicely to the second theme which is about an open and confident New Zealand. This Budget increases support for New Zealand Trade and Enterprise. It increases support for our international education industry. It increases support for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to negotiate things like free-trade deals.I want to make a very serious point about the Trans-Pacific Partnership here because there is a very serious question for the Labour Party in the next few weeks and months I hope with the conclusion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks which I hope will happen. It actually is almost an existential question to the history and reality of what the Labour Party is. It is almost a crisis inside the Labour Party.The question for the Labour Party is this: is it going to be a responsible party of Government that continues the bipartisan consensus actually started by its own party in 1984 which is that New Zealand’s future is one that is connected to the world that is connected to the global economy and that does not try to insulate itself from global competition and market forces? Is it going to be that responsible party or is it going to be a party that harks back to the worst excesses of 1970s orthodoxy of big government of repressive insularity of a Government that tries to shield New Zealand away from the rest of the world? This is “Jane Kelsey-onomics”. Jane Kelsey has never seen a free-trade deal that she thinks we should sign. She was opposed to CER she was opposed to the China free-trade agreement she is opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and she is almost certainly opposed to the Korean free-trade deal.This is the big question that confronts the Labour Party and the question for the Labour Party is this: are Phil Goff and Clayton Cosgrove and all of the moderate people who know that that is in New Zealand’s interests—and who in the case of Phil Goff actually helped start the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations back in 2008—going to win the battle inside the Labour Party? Or is the hard left the Jeremy Corbyn - supporting Clare Curran and her acolytes—in so far as Clare Curran could have acolytes—going to win the battle inside the Labour Party? This actually goes to the heart and soul of the Labour Party and of New Zealand’s future.Kelvin Davis: Sorry can you just clarify what you’re talking about?CHRIS BISHOP: My point is we need bipartisanship on the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal. We would like the Labour Party to support this very important deal for New Zealand’s future. Sadly it seems like the hard left is going to win this battle inside the Labour Party and that will be to the detriment of New Zealand’s future.This is a Budget that locks in an open and confident New Zealand that is welcoming of foreign investment is welcoming of foreign migration and does not seek to demonise Chinese people like the Labour Party opposite seeks to do. Because of that I am very strongly in support of this Budget.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): That speech said everything about the National Government’s priorities. It now regards the Labour Party’s 9 years in Government as reckless. So what is it that it regards as so reckless? Nine surpluses in a row is clearly reckless according to the National Government—nine surpluses in a row. Record low unemployment—that is a reckless idea! What a reckless idea that we get people into work! That is recklessness according to the National Party. Record low debt in New Zealand’s history—that is reckless according to the National Government. What a reckless irresponsible Government that would deliver those things for New Zealand! It says everything about the National Government’s current economic management that it thinks that that is reckless—that it thinks that that is reckless.Chris Bishop railed against the idea that the Government must do something—that the Government must do something. There are 59 people sitting over on that side of the House who have clearly adopted that strategy. They do absolutely nothing to justify the salaries that the taxpayer is giving them. They believe that the role of Government is to do absolutely nothing—absolutely nothing. Increase taxes—yes the Government has done that. It increased GST for New Zealanders. Decrease spending in key areas—yes the Government has done thatin a whole host of areas on a real terms per capita basis. This is a Government that does not actually want to do anything and does not want to confront the real issues that are facing New Zealanders. This is a Government that thinks a debate about changing the flag is more important than the looming dairy crisis. In fact it is not even looming any more; it has arrived.We have a major problem. There were 500 jobs lost at Fonterra. We have got 1100 jobs lost so far at Solid Energy with the prospect of more to go. There is 7.5 percent unemployment in Taranaki. Remember the days when the National Government was going on about how great Taranaki was? This was an icon of what provincial New Zealand regional New Zealand could be. Taranaki was highlighted there. There is 7.5 percent unemployment in Taranaki under this National Government and things are getting worse. That is the highest level of unemployment in Taranaki in 21 years and it has happened under this Government. We reached record low unemployment under the Labour Government and now we are seeing more and more people unemployed under this Government while Chris Bishop and the National Government are adopting their mantra of “Government should do nothing.”The biggest message in that 10-minute contribution was Chris Bishop’s saying that the idea that the Government should do something was preposterous and that the Government should in fact do nothing. There are 50000 more people unemployed today than when John Key became Prime Minister. That is one of the many legacies that this National Government will be leaving New Zealand. The Government’s priorities are all wrong. It wants to change the flag not fix the dairy crisis. The Government wants to put sun decks and $140000 televisions in head offices not deal with the housing crisis. The Government wants to pump up the Beehive salaries whilst turning a blind eye to the fact that unemployment is going up under this National Government. This is a Government that is breaking so many of the promises that it made to New Zealanders.Of course there was no more privatisation under National. The privatisation agenda has ended unless of course it is a State house or some land or it is all of those other things that the Government is selling off. Apparently that is not privatisation despite the fact that something that was owned by the Government is no longer going to be owned by it. Somehow under National that does not fit the definition of privatisation any more. Of course what we know about the National Government is that if it cannot sell it it will cut it; if it cannot cut it it will restructure it; if it cannot restructure it it will try to contract it out; and if it cannot contract it out well goodness knows what will happen then. The Government simply tries to ignore it. It is a Budget of broken promises.We spent a lot of the Budget debate talking about the surplus and then goodness me a surplus just sort of popped up. It was only a temporary surplus but it did pop up. Do you know what one of the biggest contributors to the surplus was? The underspend in education. The money that the Government had budgeted to spend on education it did not actually spend on education. That was one of the biggest contributors to this tiny little surplus which just popped up out of nowhere. The Government stopped spending money that was budgeted for education. Where did the Government stop spending it? The Government released this breakdown which accounted for about 40 percent of the underspend. Where is the rest of that money? Where is the rest of the money that the Government did not spend on education but that it had budgeted for? I have found out. I know where it is. It is in Investing in Educational Success.This is the flagship programme that the Government has in the education area and the Government is underspending on it. The Government cannot give the money away. It cannot give the money away for its flagship education programme. That is how the Government ekes out a surplus—by stopping spending money on health and education. These are the areas where New Zealanders know that money is sorely needed. This Government is so determined that it will eke out some kind of face-saving surplus for Bill English by underspending on education. I think that that is totally and utterly wrong and it says everything about the Government’s priorities.I want to talk about the sell-off of State housing because that will bite in an area like the Hutt Valley where we have a lot of State houses. It will hurt people in the Hutt Valley—and it is hurting themalready. What we are seeing is the wholesale sell-off or demolition of State houses throughout the Hutt Valley. In areas where there were high concentrations of State housing there is now vacant land—empty land. And what happens to that land? It gets sold off and new houses get built. Here is the real rort—and this is just amazing—the Government will not release the figures on this because it knows that they are so damning. The Government gave away over 100 houses in 4 months—literally gave them to a developer and said: “You develop and you give us back some houses.”The Government has now admitted that it is buying back the houses. So basically the Government gave away the land and the houses and what did it get back out of it? Absolutely nothing because the Government is now buying the houses back off the developer. How is that in any way a good use of taxpayers’ money? Of course the Government will not release the information—it is commercially sensitive. The prices are all commercially sensitive. The Government having given the developer all of the land and the houses that were previously on it which it then trucked off and used elsewhere—the taxpayer is now having to buy back a small percentage of the houses that exist on that land. How is that good? How is that possibly being accountable? How is that possibly justified?And that is happening not just in Pōmare; it is happening up and down New Zealand. When I think about these commercial geniuses in the National Government I tell you: private interests see them coming. Basically the housing developers see them coming because they know that they are going to make money. Rio Tinto sees them coming. Skycity sees them coming. It was $30 million for Rio Tinto. Skycity—goodness knows how much money it is finally going to get out of them. They see them coming—the commercial geniuses over there. Such good negotiators they are that every time Steven Joyce sits down for a meal the taxpayer ends up forking out more money. He is that good a commercial negotiator that the commercial sector—the private sector—sees him coming and it hooks more and more money out of him.This Budget is not good for New Zealand. It continues to overlook the very big issues that we have—the housing crisis. The average price to buy a house in Auckland will be $1 million within a short space of time. That is outrageous. It means that there is a whole generation of people who will not be able to buy houses in Auckland. That is something that the Government is ignoring—the lack of diversification in our export industries and the huge potential that exists were the Government willing to be more active and to be a partner to our export industries. There is enormous potential there. But no this Government is willing to look the other way. Of course it is willing to spend $14 million buying an apartment for someone to hang out in in New York but it is not willing to get in behind and back exporters who want to grow the export market. The Government is willing to allow contracts to companies overseas for significant Government procurements—that is the Government buying stuff—without even giving New Zealand manufacturers and New Zealand firms a look in. That is just wrong.There is so much opportunity in the New Zealand economy—so much opportunity to turn things round to create jobs to go back to those days when Governments produced a surplus when we paid back debt when we had record low unemployment and when people could actually afford to buy a house. Gosh what terrible days they were under the Labour Government! We could go back to those fantastic times for New Zealand if the Government were willing to take so many of the opportunities that exist before it. But it will not because as Chris Bishop has pointed out the National Government believes that Governments should do nothing—as he so clearly articulated in his 10-minute speech which said everything about the National Government’s priorities. The Government should do nothing—the Government should do nothing. I disagree. I think that if we are going to have Governments Governments should do something. They should make sure that the conditions are right for job creation for people to be in work for people to be buying houses for housing to be affordable and for our export industries to thrive. I believe those are functions that the Government should undertake. Not under this National Government—that is not happening and New Zealanders are being short-changed.But New Zealanders are seeing through it. New Zealanders have had enough. New Zealanders want to see the Government stepping up and they are not seeing that. They are growing tired of the National Government and they are growing tired of the arrogance of the National Government. They want a Government with vision and they know that they have not got one. Well I tell you what: they will get one soon because we are only 2 years away from an election and there will be a change of Government in 2017. We will deliver for New Zealand the prosperous economic conditions that will create jobs that will increase incomes and that will give New Zealanders a foot on to the property ladder so that they can buy their own homes and so that we can see our social services like health and education really thrive.BRETT HUDSON (National): It is a pleasure to speak on this Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill and the Imprest Supply (Second for 2015/16) Bill. This Government has been all about forging a resilient and adaptive economy and it is working extraordinarily well. What we have seen over the last 4 years for instance is 194000 further jobs created—69000 of those jobs in the last 12 months—and we have got a forecast of a further 128000 jobs across the next 4 years. The outlook for growth is stable at a moderate level of between 2 and 2.5 percent despite the softening conditions we have seen in commodity markets particularly in the dairy market. Wage rises have been well ahead of inflation. Average wages grew at about 3.6 percent in the last year; inflation was a mere 0.3 of 1 percent. Average wages have grown 15 percent over the last 5 years. The average wage has risen to $57000 which is $10000 a year more than when this Government took office in 2008.Interest rates are low and will remain lower for longer. There is talk about potentially another cut in the not too distant future. But if we look at the record of the previous Labour Government there when Labour exited it had interest rates running hard trying to reach 11 percent and actually winning the race. Under this Government they are low and they will remain lower for longer. Under this Government we have also seen now 5 years of positive household savings. That is the first time the country’s seen that in 20 years. That is all a good-news story. It is good news for the past few years and it is still a good-news story looking forward. We have developed a resilient and adaptive economy.But if we listen to the Opposition members all they want to do is talk down New Zealand and its prospects. One only has to look across to the Opposition leadership seats to see doom and gloom. In fact the only person smiling on the Labour benches is Grant Robertson because he sees his leadership hopes rekindled with every day and every speech that Andrew Little makes. I think that Gene Simmons probably agrees with him.In this Budget this Government has delivered on its pledge for New Zealand for the next years to come including a $790 million package to help reduce hardship to the children and their families in greatest need. It includes a $25-a-week increase to benefits for families with children. That is a $25-a-week increase. That is the first increase to real benefits in 43 years.Sarah Dowie: How much?BRETT HUDSON: In 43 years. And in 43 years there have been two Labour administrations. Neither of those did that—neither of them. We had long years some might say insufferable years under those two Labour administrations and neither of them were raising real benefits as this Government has done.But we recognise that the way out of hardship is through work. We do recognise that low-income families can find times tough. So we have included in the Budget assistance for them too—$12.50 a week for low-income families who are receiving Working for Families subsidies but not benefits. We have also increased childcare support allowances for low-income families. These initiatives are targeted at around 160000 families covering approximately 300000 children. This is from a Government that cares a Government that is prepared to tackle things that are often seen as intractable problems and that takes real measures to help those in need.Along with that we recognise that New Zealanders are living longer. We want them to live healthier lives as well as longer lives. So we have increased health spending by $1.7 billion. The annual spend in health is just a shade under $16 billion. In education there is a further $680 million because we understand and appreciate that if we want a better life for our children in the future that effort starts at home with the way they are raised at a young age and its continued strength and it is really reinforced through good education. So there is another $680 million in the compulsory education sector and that brings that spend to over $10 billion—in fact almost $11 billion a year. There are significant reductions in ACC levies helping to reduce costs for businesses helping to reduce costs for people and believe me a lot of New Zealanders have experienced and are still looking forward to the reduction in the ACC levies on their next motor vehicle registration.As well as that having heard lots of noise from the other side about property speculation we took steps to strengthen the tax rules on property investment the tax rules that have existed in this country for decades. We have applied a brightline test to make sure the courts and the Inland Revenue Department can more readily address those people who are speculating with investment properties but what we did was strengthen what was already there.There could be a number of reasons as to why people might say to themselves that the Opposition is not fit to govern. Formulating public policy on the basis of what someone’s surname sounds like is reason enough alone for the Opposition to remain on the Opposition benches for decades to come. [Interruption] But beyond that—it might be based on analysis but it was poorly directed policy I can tell you that. So if that is not reason enough on its own that Opposition members should stay there for decades to come they do not even understand the existing tax provisions in New Zealand. There is already a capital gains tax in New Zealand for people who speculate on property and what this Government has done is strengthen the measures to make sure that it can be applied more readily in court and by the Inland Revenue Department. And members opposite oppose it. They scream black and blue about property speculation and then oppose measures to do something about it. Well that is just simply a party that is not fit to govern at all.Along with this we have been doing a lot around building this resilient and adaptive economy to make sure it is diversified and we have seen the results of that. So over the past year the information and communications technology sector now comprises about 1.7 percent of GDP. On its own the information and communications technology sector is one-third of the dairy sector and we appreciate that dairying is going through a tough time. The information and communications technology sector has grown 9 percent per year since 2008 and now it is a third of dairying at 1.7 percent of GDP. International education is $2.85 billion a year and 1.33 percent of GDP. The wine industry wine exports is $1.4 billion. That is up 8 percent over the last year. It is about 0.7 percent of GDP and growing. High-tech manufacturing has gone from $139 million in 1991 to $1.4 billion in 2012. Tourism is now 7 percent of GDP. It is larger than dairying. Beef exports—we have heard a lot of people talk about how although dairy is down beef is up. It is at $3.1 billion. It has gone up 34 percent over the last year alone.I would like to spend a couple of minutes just within this diversified economy talking about information and communications technology. We have announced in the Budget an additional $360 million around ultra-fast broadband and the Rural Broadband Initiative broadband infrastructure. There is $100 million in a contestable fund to expand rural broadband coverage across the country $50 million to address some mobile black spots and an additional $210 million to expand the coverage of the ultra-fast broadband programme to 80 percent of the population. Together when they are complete we will be covering almost 100 percent of the population but probably about 49 percent of the geography which is why we have announced that $50 million to deal with some black spots. It is a real issue given the geography of New Zealand. That will bring our investment to broadband infrastructure in New Zealand to around $2 billion.What we are doing is investing in capability for New Zealand businesses to grow to employ more people and to take their goods and services to markets across the country and around the world. What we have seen there if you look at what ultra-fast broadband has already achieved—look at Timaru. There was a software development company in Timaru that before ultra-fast broadband employed one person; now it employs 12. It is able to deliver its services to customers not only across New Zealand but outside of New Zealand. And now the information and communications technology sector is the third-largest sector in Timaru. That is a fantastic result.Or in Whangarei where a doctor used to have to book clients into the local hospital for retina scans. He now does them in his practice and sends the results over the internet to the hospital. It is much easier and quicker for him and better for the patients. It is a far better health service. Or the panel beater in the North Shore who has got a 15 percent productivity improvement by taking photos and videos of the damage sending them through to the assessor getting the job done and approved much quicker and getting the customer out the door.This is a good Budget for New Zealand. It is a great economy that we have developed for New Zealand. It is one we intend to continue to develop. I commend the bills to the House.A party vote was called for on the question That the Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill be now read a third time and the Imprest Supply (Second for 2015/16) Bill be now read a second time.Ayes 63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 58New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12.Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill read a third time.Imprest Supply (Second for 2015/16) Bill read a second time.Imprest Supply (Second for 2015/16) BillThird ReadingHon NIKKI KAYE (Minister for ACC) on behalf of theMinister of Finance: I move That the Imprest Supply (Second for 2015/16) Bill be now read a third time.Bill read a third time.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) BillFirst ReadingHon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Housing): I move That the Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services Committee to consider this bill. This Government is continuing its commitment to improve the social housing system to support more vulnerable New Zealanders with the Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill.This bill achieves three things. It authorises designated Ministers to enter into social housing reform transactions in the name of Housing New Zealand Corporation and its subsidiaries. It clarifies that the Public Works Act 1981 offer-back provisions do not apply to land held by Housing New Zealand Ltd. It also preserves this treatment for designated Ministers so that just as the offer-back provisions do not apply and have never applied to land held by Housing New Zealand Ltd they do not apply to Ministers acting in Housing New Zealand’s name. The bill confirms the Crown’s authority to administer Crown land that is held under the Housing Act 1955.The primary purpose of this bill is to enable the Social Housing Reform Programme to progress. The bill is needed firstly to provide Ministers with statutory authority to undertake the transfer of Housing New Zealand properties to community housing providers; and secondly to provide Housing New Zealand with the statutory mandate to support the transfers. Housing New Zealand’s guiding legislation evolved to fit the existing social housing system and this Government has decided that the existing social housing system is not best serving the needs of vulnerable New Zealanders.The objectives of the Social Housing Reform Programme are firstly to ensure that people who need housing support can access it and receive social housing services that meet their needs; secondly ensure that social housing is of the right size configuration and quality and in the right areas for those households that need it; thirdly help social housing tenants to independence as appropriate; fourthly encourage and develop a more diverse ownership of social housing with more innovation and responsiveness to its tenants and its communities; and fifthly help increase the supply of affordable housing especially in Auckland.Legislative changes support these objectives and in particular the fourth objective to encourage and develop a more diverse ownership of social housing with more innovation and responsiveness to tenants and communities. The Social Housing Reform Programme includes the transfer of Housing New Zealand houses to community housing providers to support the development of the community housing sector.The proposed initial transactions involve the transfer of 1000 to 2000 Housing New Zealand houses to registered community housing providers. The transactions process is new both for the Government in terms of transferring substantial numbers of social houses and of course for those community housing providers. Consequently the process is proceeding in a measured way so that potential participants have the opportunity to prepare. This bill supports the programme by amending the Housing Corporation Act 1974 to provide designated Ministers with the authority to transfer Housing New Zealand Corporation properties. Designated Ministers will be able to do this by entering into contracts and performing other acts in the name of Housing New Zealand.Along with transferring properties the bill enables the designated Ministers to enter into contracts to ensure that Housing New Zealand provides transitional services to transferees to ensure that tenants’ needs are looked after during any transfer process. We will ensure that transaction processes work smoothly for current tenants. There are safeguards in the process. Following the exercise of the transaction mandate Ministers are required to publicly notify the general nature and purpose of its use by means of a statement published in the Gazette and presented to the House of Representatives. This provides transparency allowing Parliament and the public to see that its exercise is consistent with the purposes outlined in the legislation.The offer-back provisions set out in the Public Works Act 1981 do not apply to land held by Housing New Zealand and the bill ensures this position is carried forward by amending the Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Act 1992. This amendment ensures that Ministers’ use of the transaction mandate to transfer properties on behalf of Housing New Zealand does not raise any doubts about whether the Public Works Act applies.It is important to provide certainty on this point to avoid delay to the social housing reform process. This amendment does not alter any existing rights as it confirms the current legal position that the offer-back regime does not apply. If there are rights of a first refusal for iwi in relation to Housing New Zealand Corporation properties under Treaty settlement legislation these legal interests are preserved after these changes. We are going through a thorough process to deal with these.The final aspect of this bill is an amendment to the Housing Act 1955 to clear up a longstanding issue not directly related to the social housing programme. This amendment is a technical amendment that gives a designated Minister the exclusive power to administer State housing land that is identified by the Minister in a Gazette notice. State housing land is land that is owned by the Crown and is set aside under the Housing Act. Some of this land is managed by Housing New Zealand on behalf of the Crown and some is managed by the Crown itself.The Crown and Housing New Zealand agree that the Crown should have the authority to transact State housing land that Housing New Zealand does not manage but the legislation setting out this authority is unclear. This bill clears up that matter. This amendment does not apply to land that is owned by Housing New Zealand. This Government remains committed to improving the lives of tenants in social housing and this bill supports that objective. I commend this bill to the House.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Labour opposes this bill. We will not be voting for it. It gives Minister Bennett and Minister English extraordinary powers to sell State houses to personally negotiate contracts “on any terms and conditions” that the Ministers wish and to take any action to facilitate the sales process. It allows the Ministers the power to sell off State houses without any reference to Housing New Zealand’s board its chief executive or its legislation. The bill will exempt the Ministers from all relevant enactments including the objectives and functions of Housing New Zealand for example social responsibility environmental responsibility and good financial oversight—things that clearly the Ministers do not want to be bound by. The Ministers are not constrained by “any rule of law to the contrary relating to capacity or validity of acts.” It also exempts the Ministers from any legal challenge except judicial review.These provisions especially given this Government’s track record should be ringing alarm bells loud and clear. National wants the freedom to do dirty deals flogging off billions of dollars’ worth of publicly owned land and housing. It does not want to be bothered by pesky public servants or the rule of law. We know that the Government is currently having secret meetings with merchant bankers public-private partnership investors and property developers who want to get their hands on these valuable public assets. The Government refuses to release the details about whom it is meeting to discuss the sales with.This bill is the latest move by a Government that is desperate to offload State houses and keep this troubled and deeply unpopular policy afloat. If people needed any reminding of this Government’s propensity to blur the ethical lines in its governance let me remind people about a story that appeared on 6 June in New Zealand Herald about the fact that Housing New Zealand Corporation paid $1.6 million to Andrew Body a public-private partnership investment consultant to help it sell State houses. First what did the Government do? It engaged Mr Body to help it develop the policy to sell State houses through the Housing Shareholders’ Advisory Group and then later on an advisory panel to help form Government policy on social housing.Part-way through those appointments Housing New Zealand contracted Andrew Body to conduct work in the asset transfer work stream. So having developed the policy it then hired Andrew Body to help it move ahead with selling the houses even though he was already working for an international public-private partnership investor. When Housing New Zealand was asked about this apparent conflict of interest it hid the information and refused to release it publicly under the Official Information Act. It took the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment which was caught out telling the truth to respond to an Official Information Act request by releasing the information that made it very clear that there was on the face of it a clear conflict of interest in the engagement of Andrew Bodyin this work.Andrew Body was paid $1.6 million by this Government in a series of contracts to develop the policy and then advise it on selling off State houses. There was a clear conflict of interest and Housing New Zealand hid it from the public. This State house sell-off policy of Bill English is deeply unpopular and the most recent opinion poll showed that 75 percent of New Zealanders—and actually 60 percent of National Party voters—oppose the sale of State houses to the Gold Coast company Horizon Housing which is interested in picking up these State houses. It is a deeply unpopular policy. But no wonder—this Government has allowed itself to be diddled by Rio Tinto in relation to Tīwai Point by Warner Bros by Skycity and by Saudi businessman Hamood Al Ali Khalaf. What a roll-call of shame. This Government has incredible commercial acumen—what fantastic deals it does on behalf of the New Zealand taxpayer!Given this record of negotiating bum deals for New Zealand it is a bit of a worry that Minister English and Minister Bennett are basicallyasking with this bill for a free rein to hock off billions of dollars worth of publicly owned land and housing. Not only is this Government an utterly incompetent commercial negotiator but it has brought the ethics of Wall Street into the Government at the highest levels. The Saudi sheep scandal has shown that it is willing to blow millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on dubious schemes and then lie to cover its tracks. Now Paula Bennett and Bill English want the unfettered power to flog off billions of dollars of land and housing to their Cabinet club mates. This is sickening and Labour will be opposing this bill.Bill English may want his political legacy to be the sale of thousands of State houses to property developers merchant bankers and overseas companies but it is time he let this policy go. New Zealanders want State housing to be there to guarantee a decent roof over the heads of the most vulnerable families just like the Prime Minister and his mother enjoyed in the 1960s when Kiwi taxpayers gave them a decent roof over their heads. It gave the Prime Minister a start in life that benefited him but apparently according to the National Party that is no longer good enough for New Zealanders in the 21st century.This policy has been a dog since the word go. First National said it was building up local community housing providers and that is why it wanted to transfer State housing. But now Paula Bennett and Bill English say they want to sell State houses to only large organisations that can spend tens of millions of dollars and buy hundreds of houses in one go effectively eliminating the entire New Zealand community housingsector from the whole process. It makes a mockery of what they said.Bill English said that the Salvation Army was lining up to buy these houses and if it was not the Sallies it would be iwi. Well the Salvation Army made it very clear that it did not believe that this policy would benefit tenants and it ruled itself out of buying these houses. Iwi leaders said that they would buy these houses only if they got them for nothing. Meanwhile the National Party said that these houses would go only to non-profit groups. That is what Paula Bennett said. But as soon as the Salvation Army pulled the plug on this deal Bill English was forced to concede that actually banks and property developers would be in on the game as well.National has said—and I think Paula Bennett just said something similar in her contribution tonight—that community groups would do a better job than Housing New Zealand. National has said that somehow people in the local community and voluntary sector would understand the needs of social housing tenants better than Housing New Zealand. Now apparently the Government is talking to organisations in Australia who are somehow going to understand the needs of State housing tenants in Invercargill Palmerston North Timaru Wanganui—the Australians are going to be able to do a better job than New Zealanders. Well how does that work? How does that work?This Government is yet to provide a scrap of evidence that the people to whom it is intending to flog off State houses will do a better job of looking after State house tenants than Housing New Zealand can. We asked Paula Bennett under the Official Information Act for the data. We asked her for the evidence. What is the evidence base of this policy in the lines that the Minister is trotting out to justify hocking off billions of dollars of State houses? The answer that came back from Paula Bennett’s office was that there is no such evidence. That says it all.This bill puts Minister Bennett and Minister English above the law. There is a very good reason why Ministers are subject to the rule of law and to all the normal legal and constitutional provisions which put checks and balances around them especially when those Ministers are conducting negotiations to sell off huge public assets that have been paid for by generations of New Zealanders. There is a good reason for that. This bill leaves the process wide open to corruption. This Government should take that seriously. There are reasons why those provisions are there. They should not be cleared away.MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): It is a pleasure to rise to speak at the first reading of the Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill. I do not believe for one second that that member Phil Twyford actually believes in what he just said. Can I quote Mr Twyford? Mr Twyford said: “Tenants with high and complex needs may be better off being transferred to a community housing provider …”. I do not believe for a second that the member Phil Twyford believes in what he just said. Mr Twyford said: “What does this bill do? It shifts housing stock out of the hands of Housing New Zealand into the community housing sector. This is something that … Labour is perfectly comfortable with …”. So it was all right back then you were comfortable with it then but not now.If I can I would like to go back to that period up to the election in 2014 to think about the pledges that the parties gave in campaigning and to think about the mandate this Government has with this policy around social housing. If we look at our National Party pledges the first one was to free up land for new sections. I know that in my electorate we have done exactly that. With the Land Use Recovery Plan we have been able to free up land which has increased supply which has equalled demand. When you look at statistics like annual house price inflation New Zealand has 7.5 percent Canterbury has 5.5 percent and “Waimak” has 3.5 percent. We are the third-biggest district in the South Island—we have just overtaken Invercargill—and we are the third fastest - growing electorate by population yet we have only 3.5 percent annual house price inflation. That is because like I am referring to our housing policy going into the election was about freeing up land for new sections.The next pledge was about keeping interest rates low. We know that we have some of the lowest interest rates in 50 years.Tracey Martin: What’s that got to do with State housing?MATT DOOCEY: Well I am getting to that. I am getting to that. The third pledge was about introducing the KiwiSaver HomeStart package which we have done. That is three out of three.Tracey Martin: State housing?MATT DOOCEY: Stay with me—three out of three. And here we move into the fourth pledge: to reform the social housing sector facilitating a shift from State housing to a range of new social housing providers. We pledged our housing portfolio and our promises we got the mandate from the New Zealand people at the last general election we are sticking with it and we are delivering it unlike Mr Twyford who says what he wants and then backtracks on it. What we have done is we have clearly set out that path at the election and at the first opportunity that we have had to deliver it in Budget 2015 that is exactly what we have delivered: social housing reforms. The reforms allowed an extra 3500 New Zealanders to gain access to housing and provided extra wraparound services for vulnerable Kiwis who will get extra support around education training employment mental health and alcohol and drugs to support them into independence on top of the Support for Children in Hardship Bill. The list goes on because what we have done is we have stuck with our promises. The people of New Zealand trust us and have confidence in us to deliver what is right for the people and that is exactly what we are doing because we listen to people we care for them and we are the working peoples’ party.When you look at statistics from Housing New Zealand at the moment when you look at one-bedroom houses there is a 25 percent demand with only a 9 percent supply—25 percent demand; 9 percent supply. When you look at three-bedroom houses there is a 24 percent demand with 43 percent supply. You can see where there are big houses there is only a small number of people in them and the housing is not meeting the demand. It is about the right house for the right people at the right time in the right location. That is what we are working towards—a systemic approach.If those members talk about housing they may want to talk about the Red Army. They are not talking about the Chinese and they are not even talking about the Canadians. It is the reds under the bed. They go to bed every night holding their copies of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx under their pillows dreaming of the 1950s the 1960s the 1970s and of State intervention. They are going to bed with great dreams of State intervention as if they have forgotten about the revolution of the liberal market economy. That is where we are. We are in a mixed economy of care—a mixed economy of care where we have private provision Government provision community provision and NGO provision. It is flexible and it gives people choice because what we do on this side of the House is we back communities. We believe in big communities and to all those innovative community organisations: we believe in you. We are here to support you and the aspiration you provide for your tenants to give them vision and to give them hope.The Social Housing Reform Programme—when you look at some of the statistics 3650 people assessed as high needs are waiting to be on the list for social housing. It is not working. Things had to change and it is right that they are. I am proud that I am part of a Government that is sticking up for people and putting people first. That is what this is about. Thirteen hundred tenants from Housing New Zealand have applied to transfer to better houses that suit their needs. A third of Housing New Zealand properties are in the wrong place and are the wrong size. The tenants are becoming more complex. A third of them are sole parent families with children. Over 20 percent are over 65 years old. What we need to do is think through with community housing providers about how they provide new innovative ways to support the complex needs of their tenants.What we know is that we will be looking to transfer 1500 houses with existing tenants and tenancies as part of this mandated bill. When we look at the regulatory impact statement it outlines clearly two options. Option one is to ensure that the Crown has the authority to transact Housing New Zealand Corporation’s stock by means of a new asset transfer provision. The preferred legal mechanism is a transaction mandate. That is exactly what this bill is about: a transactional mandate. Option two is to commence the programme underneath the existing legislative framework of Housing New Zealand. The regulatory impact statement came back for this bill about the transactional mandate and said: “There is no or minor impact on tenants as a result of selecting one option … Option one provides benefits to potential bidders as it provides certainty that the transfers can proceed.” It showed that if we had gone for the impact analysis on option two it would not have worked.What we know is that at the end of the day the Social Housing Reform Programme has a range of objectives. The first objective is ensuring that people who need housing support can access it and receive social housing services that meet their needs. I have already talked about the statistics of the range of bedroom numbers that are not meeting the needs of the people on the waiting list. It is also about those people who need wraparound services: employment training and education. What we are trying to do is move people into independence. We know people benefit from being independent. They become productive members of society. It is not only about getting them into employment; it is about getting them into independent housing. It is a great bill and I commend it to the House. Thank you.CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I just want to pick up on a couple of things that Matt Doocey said. Firstly he was saying that my colleague Mr Twyford does not believe a word of what he was saying. Well I can tell Mr Doocey he does because he was in charge of writing the notes and everything that was written down is what he believes unlike that speaker who was reading from a piece of paper and who knew nothing about what he was talking about.Secondly I just want to say that the other thing that Matt Doocey said was that we on this side of the House are communists for opposing this bill. Well can I just say that he must then be accusing the 75 percent of New Zealanders who disagree with the selling off of State houses. He must be saying they are also communists. I am not sure about how the 75 percent of those New Zealanders feel and actually 60 percent of National voters oppose the Government’s plan to sell off State houses. So 60 percent of National voters according to Matt Doocey are communists as well.I think it is very clear from what I am already saying that we oppose this bill. Our biggest concern here is that this bill gives Ministers English and Bennett extraordinary powers to take direct personal control of selling State houses exempting Ministers from normal legal requirements and leaving the sale process wide open for corruption. New Zealanders have a real interest in what is going on here. So of course we are not going to support the idea that those two Ministers be given extraordinary powers to make decisions without consulting or going through the normal process.I want to just take this back to my own electorate and say that the No. 1 issue coming through my office doors—and I am sure this is the same for every electorate MP in this room—is housing. Firstly for that Government to say that we do not have a housing crisis in this country is absolute rubbish and it knows it. Secondly we cannot pretend that State housing is not part of the solution here. What I have been really disappointed in is the fact that that Government has been so negligent that in order to meet its own ideological philosophical aspirations—which is: do not own these houses because it does not believe that the State should have a role in this—it would allow these houses to continually become more and more run down under its watch to the point where we have public cases in the media where the coroner is stating that the No. 1 reason for the deaths of children is actually the housing that they are living in. That Government is responsible for that.So here we are looking at a piece of legislation that will enable the National Government to sell off our State housing but in the lead-up to this it has been doing everything that it can to make it look like the State cannot manage the housing that it has. It has been deliberately doing a bad job of managing the housing that we have so that it adds weight to its case and so that it can look like it is justified in selling it off. No one can do a better job of providing housing for New Zealanders who need it—the most vulnerable who need it—than New Zealandersactually. So the fact that the Government is even looking at selling off these houses to Australians has everyone in this country rolling their eyes shaking their heads and shrugging their shoulders because how can Australians look after our most vulnerable take over our Housing New Zealand stock and do a better job than we can? It is an indictment on that Government that there have been so many cases in the media recently about the state of the Housing New Zealand stock that we do have.I want to talk about a couple of cases in my own electorate that are actually that Government’s responsibility to do something about and it has done nothing. There is a case where we have a young boy who is 10 years old and has a disability. He cannot get inside or outside of his house without being carried by his parents. The house cannot be modified because of the way it is and the land that it is on. They cannot get a transfer despite the fact that we have been supporting them to get one because there is not enough stock—they cannot get a transfer. That child now has to be home schooled because the mother cannot carry that kid inside and outside the house every day. That is what happens when we do not have the Housing New Zealand stock that is required.There are thousands—and I have seen this through my own Official Information Act requests—of New Zealanders every month applying for Housing New Zealand houses but how many of them are making it on to the Housing New Zealand waiting list? Less than one-fifth of them are actually making it on to that list. Are they applying despite the fact that they do not need it? Are they applying even though they do not need it?Sue Moroney: No.CARMEL SEPULONI: No. They need it. It is not a case of people going: “Oh where can I get an easy deal? I’m going to put my name forward for a Housing New Zealand house.” They actually need it but less than one-fifth of them are actually getting on to the Housing New Zealand waiting list. That Government is trying to make out that there is not that much of a demand but we know that the number of people who are applying is not equating to the number of people who are on the list.In recent months we have seen examples of where the Government has actually had the opportunity to pick up more houses but it has chosen not to. One of those examples was in the Waterview area where a number of Housing New Zealand houses were purchased for the Waterview Connection which we support but were then no longer required. So 31 of those houses were no longer required for the project and who then had the first right to purchase those houses? Housing New Zealand could have purchased them back but despite the fact there are thousands of New Zealanders wanting Housing New Zealand houses and trying to get their names on to the list did Housing New Zealand take up that opportunity to purchase those houses back? No it did not—it did not. It allowed them to go out for private sale despite the fact that Government members—Nick Smith and everyone else—are constantly talking in the House about the fact that they are doing whatever they can to be part of ensuring that they are meeting the housing demand. Well actually they are not. They want it to go private. They want to have no hand in this whatsoever.And do you know what? It is history repeating itself. So many New Zealanders have forgotten this and we have to keep reminding them of it: the National Government sold thousands of Housing New Zealand houses back in the 1990s. Then when Labour got into Government in 1999 the first thing it had to do was try to rebuild that stock. In the process there were a whole lot of houses that were run down as well. We had 9 years to try to rebuild the stock and try to fix up those houses and maybe we did not get to the point where we could have or we wanted to get to but we did actually try to rebuild that stock.And now here we are in that same predicament with a National Government that has not learnt from its mistakes and has not changed its ideology in any way. Here we are—history is repeating itself and the Government is selling off Housing New Zealand houses again. Then what is going to happen is that when National’s time is up and New Zealanders decide that actually they have had enough of a National Government and what that means for this country and Labour gets back in with whichever coalition partners we have at that time—what are we going to have to do? We are going to have to rebuild that stock and then try to do some work around the maintenance of our Housing New Zealand houses that have been neglected by the National Government.Selling off our Housing New Zealand houses is not the answer to the housing crisis that we have at the moment. I think that actually the National Government—all of its backbench MPs all of its Ministers—should be embarrassed about what it is doing. We have a major housing crisis in this country and it is not just about those who cannot afford to buy houses. It is about those who cannot afford to even rent a house. It is about those who cannot afford to get out of the garage that they are living in because they do not have enough money to rent a house. They cannot afford to get out of the car that they are living in because they cannot afford to rent a house. Yet that National Government would rather sell off the Housing New Zealand stock that we have and take away one of the few opportunities that New Zealanders have to get into affordable housing. I think the Government should be ashamed of itself and we will not be supporting this bill.ALFRED NGARO (National): It is a privilege to stand and speak on the Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill in its first reading. I think that the previous speaker Carmel Sepuloni probably needs to do a little bit more homework before she actually launches off in her speech. Here is just a little bit of a history lesson right? Let us take the housing stock out in Glen Innes for instance. We are out there working in Glen Innes—that is right; there is a little bit silence of the lambs at the moment—and here is the evidence that shows that right? So we could talk about the rhetoric but let us talk about the facts of what actually happened.Out in Glen Innes there are around about 2500 State houses. The stock of houses in that area of Glen Innes was some of the worst and under the Labour Government the previous Government in 9 years not once did they go out to repair to maintain or even to rebuild the housing stock there.Kris Faafoi: Oh that’s rubbish.ALFRED NGARO: No it is not rubbish; it is actual fact. Why do I tell you this? You can talk to guys like Pat Snedden who are part of the Tāmaki Transformation Programme which actually started in 2007. It was an idea that came to fruition in 2008—set up under Helen Clark. At that time also Pat Snedden was helping to head that project. I as a community representative came along and actually gave some commentary around how they could engage with communities. So it is not rubbish; it is actual fact.It started under the Labour Government. Glen Innes was the worst stock of repairs and maintenance of any State housing in the whole of New Zealand. So before that member launches off and talks about the shameful record she needs to go back and have a look at her own party’s history because then she will see that under the Labour Government not once in 9 years did it actually rebuild that stock.So let us talk about what we are doing here. What we are doing here is this: we are taking the opportunity to be able to engage in the social housing sector. This bill is called the Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill.Kris Faafoi: You’re just selling them. Just say it.ALFRED NGARO: We call it transaction mandate. Let us use another word that maybe even Kris Faafoi may have heard. It is called the devolution of stock OK? Where did that word come from? Let us use the word “devolution”. Why? I know you will know that because when the Hon Steve Maharey was the Minister for Social Development he set up a thing called the Care and Protection Blueprint and I just happened to be part of that committee. On the Blueprint committee—that is right Mr Deputy Speaker I know you are attentively listening to this—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Do not bring me into it.ALFRED NGARO: In the Blueprint the conversation that was there was in fact this: do we trust the social sector to actually provide services that as a Government we cannot provide in regard to extended and extra services that are above and beyond our core services as a Government? The answer was yes we should do that.So devolution both in terms of housing stock and in the delivery of services was talked about way back then. We put together what was called a “blueprint plan”. That plan went to Cabinet and here is the one reason it did not go all the way. It was because the mandate was not given by Cabinet at that time under the Labour Government to trust in the socialsector to provide services that it could not provide. In other words they were not given the mandate. They were not given the mandate. So there you go. There is a little bit of a history lesson for you.Kris Faafoi: Here’s a history lesson: you’re selling the houses.ALFRED NGARO: So here is the reason why this bill is a point of difference Mr Faafoi. This bill is a point of difference because it simply does this: it says that actually we trust our social services. We trust the Housing Foundation with Brian Donnelly. We trust Habitat for Humanity. We trust VisionWest Community Trust and Lisa Woolley. Why? Because they deliver above and beyond what we are able to deliver. These are social services that have actually said to us: “Actually give us the opportunity to prove that we can do this.”So I think actually what this bill does is it shows that not only it is giving a statutory mandate to our Ministers but it is forming a relationship of trust in our social services and especially in the social housing sector the third sector to provide these services that are much needed in our communities. So we know what this does first and foremost.There are some issues of concern. I want to raise them because they have come out in some of the speeches and they are in regard to the relationships with iwi. We know there has been talk about that. It is important to note that in this bill it does not in any way change the first right of refusal rights that iwi may have over some Housing New Zealand properties. We know there has been some concern that is there.Denis O’Rourke: That’s not what it says.ALFRED NGARO: It is in the bill. We are keen to make sure that that relationship is maintained. We are working through a thorough process with iwi in Tauranga and in Invercargill to establish what rights and interests they have and we will deal with them in good faith. So that is one of the areas first and foremost.Denis O’Rourke: Get it right. He hasn’t got that right.ALFRED NGARO: We want to make sure just in case because on the Opposition—and unfortunately even with Mr O’Rourke—there is what we would call the manufacturing of crisis. It is all doom and gloom. It is only about the things that could go wrong not about the things that could go right which is what this Government is about.Let us talk about some other issues. This bill does not apply to Crown land. It only relates to land owned by Housing New Zealand. There was some concern that was raised there. No one’s rights under the Public Works Act are changing. The bill simply clarifies that the offer-back provisions of the Public Works Act have never applied to Housing New Zealand property. Again we want to sort of dispel the myths of doom and gloom that are coming from the Opposition as well.So what are the things that we think are really important in regard to the social housing issues? What are some of the achievements? While we talk about what the bill is doing let us look at some of the things that we have achieved so far in social housing. In June 2015 quarterly social housing register figures showed that the number of people on the register has decreased. That is right—by 1299 from the June 2014 quarter to 4541. That is a 22 percent decrease. I know that members of the public who are listening out there may want to hear these facts and figures. It is a 22 percent decrease.The Ministry of Social Development Housing New Zealand and the community housing providers are more intensively working to match people to houses that suit their needs. Here is that point of difference: we know that core services by the Government are what we are responsible for but where we go above and beyond—and this is that relationship of trust that is formed with social housing providers in which they can provide that.So it is important that we are matching people to houses that suit their needs and in fact maybe even as the previous speaker Mrs Sepuloni talked about the needs of those who potentially have disabilities. Social housing providers that have a particular niche are able to provide for those specific needs as well. And so the number of housing offers made and accepted increased to 1590 in the June 2015 quarter compared with 1522 in the June 2014 quarter as well.Let us talk about the tenancy reviews of those who are paying market rent and who are able to sustain private accommodation. They make more homes available for those who are more in need. I have seen this for myself. It is a really challenging space because it is almost as if the rhetoric that is being championed by the Opposition—Kris Faafoi: Don’t go there.ALFRED NGARO: —is “a State house for life”. I will go there because that is what I hear. It is almost like “a State house for life” you know? There is that sense of entitlement that they build into the houses and into the homes and even into the hearts of people who are in our communities.What we are saying is this: a State house is a provision for need in the circumstances that a family or an individual may find themselves in. But our belief is this—our belief which we will champion on this side is to help people to a sense of independence so that they can be self-determining in their future and for their families as well. So that is why we think it is important.From tenancy reviews of those paying market rent who are able to sustain private accommodation and from over 150 households who have moved into private market rents 11 tenants have purchased their own homes. That may not sound like much Mr O’Rourke but 11 tenants—we think actually there are 11 lives and 11 families who have been changed by this opportunity as well. We have also paid out around $380000 in housing support products to 204 people providing assistance for things like their bond moving costs and letting fees.I look forward to this bill going to the select committee. I look forward to the opportunity for submissions to be heard where we can actually hear from others who are out there and the providers. I also acknowledge the championing of our Minister for Social Housing and our Ministers who are actually out here because at the heart of this bill it is about the devolution of trust. It is about ensuring that actually in the third sector it has the ability to be able to reach and meet the needs that the poor Government cannot. We believe this is actually a move that is in the right direction. I commend this bill to the select committee and to the House.METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. Tēnā koutou katoa o te Whare. This bill has two very simple purposes. The first is to help with Nick Smith’s ridiculous bungling over his attempts to sell public land to private interests land that should be offered back to Māori first. The bill does try to find some way of fixing that big mistake. The second—more important I think—purpose is that it is designed to make two Government Ministers the sole ownersin effect of an $18 billion asset that has been built by generations of New Zealanders for the many generations to follow. Under this bill these two Ministers can sell off any amount of that asset that they choose to anyone they like for any price that they decide is OK with zero oversight from the rest of New Zealand.This second and primary purpose of the bill—the selling off of an $18 billion State asset—makes it the largest State asset sale that this country has ever seen. Not only is this bill designed to facilitate the sale of this multibillion-dollar asset; it is a sale to anyone from anywhere. There are no constraints on these two Ministers as to how they choose to flog it off. It is a massive transfer of New Zealand’s housing wealth potentially sold off for a song to Australia to the UK to America to Canada—to whomever the two property-owning Ministers decide it is in their best interest to sell it to—and there is no mandate for this. There is no mandate for this asset sale. In the latest poll as we have heard New Zealanders are overwhelmingly opposed to the sale of State housing to an Australian entity. They want this State housing kept in New Zealand hands but this Government wants to be able to sell it off to anybody it likes.The problem for the Ministers is that John Key at the beginning of this year very grandly announced that he was going to sell 2000 State houses in 2015 and sell 8000 State houses before the election in 2017 but he failed to tell that to agencies like the Salvation Army which he had then expected to just front up with the cash to buy them. The Salvation Army did the economic analysis after being sprung on by this announcement and found that actually the cost of maintaining the housing—housing that has been neglected and degraded because of years of deferred and poor maintenance—made the whole concept of these thousands of houses being sold ludicrous. The cost of buying the homes and then restoring them to any degree of safe use for the tenants is simply beyond New Zealand’s community organisations no matter how motivated they are by compassion for the tenants in these homes.Now with this grandiose announcement by John Key about selling all these thousands of houses that are in total tatters because there is nobody to buy them the Government is now legislating to let two Ministers—just two—treat New Zealand State housing as if it is their own personal property. They can override the Housing New Zealand board and sell off these homes to whomever they want to for whatever price. We may well hear the Minister for Social Housing and others from National claim that they are bound by the social housing reform objectives but I can assure the country that those objectives do not provide any protection for the retention of State housing nor do they increase State housing in this country. The Ministers have to consider only one of those objectives not all of them and if the Housing New Zealand board which is supposed to be responsible for this work strongly disagrees with the Ministers’ plan to sell off the housing it has absolutely no authority to stop the Ministers acting as if they are the personal landlord of State houses.This bill makes two Ministers the landlord for 60000 families—60000 families will now have what Paula Bennett and Bill English as their personal landlord a landlord who will not fix the leaks who will not improve the ventilation who will not fix the dampness in these homes and who will not fix the broken windows or replace the missing doors or deal with the poor heating in those homes. They are landlords who are hell-bent on selling the properties and kicking out the tenants. And this is at a time when last week’s household income survey showed that 45000 more children are living in poverty than there were in 2013 for the most part because their parents’ incomes have stagnated and the housing costs for those families have skyrocketed—75 percent of families who are getting the accommodation supplement are paying more than 40 percent of their income in housing costs.That is a massive burden on low-income families. Fifty percent of these people are paying more than 50 percent of their income on housing. They simply cannot afford to be in the private market and they certainly cannot afford to buy their own homes. They are locked out of decent housing and they are locked out of homeownership but this Government has this pathological aversion to increasing the State housing stock to help to curb the massive rent increases and the massive price increases that we see fuelling the housing crisis.On top of that we know that 75 percent of the children in poverty have parents who rely on a benefit. That shows that this Government is deliberately keeping those families in poverty—75 percent of the poorest kids live in families that are dependent on a benefit—and benefits are so low that these families have no escape. Do not listen to any of the rhetoric around the $25 increase in benefits. We know that most families will not see even $20 of that if they are lucky.Seven out of 10 children living in poverty live in rental housing—seven out of 10 who live in poverty live in rentals. Rental housing is predominantly cold damp and unsafe. Poor-quality housing contributes to 1600 deaths each winter in New Zealand and rental housing is in many cases responsible for that and in some very clear cases State rental housing is responsible for that. We all remember Emma-Lita do we not? We all remember Emma-Lita.So the question is whether the two Ministers will take their new landlord responsibilities seriously. Will they make sure that all of the homes that they are responsible for are warm and dry and safe for the children who live in them? Will they fix the broken windows install the insulation and put in the safe heating devices? The answer of course is that they will not. Of course they are not going to go anywhere near that because their only objective under this bill is to be the auctioneer. They want to sell the property; they do not want to invest any more in the maintenance. There is no value for them in doing that. There has not been any up until now and there is not any impetus now under this legislation for them to fix those homes.The only objective under this bill is the asset stripping from New Zealanders of this $18 billion asset. In the process of throwing out thousands of New Zealand families who we know from the report on the household income survey are stuck in a poverty trap the Government is making that situation for those families so much worse by its inaction and neglect and by an ideology that says that the State should not be involved with housing no matter how desperately New Zealand families need the State to provide that very basic safety net.It will come as no surprise to you Mr Deputy Speaker or I expect the Government that we are opposing this bill. We are deeply disappointed in the face of all of the evidence that shows the desperate need for the improved quality of this housing the desperate need for more of it for the families who are living in garages and their cars as we know they are now—we are disappointed with the failure of Government to take seriously the 1600 deaths which includes many hundreds of children that happen every winter because of poor-quality housing. The only solution that this Government presents—the only solution—is to flog off one of the last remaining safety nets that our families and their kids so desperately need. It is the last remaining safety net which our grandparents built in order to protect our grandchildren and their children too. Thank you.DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): We need to look at the Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill in the context of the housing crisis—the housing crisis that this Government has constantly said does not exist. But home seekers know the truth. They know that homeownership is now only 65 percent—the lowest since 1951—and they know the reason. It is because home affordability has worsened in Auckland by 25 percent in the last year alone. The Government’s response to that has been utterly pathetic—in fact retrograde as this bill demonstrates—by trying to get the State out of social housing trying to fob it off on to often ill-equipped non-profit organisations. It is now selling State houses at a time when they are needed the most and to make matters worse allowing them to be sold overseas. John Key says that this is OK. However the vast majority of New Zealanders say that it is not OK because they know that this bill and legislation like it is just another step in the wrong direction.The bill empowers Ministers to direct the sale and transfer of Housing New Zealand Corporation homes ostensibly for housing reform objectives but the main objective is to simply get the State out of social housing. So the real objective is to fast track that process by giving Ministers wide and indeed excessive executive powers that are not usually given in any such circumstances. Actually the Government knows that because in its own disclosure statement it correctly says: “The transaction mandate is an unusual … mechanism. It provides Ministers with the ability to effect the transfer of HNZC assets in HNZC’s name without a decision-making role for the HNZC board.” So that raises the whole question about why it would bother to maintain such a board if in fact it is not allowed to make the decisions. The reason of course is that the Government does not in fact trust it to do what the Government thinks should be done. So the Government wants to both pay the piper and play the tune itself. Nothing could be more inappropriate.The bill allows Ministers to take Housing New Zealand assets and sell them without any involvement at all of the board that governs the organisation that owns them—very very inappropriate and very bad law. This represents yet another extension of executive powers by the Government. I have constantly complained in this House that the Government is taking on more and more powers of the executive in several new pieces of legislation over the last few years thus sidelining Parliament or sidelining agencies of Government established with parliamentary authority.But that is not the worst demonstration of the arrogance of this Government demonstrated in this bill. The bill allows land acquired by Housing New Zealand under the Public Works Act to be sold and transferred without complying with the usually required offer-back process. The reason for that is obvious—and I agree with Metiria Turei on this. When Nick Smith was embarrassed over the lack of Government land available in Auckland for new housing as he claimed was available he made reckless claims about how much land the Government would dedicate for the purpose without first checking whether the land was in fact suitable for housing and without first checking whether some of it was actually legally available for housing. This bill is therefore designed as Nick Smith’s face-saving device and nothing much more than that. Belatedly introducing this bill allows the Public Works Act to be bypassed and to hell with people for whom that process was intended to protect. The Government simply does not care about their rights and it wants to fast track its State housing privatisation programme at any cost.Alfred Ngaro said in his speech that the Public Works Act has never applied to State housing. That is only his opinion and it is not actually the law. It is not actually what that Act says and people need only to look at that legislation to know that. There are 2000 houses to be sold by this back-door method so who gets the proceeds and what can they be used for? New section 2A(4) inserted by clause 4 says that they “must be paid to a Crown Bank Account.” So what is the Government’s mandate for that money? How do we know whether the funds will go back into new social housing? There is nothing in the bill to describe that. So there are many unanswered questions about that.What we can be sure of is that this Government will want to reduce the role of the State in the provision of social housing despite the majority of people who are seeking the opposite and despite the fact that without more—not less—Government investment in housing the housing crisis will in fact deepen and will never be solved. The rationale of this bill is ostensibly the pursuit of the objectives in new section 50D which includes some of these—for example: “(c) social housing tenants are helped to independence as appropriate:”. What does that mean? It means pushing people out of State houses—that is what it means. Another one: “(d) there is more diverse ownership or provision of social housing:”. What does that mean? Privatisation of State houses—that is what it means. It goes on and on—“more innovation”—and the last one: “(f) the supply of affordable housing is increased especially in Auckland.” Yeah right! How by what process and by whom? Because it is not going to be by this Government that is for sure.In the end this is just another nail in the coffin of State housing in New Zealand. There is no reason for any confidence at all that any genuine effort will be put into the supply of more social housing in New Zealand as a result of this bill and the other legislation that this Government has passed in the last few years. Nor is there any guarantee that the money will go into the improvement of social housing quality which is so badly needed or even that the proceeds from these sales will go back into social housing in any way whatsoever. I have listened to the speeches from those opposite and none of them have given me any confidence that that would be the case. None of that money it seems to me is actually likely to go back into State housing at all. The only thing that we can be sure of is that this bill is driven in fact by National dogma and not genuinely by any social housing objectives intended to improve the lot of people who rely on State housing in this country. More and more and more people will be relying on it because of the housing affordability crisis and because of the lack of opportunities to buy homes in New Zealand which is also the direct fault of this Government which has spent so many years doing little or nothing about the whole housing crisis.So in order to achieve this bill’s real objectives which are not State housing objectives this Government is willing to create in this bill unusual and excessive executive powers and to use them to trample over the rights of people entitled to offer-back provisions which they should be entitled to use. Those provisions are going to be in fact nullified by this bill and they should not be. There is no need for it. There is no need indeed for the entire programme of the privatisation of State houses. There is no need indeed for the transfer of State houses to anybody. It would not matter what philosophy you are coming from—whether you think they should be managed by the State or by private interests—none of that justifies this bill or the sale of State houses. That is what it is about. It is about a sell-off. It is about privatisation. It is about the extension of executive powers in an unreasonable way.For all those reasons New Zealand First will certainly be voting against this bill now and at every stage.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Before I call the next speaker I would like to congratulate the member on his delivery. However I would like to remind him that he was a lot more eloquent when he was not reading from his notes—when he was speaking off the cuff and referring to notes.TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): I am pleased to be able to stand here tonight and take a call in the first reading of the Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill. I am excited because this finally enables the reform of our social housing provision in this country to widen it more comprehensively beyond State provision only to facilitate more community housing provision more collaboration greater innovation in the models around that delivery and in the end to get greater outcomes for those who need it most—our vulnerable New Zealanders our “customers” as we heard this afternoon from Bill English.If ever there was an insight as to why this bill is needed it was the opportunity that was afforded to me a month or so ago when I was asked to attend a community housing hui in Merivale in Tauranga where 50 locals from that community had been called together to hear about this bill in particular and this particular policy reform. I had the privilege of outlining the position from the perspective of the Government but there were four others who were in the room representing Labour the Greens New Zealand First and even the Mana party. It was extraordinary the level of blind ideology that was imparted by the four parties that I mentioned: Labour the Greens New Zealand First and Mana. What was even worse was that the people in that room were nearly all clients of Housing New Zealand who had come to hear what it would mean for them and the language and the narrative that was used by the Labour and Green Party and New Zealand First representatives was appalling. They were told that they would be kicked out of their houses. They were told that this was a dirty deal between Housing New Zealand and community housing providers and that billions and billions of dollars’ worth of housing stock was going to be sold off.What was particularly revealing from my perspective was that speaker after speaker gave the philosophical view that only the Government—only the Government—through Housing New Zealand provision knows what is best for Merivale and Tauranga. They said that only the Government through Housing New Zealand should be the provider of State houses in that community. It was appalling in my view. It was a deliberate exercise in making vulnerable people feel more vulnerable through distorting deliberately what this policy is all about. But the Labour Party has form in this because in the 2008 election it wrote with Labour Party letterhead to every Housing New Zealand tenant and said: “If you vote for National you’ll get kicked out of your house.” That is what it does the Labour Party. It says it represents the most vulnerable but it uses them for its own political purpose and it is outrageous. It was fantastic to be able to stand there and give hopefully an effective outline of why this policy is important and why we are delivering for the people of Tauranga and Merivale.After the kai—we always appropriately have kai at half-time—I had the opportunity to reinforce some key messages around our commitment to have over 60000 State houses by 2017 our commitment to having an additional 3000 income-related rent subsidies by 2017 and our commitment to have housing provision remain for as long as the need is genuine and we will stand beside those people in their time of need. Most critical I could talk to our commitment that does not arrogantly assume that only Housing New Zealand should play a part in social housing provision but that together with community housing providers who are from the community who live in the community and who live its challenges and understand its opportunities we can achieve more. This is what this bill enables and it is why I am so proud to be able to stand here and support it.Obviously the key provisions for this bill support our social housing programme. The bill amends the Housing Corporation Act to provide designated Ministers with the authority to transfer Housing New Zealand properties and these designated Ministers will be able to do that by entering into appropriate commercial contracts in the name of Housing New Zealand. It was interesting to hear Mr Twyford argue—I think ineffectively—that somehow this is an over-reach in terms of ministerial power. I think it is absolutely appropriate. With Housing New Zealand under the current legislation it would be difficult for the Government to direct via policy intent particular houses to be sold on behalf of the State. This bill enables the Ministers to be able to enter into those various contractual negotiations.We heard earlier from Minister Bennett around the importance of the transparency provisions that are implicit here through the gazetting notice and the fact that we have to demonstrate at all times that these transfers are consistent with our social housing reform objectives. This legislation enables us to sell between 1000 and 2000 houses to community providers over the next year and of course as noted the Ministers can use this power only if it is consistent with one or more of the Social Housing Reform Programme objectives set out in the legislation. These are worth just stepping through because they are critical to the bill. The first is to ensure that “people who need housing support can access it and receive social services that meet their needs:”. The second is to ensure that “social housing is of the right size and configuration and in the right areas for households that need it:”. We have heard earlier from my esteemed colleague Matt Doocey the fantastic MP for Waimakariri about the mismatch at the moment between demand and supply with 25 percent of demand being for one-bedroom houses while only 9 percent of the supply exists in that space. The opposite of course is the case for three-bedroom houses which are 24 percent of the demand but just under half—43 percent—of supply. The configuration is not what we need and working with community housing providers will enable that to occur more easily.I am very pleased that Tauranga in particular has been selected as an area to work with our local community and community housing providers for some stock transfer. Obviously we have five community housing providers in Tauranga. There is the Tauranga Community Housing Trust and interestingly only a matter of a month or two ago Minister Bennett was in Tauranga opening a particular local social housing initiative that was put together by the Tauranga Community Housing Trust. Why is that so important and relevant here? It has the same footprint: twice as many houses provided all insulated all warm and all delivering to the mixed needs of that particular community. Ngāti Ranginui as we heard over the last 48 hours are obviously being involved and have 115 rights of first refusal. The country’s biggest non-governmental social housing provider is keen to buy houses in Tauranga. Two iwi organisations Ngā Pōtiki and Mangatawa Papamoa Blocks are keen to participate and have a fantastic vision that provides phenomenal opportunities for social housing not only for their iwi but also for the wider community particularly in Papamoa.So for Opposition members to stand up there as they have today and say that this is all about a philosophical view that is not connected with the community and that there is no demand is absolute patent nonsense. They need to get out of Wellington. They need to come up to Tauranga. They need to talk to the people whom they purport to represent who are lining up and saying they want to be a part of this. Those people have a vision for their community and they think that in this Government—not the Labour Government; this Government—they have a Government they can partner with that is innovative that is open and that will facilitate the delivery of their community housing needs.I look forward to supporting this bill through the select committee. I hope we get some good debate around the bill and I very much commend it to the House.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a 5-minute call—Jan Logie.JAN LOGIE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. The Green Party is opposing the Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill. This bill is part of a much wider agenda to reduce the function of the Government while increasing the power of the executive and providing more opportunities for property developers and business.This bill is part of the sell-off of our State homes and the Green Party believes in opposition to this bill that housing should be treated as core infrastructure in this country. We need to have a plan to ensure we have enough houses that those houses that we have are warm and dry and keeping us well and that they are connected to public transport and able to support community well-being. That is what we stand for—we stand for State housing and community housing alongside each other as part of a plan of having housing as core infrastructure.The Government though has decided to run down our State houses to leave the market to continue delivering damp unsafe houses to leave it to the market to deliver unaffordable new houses to make it harder to get into a State house and to kick out the families if they start earning too much. We have heard from members on that side of the House tonight about how you cannot expect a house for life—that that is just being entitled. I would like to see them say that to the faces of the veterans who were promised a house for life at the end of the Second World War and have been kicked out. I would like to see you have that conversation with them to their faces and tell them that they are being entitled in expecting the delivery of that promise.The Government has said that this is all about supporting community social housing and that we are being communists for resisting this measure despite the fact that it has sold 472 houses since September last year I understand and not one of those houses has gone to a community housing provider. Tell me how that is about supporting community housing. Tell me how putting Government policy on to community housing providers is about supporting the role of a vibrant community housing sector. It is not. That is actually about turning them into a cheaper arm of the State so that you can abdicate your responsibility put more pressure on to them and reduce your own costs. That is not delivering for New Zealanders. That is not delivering for the most vulnerable or actually giving credit or any respect to the absolute power of innovation in our community. It is not giving respect to any of those things that you are giving lip service to.What this bill actually does is give two Ministers special authority to direct the sales and leases of Housing New Zealand property. Under existing rules Ministers are able to direct the Housing New Zealand board to implement Government policy but they cannot dictate specific acts or sales. This bill overrides that. This is an overriding of the core function of the public sector. This is not only about reducing the role of the State in terms of State housing and our ability as a country to have some democratic control. Although the Government says—we have heard four times tonight I think—that it is a communist plot to suggest that we have State housing the point of State housing is that if the Government is running down the houses and people are upset about it they can vote and tell it that they are unhappy about that. When we put State housing out to property developers or even community organisations it is at a one arm’s length remove from our democratic control. The point of State housing is to enable New Zealanders to have some say over what is delivered and to have a direct interaction with that. We do not get that in this model when you are selling things off to property developers.It is not in the best interests of the country. For the Government to say that two Ministers can be responsible for 60000 families and a billion-dollar portfolio and that they have to report to this House only to tell us what they have sold off and to whom but with no other control—overriding all of the free and frank advice that might be provided from the Public Service—is frankly extraordinary. We want no part of this bill.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Jenny Salesa—5 minutes.JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): The Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill is an indictment on this Government and its duties to New Zealand. This bill proposes to give Ministers Bennett and English extraordinary powers to sell off Housing New Zealand State houses. This bill will allow them to personally negotiate contracts on any terms and conditions that they like and to take any actions to ease the sales process. If this bill is passed into law it will allow Ministers Bill English and the Hon Paula Bennett to sell off State houses without reference to the Housing New Zealand board to its chief executives or to its legislation.This Government is not being straight up with New Zealanders. It pretends that there is no housing crisis and that there are no issues with our economy.We have thousands and thousands of vulnerable families living in our electorate of Manukau East in South Auckland. Just last week I saw a family of nine—parents with seven young children. They came into our office because they are homeless and were seeking assistance. This family of nine have moved in with their relatives. They share a home with three other families—17 people living in one house—because the father who is earning a low income can no longer afford to pay the rent.The average rent for a three-bedroom house right now in Ōtara—which according to New Zealand’s deprivation index is one of the poorest most vulnerable communities in New Zealand—is $460 per week. Spending an average of $460 a week on rent is a lot of money especially when you take into account the fact that these are some of the poorest most vulnerable in our society. The median household income in Ōtara right now is $48500. The median household income for families in Ōtāhuhu is $46200. The struggles for so many families whom I see in my office in Ōtara are very very real. The family of nine whom I saw who reached out to me for assistance because they are homeless has gone through the Work and Income assessment process. I am glad to report that they are able to qualify to be housed in a Housing New Zealand State house. However our office has been informed that State houses in our electorate of Ōtara are 98 percent occupied so who knows how long this family will have to wait—and wait—before they are eventually housed.Meanwhile Ministers English and Bennett are about to flog off the thousands of State houses that we currently have. How about housing the vulnerable families that we already have on the book? How about housing the thousands who already qualify to be housed by Housing New Zealand—the thousands who have been waiting for months and months and some of them for over a year just to have a roof over their heads? It will be great when this Government through its actions actually shows that it cares equally for all families in all of Aotearoa New Zealand instead of just saying that it does care and instead of just saying that it is a compassionate Government. Actions speak louder than words.Social housing plays a significant part in supporting the communities in my electorate. At the last census count a third of Manukau East’s rental properties and two-thirds in Ōtara actually belonged to Housing New Zealand. In terms of numbers that is 2128 State houses in Ōtara and in total in Manukau East it is 3761 State houses across our electorate. There is a shortage of social housing and the numbers are indeed at an all-time high. Across all of New Zealand over 5000 families are on the waiting list for a social housing State house.I urge this House to reject this bill. I urge the Government to give up selling our State houses—our assets—and instead to actually house our most vulnerable families. Thank you.JONO NAYLOR (National): I feel this evening as though I am trapped inside a children’s storybook. From what I have heard from the other side of the House it feels like the story of Chicken Licken—“The sky is falling the sky is falling.” It is doom it is gloom and nothing good can possibly ever happen. All we are hearing about are the negative things that perhaps might be going to happen as a result of this bill.I think it is really important that we do put this bill in the context of what it is that this Government is trying to achieve for the vulnerable people of New Zealand. I guess the first point is that the provision of social housing in New Zealand is going to continue. It is something that this Government is committed to having happen. We are looking at some different ways that we can perhaps deliver social housing in New Zealand and I think that is a good thing. We continue to be committed to ensuring that the people who need it the most will still be getting the assistance they need through social housing. That is fundamental in any society that is caring and from a Government that has any level of benevolence. This Government is no different in that regard.The question I guess we need to ask ourselves fundamentally when we are looking at anything to do with social housing is whether the Government should be in the business of ensuring that those people who are unable to house themselves are housed. The answer to that question unreservedly is that yes we should—absolutely we should. It is absolutely the business of Government to ensure that when people are unable to house themselves or when perhaps they are not able to afford to do that the Government provides subsidies on occasion perhaps the Government can provide housing or the Government perhaps empowers other organisations to provide housing. This Government continues to be committed to the idea that the Government should be in the business of providing social housing.Does this mean however that we need to stick to the same mode of delivery that we have always used? The answer to that is no not necessarily.In the 1930s Mr Savage was the Prime Minister and he kind of initiated this idea of State housing in New Zealand. In Palmerston North we have got Savage Crescent which is now a heritage site because it has got some of the first State houses that were constructed in New Zealand. Is it appropriate that they remain there as a heritage site? Yes it is. It is really important because it is an important part of New Zealand’s history. It is an important part of a good idea at the time that delivered a really great outcome for the people of New Zealand. But if I was listening to the members on the other side of the House this evening I would think that innovation stopped in the 1930s—that when Mr Savage as Prime Minister and his Government brought up the idea of State housing it was the last good idea that anybody could possibly ever have about the provision of State housing in New Zealand and that therefore we must not tinker we must not meddle and we must not do anything that could possibly be different from what is happening.Well I am not prepared to just settle on what has been done in the past. I am aspirational for the people of New Zealand.Chris Bishop: Ambitious.JONO NAYLOR: I am ambitious even for the people of New Zealand because I do not want them to simply have just what was always provided before. I think that the people of New Zealand deserve better than to have us simply resting on what was done close to 100 years ago. I think they deserve to have us thinking about creative ways in which we can deliver an even better service to them.We are going down the path of innovation. This Government is absolutely committed to looking at innovative new ways to help people in the area of housing. I will touch on the bill a little bit more but again I just want to get the context right. Remember that this Government is also looking to help more people get into their first home. We have introduced the HomeStart package which is helping young people to be able to cash in on their KiwiSaver account to be able to get greater grants from the Government to enable them to get into their first home. We are absolutely committed to ensuring that we reverse the trend of people finding it harder to get into their own home. We are committed to ensuring that people will be able to get into their first home and we are looking forward to seeing what is going to be happening. We have been doing roadshows on the HomeStart package around the country. The level of interest from mortgage brokers and young people who can finally see an opportunity to get into their first house—they are absolutely getting into it. They are loving the idea. We are going to see some great things happening from that.For those people on lower incomes who have been either renting properties or are living in their own home we have done a whole heap of work over the last few years on warming up those homes. We believe that people should live in healthy homes live in warm homes. The Warm Up New Zealand: Healthy Homes campaign has been a fantastic success which has seen so many people now living in homes that are warmer and drier and they are living better. But we have got to keep going because this Government is not going to just sit there and say: “Well that’s last good idea that we’ve had—HomeStart and warming up homes.” Unlike members opposite who want to rest on a 1930s decision and stay there we are going to keep going. We are going to keep doing more to deliver better outcomes for New Zealanders.One of the things that has received a bit of criticism and I will not shy away from it is the tenancy reviews that have been going on. Some of those reviews have been really really interesting. What we have found is that there are a number of people who are currently living in State-owned houses who are actually paying either a full rent or nearly a full rent. I have to ask myself: what is the point in the Government owning houses that people live in and pay full rents for? Those are people who could be paying market rents who perhaps could even be potentially buying their own homes but they are staying in the house that the State provided for them as was appropriate when they had the need beyond the point when they have that need. So it is appropriate that those people move on from that point and that they move into other arrangements that they can afford so that we can free up those houses for those people who most need them.It has been really interesting. The moment that those tenancy reviews have been done with a number of people the first thing they have said is: “Oh yes I guess we could go and look somewhere else. Actually perhaps we could think about buying.” I think that is a really positive outcome for those people to get out from underneath the feet of the Government and start to take control of their own lives and get involved in that way.I think it is really important again that we continue to work down this path. It was really interesting and I have told this story before but I hope if people have heard it they will not mind hearing it again. Last year I spoke to a woman who was living in a four-bedroom State house. It had been really good for her when her children were young. They had grown up and they had moved on. This woman said to me: “But don’t worry Jono those rooms aren’t going to waste because I’ve got international students living in there. I’ve got international students who are helping to supplement my income.” On one level I was kind of thinking that that was very good innovative entrepreneurial thinking on her part but that said I also thought that what she was doing was stopping some people who perhaps needed that kind of housing. So we are looking at what we are doing with our portfolio. We want to make sure that our portfolio delivers the right kind of housing to the people who need it most rather than just presuming that the stock of houses that was built in the 1930s for families of the 1930s will meet the need of today.I just want to come back finally to this point about innovation. Currently we have got over 60000 New Zealand homes. What we are talking about here is some empowering legislation that will allow the relevant Ministers to sell—or actually not just sell. It is interesting. People have been talking about selling but if you read the explanatory note on the front of the bill—I suggest members opposite do—it states very clearly that “Contracts may be for the sale or lease of properties”.This is not just about sales; it is about having flexibility for us to be innovative. We have got over 60000 State houses; we are talking about one or two thousand. That is about 2 or 3 percent of the current housing stock that we are debating tonight. We are not talking about a radical overhaul. We are not talking about a mass sell-off. What we are talking about is giving the relevant Ministers the flexibility to be innovative with a very small proportion of our housing stock so that we can have a look we can see whether or not these things will deliver better results and if they do perhaps we will do some more. But what we are going to keep doing is we are going to ensure that the people of New Zealand who most need our help get our help. Therefore I commend this bill to the House.Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): Earlier tonight in the Legislative Council Chamber I joined with my Labour Party colleagues and other members of the Opposition to welcome representatives of families of the workers who have died in work-related accidents in the last 5 years including those who died in the Pike River tragedy. I want to acknowledge them. One of the questions that a speaker raised there was that they were promised by this Government and by this Prime Minister that legislation would come into this House that would ensure protection for all workers and they feel—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! That is not part of the debate.Su’a WILLIAM SIO: —that that promise has not been kept. I raise that Mr Assistant Speaker because that is the question that New Zealanders need to ask of Government members when they listen to their speeches on this particular bill and the promises that they are making that this bill will enable more social community providers to provide more social housing. What they are promising New Zealanders is that under this bill by selling off State houses more social housing is to be provided to New Zealanders.We have heard tonight that the Minister for Social Housing made that promise by saying that this bill gives her and another Minister exclusive powers to sell thousands of houses in the current housing stock to the private sector. Those members say “community housing providers” but we know that that is not what is intended. They are not being straight with New Zealanders. When they use the words “community housing providers” we think it is going to be the Salvation Army but that is not true. We think it is going to be the Methodist Mission but that is not true. What is true is that they have been talking to property investors—property investors not only in New Zealand but also in Australia. So when they say “community housing providers” it is the property investors whom they intend to sell these houses to. So I ask New Zealanders as they listen to this to remember the promise that was given to the Pike River families and to ask themselves whether they can trust this Government in making the similar promises that it now makes to New Zealanders in regard to the provision of social housing.The regulatory impact statement on this bill will give listeners a bit of an idea of the incompetency of this Government. It says: “The proposals have been prepared in a short timeframe … they have been prepared without precise information about the form of the transfers transactions and HNZC’s future role in the social housing market …”. The future of the social housing market under this Government’s legislation is that it is going to destroy Housing New Zealand as we know it. It is destroying a tradition that has existed since 1905 when from thence forward the Government of the time and subsequent Governments agreed that there was a right for every new citizen of this country to be housed. It was a basic fundamental right. That right is enshrined in international covenants. Subsequent Governments have upheld that.In 1970 we continued under the Labour Government the provision of social housing because of that belief that it was a basic and fundamental right that every New Zealander should be housed in a house that was affordable in a house that was warm and in a house that was safe for families.What does a conservative Government that has existed—what has been its attitude towards the provisions of social housing? As far as we go back every time there has been a conservative Government that has come into power it is its belief that it should sell off State housing. It is its belief that the private sector should rule. The same thing happened also in the 1990s when the former National Government did the same.But this Government now is going to go further. So what is it going to do? It will give Ministers Bennett and English the exclusive power to sell off State houses. Who will they sell them to? Here is what the Government says: it is part of its social reform strategy. If you look at the first point that the Government makes it establishes “the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) as the single purchaser of social housing …”. What does that mean? No longer will you have Housing New Zealand providing social housing. In the second point it says “growing Community Housing Providers (CHPs) through MSD’s contracting and transfers of Housing New Zealand Corporation (HNZC) stock;”. What does that mean? It is going to sell off the housing stock to property investors.Another point is “making Income Related Rent Subsidies (IRRS) available to non-government CHPs to help those providers to grow;”. What does that mean? It is going to subsidise landlords and property investors to provide this particular service. The final part that it says this legislation provides is “housing more families by making better use of HNZC land”. What does that mean? It is selling off land that is currently owned by Housing New Zealand into the private sector.But this is what the disclosure statement prepared by Treasury says—that this legislation is unprecedented. These are new powers—new powers—that it is giving its Ministers because not only are the Ministers not accountable to Housing New Zealand or the board but they are accountable to only themselves.Where does the money go from selling the stock and from selling the land that belongs to Housing New Zealand? It does not go back to the Housing New Zealand board; it goes into the Crown entity’s bank account. What does it get used for? Certainly it does not indicate anything about the provision of more social housing.The Government has not been straight with New Zealanders when it introduced this legislation. That is why I said that the promise that it made to the Pike River families is a similar promise to the one that it is making today to New Zealanders. People need to be asking themselves whether they can trust this Government to keep its word. I say no. I say if you base it on its track record so far there is no way that selling off State houses will ensure that there is greater provision of social housing to those in need.One of the Government members at least acknowledged that there is a role for the State in the provision of this. But once a State house with a tenant is sold to the private sector do we imagine that the landlord is going to fix up the heater when it breaks down? Do we imagine that the landlord is going to replace the carpet if it is ruined? Do we imagine that the landlord is going to keep that house warm so that the children living there are free from any sicknesses and illnesses? If we go by the track record of most landlords that is not going to happen—based on the complaints that our offices receive.The other day I was in the electorate of Botany. I took Andrew Little there and we visited the Salvation Army in Howick. I imagine that when we talk about Howick—it is an affluent part of our society in Manukau. But this is what the Salvation Army said to us: of all the issues that it is now facing in a wealthy part of South Auckland in Howick housing is No. 2 after the loneliness of that generally older population. It is now seeing more and more people being in housing situations where they are renting a garage which does not have insulation and does not have any warmth. It also said that it is surprised by the number of people who are now in homeless situations and the Salvation Army is having to find homes for them.That is the kind of condition that this Government has established for New Zealand in the last 7 years. It will continue along that pathway based on this legislation. Yes Government members can say all they want about helping the poor but this piece of legislation does not do that.I want to finally finish off. Most of us would have campaigned and walked around and at one time or another would have stood on dog tae tae. If you imagine standing on that we have often had the experience of trying to clean it off. It does not go away—it stays. I would say that when this Government passes this piece of legislation New Zealanders will for ever remember it is this Government that is selling off Housing New Zealand homes and the stench is going to stick with it for ever.I want to finally say—farmers will appreciate this. Farmers have a saying “It does not matter how much perfume you pour on pig shit it still stinks”. That is why despite Government members’ flowery words this piece of legislation will hurt ordinary New Zealanders.Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill in its first reading. It is a pleasure to take this call in support of this bill. The social housing reforms are important and they are well on track. Our social housing reforms are about recognising and understanding families in need. Our focus is on making sure that people who need social housing get that at the right time and also for the right amount of time. People have different kinds of needs. Some people need long-term State housing while others are able to move on to private rentals as their circumstances change. So this is about privatising social housing for people in the greatest need and also providing opportunity for people who can move on to private rentals.This Government is keen to work with different organisations to encourage community housing and that is what this bill is about. This bill is to support the Social Housing Reform Programme by amending the Housing Corporation Act 1974 to provide designated Ministers with the authority to transfer Housing New Zealand Corporation properties. Ministers will be able to do that by getting into contracts in the name of Housing New Zealand. This bill will also help Ministers to make sure that Housing New Zealand looks after tenants in those properties that are being transferred. So those tenants are the focus of this bill. The Social Housing Reform Programme is to provide more social houses through Housing New Zealand and also through community housing providers. This involves the transfer of houses from Housing New Zealand to community housing providers. The initial proposal is to transfer 1000 to 2000 houses from Housing New Zealand to community housing providers.This National Government cares about people. We care about families. This National Government is committed to looking after people—those who need social housing. This National Government is committed to providing income-related rental subsidies for more households. Currently there are 62000 households around New Zealand receiving taxpayer-supported income-related rental subsidies. This National Government has committed to increasing that by 3000 households by 2017-18.We need these reforms; that is why we need this bill. It is important because there are around 3600 people assessed as having a high need. They are on the waiting list of the social housing register—yes 3600 people are on the waiting list. There are around 1300 Housing New Zealand tenants who have applied for a transfer. This is a very challenging situation because one-third of the $18.7 billion Housing New Zealand portfolio is in the wrong place or is of the wrong type. For example 30 percent of people on the waiting list want to get into a one-bedroom house. But if we look at our stock only 9 percent of the houses that we have are one-bedroom houses. Also people’s needs change with time and their needs are not just about housing itself so it is important to look at other kinds of arrangements.This Government has already taken a number of steps to improve the supply of social housing. If you go back to 2010 after a report from the Housing Shareholders’ Advisory Group the Government’s programme has so far included setting up the Social Housing Unit in 2011.This was recommended by that advisory group and this was to help grow a community housing sector and also then changing the law in 2013 was to open social housing to approved non-Government providers so that they could receive the same subsidies as Housing New Zealand. During the 2014 election campaign the Prime Minister confirmed that we will be moving away from Housing New Zealand’s monopoly to a range of social housing providers.Our goal is to have a strong social housing system that people can access and that provides for people’s needs. We want to make sure that people are able to get into social housing when they need to. We also want to make sure that those houses are of the right size that they are of the right configuration that they are of good quality and that they are in the right kind of area. The Government will continue to be the largest owner of social houses and it will further increase subsidies for New Zealanders in housing need. Over the next few years the Government wants to see that Housing New Zealand and community housing providers collectively are able to provide more social houses than we have now.As I said Housing New Zealand will continue to be by far the largest owner of subsidised houses and we will ensure that in 2017 it provides at least 60000 properties which is down from 68000. This is taking into consideration various community housing providers coming on board.I heard the previous speaker Su’a William Sio and just to clarify tenants in properties that will be sold will continue to stay in those properties. They will stay in those properties for the duration of their need. The Government will spend more on income-related rent subsidies and ensure that Housing New Zealand has enough capital to redevelop and look after those properties. This bill is not about selling State houses—just to explain to the Opposition. Yes it is not about selling State houses. It is about better meeting the needs of tenants by supporting the growth of the community housing sector and ensuring that there are more social houses available for people who need them. As I said before the Government will be providing income-related rental subsidies for another 3000 houses by 2017-18 taking that number from 62000 houses to 65000. The Government is committed to both supporting a stronger community housing sector and also investing significantly in Housing New Zealand properties and to providing $1.9 billion per year in accommodation support.Our focus is on families not on the number of houses owned by the Government. We know that tenants’ needs can be better met through innovation through diversity and through providing choice and that is why we need to involve community housing providers. Community housing providers can provide a wraparound support to those people who need social services so that they do not have to go to multiple agencies and explain their circumstances. So it makes it really easy for people.I also heard Su’a William Sio the member speaking before me saying that these houses will be sold in Australia. These houses will be sold to organisations that are willing to register with us as community housing providers which means that they will have to meet some strict standards. There are standards that they will have to meet and only then can they buy these houses. So there are strict criteria for them to buy these houses. Properties sold as social houses will continue to remain as social houses unless the Government agrees otherwise. In most cases when these houses are transferred there will be tenants in them. They will be looked after. So this bill is about making sure that Housing New Zealand looks after those people during that transfer process and if there is any redevelopment of those houses it will make sure that those people are provided with proper accommodation as per their needs.People have complex needs and to provide for those complex needs the Government needs to work with different parties—non-government organisations and community-based organisations—and that is what we are doing. So I support this bill and commend it to the House. Thank you.A party vote was called for on the question That the Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill be now read a first time.Ayes 63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 58New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12.Bill read a first time.Bill referred to the Social Services Committee.Health Practitioners (Replacement of Statutory References to Medical Practitioners) BillFirst ReadingDebate resumed from 23 July.JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): The Health Practitioners (Replacement of Statutory References to Medical Practitioners) Bill I am assuming enjoys wide support through the House. On the face of it it looks like a pretty sensible bill. As I have been reading the bill for the first time this evening it seems on the face of it relatively in concept quite straightforward. What this omnibus bill does do to a number of statutes is to bring legislation into line with current practice. Once again it is another statute that is being brought to the House that is modernising legislation to make it fit for modern times and so it is with this bill.Medical practitioners or medically trained practitioners including general practitioners have for many years been the medical personnel who have had statutory duties under a number of pieces of legislation. Of course current practice has changed now. For example we have a much higher level of competency and training in a number of other health professionals—nurses in particular and other health practitioners as well.As I often do I will refer back to my large rural constituency where health services are delivered increasingly away from the base hospital and towards where the local population lives. That is a laudable move by this Government and it is working particularly well for the people who live in my communities. We are getting health services closer to where people need them.Another component of the delivery of those health services is to allow those highly trained health practitioners to now deliver some of those roles that have been the province so far of medical practitioners. So if I can simplify the omnibus bill rightdown in many instances the changes in this bill proposed for the statutes to which it refers are to change references from “medical practitioner”to “health practitioner”. “Health practitioner”is not just a term thought up by some officials in the Ministry of Health. Health practitioners are required to have competencies and knowledge as you would expect and the ability to perform a number of tasks.I am just going to go through some of the statutes that are covered in this bill. There are a number of them of course as this is an omnibus bill. It is interesting for those of us who are in this business that an omnibus bill may be introduced to the House if the amendments to be effected to each Act are of a similar nature. Of course in this case this bill as it is applied to those statutes recognises the increasing skill levels of health practitioners. I will refer to the Accident Compensation Act. What the amendment to that Act will do is make reference to a health practitioner rather than a medical practitioner in clause 7 of schedule 1. What that means if you go to schedule 1 is that ahealth practitioner leading the coordination of treatment or rehabilitation of the claimant for ACC must now be given the opportunityto participate in the preparation of the individual’s rehabilitation plan. Again that is using wisely the enhanced skills of health practitioners.Under the Burial and Cremation Act which is an older Act of Parliament—from 1964 and probably due for renewal—a “doctor’s certificate” which is required by that Act is going to be renamed a “certificate of cause of death”. References to “doctor” in that piece of legislation will be replaced by references to “medical practitioner”.And so it is with the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act. This one is our very important Act for vulnerable children in particular in the New Zealand legislative system. So in that legislation there is an equivalent duty to minimise distress to children and young persons when carrying out medical examinations and that duty goes on to health practitioners so that it is in line with the duty of medical practitioners who do the same thing. So the benefits there—and I am looking forward to the select committee consideration of this bill—are that the focus under this Government goes on yet again to what is good for children. A health practitioner who may have an existing relationship with the child under care now has the ability to undertake procedures and medical examinations rather than it just being confined to those of the health practitioner.The bill also amends the Holidays Act the Land Transport Act—and I am not going to go into each piece of legislation. There are other members who I know are very keen to speak to those particular Acts. I know that my colleague Scott Simpson is particularly keen to focus on the Holidays Act and the Land Transport Act in his initial contribution so I am going to leave those up to him.I just want to finish my contribution with a couple of comments on our health workforce because of course this omnibus bill once it is passed will have a large impact on health professionals in New Zealand. I will just note that it is this Government that is investing in the training of health professionals which is why it is appropriate for us to be able to make these changes in the way health services are delivered to New Zealand. Although this is a simple bill on the surface it has wide-reaching implications and I commend it to the House.JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Labour supports the Health Practitioners (Replacement of Statutory References to Medical Practitioners) Bill. This Government has been going on about increasing the focus on primary and community - based care and improving and implementing new models of care to ensure the sustainability of Vote Health part of which involves nursing and ensuring that health care workers carry out a wider range of functions. And yet it has taken 7 years to get this bill on to the Order Paper—7 years. This delay has been frustrating for the nursing profession which has been promised more support for increasing its scope of work in legislation for many years.Labour supports this bill but I wonder why it has taken the Government so long to get cracking on this legislation which is needed to enable nurses and other health practitioners to contribute fully within our health system. The Government has been told for years that it needs to remove the barriers to innovative practice by removing legislative references to medical practitioners when certain health professionals like nurses are perfectly capable of undertaking this work. The National Nursing Organisation body has reported that nurses have long been frustrated by the models of care in primary health care and that they do not make the best use of their knowledge and skills as well as they should.Treasury and the Ministry of Health have both urged the Government to speed up this bill and to remove the barriers to extending nurses’ roles within the current health workforce. There has been a constant chorus from the Government about an increased focus on primary and community - based care and I am really pleased that this bill is actually being read for the first time.Can I just acknowledge that 13 years ago the first piece of nurse practitioners legislation was introduced to this House in 2002 by none other than the Minister of Health at that time the Hon Annette King. The first prescribing rights for nurse practitioners were announced 10 years ago in 2005 again by the Hon Annette King. Now here we are 5 years further on finally looking at a partial response by the Government.The Hon Annette King has continued her visionary work in this area and has had a Nurse Practitioners Bill in the members’ ballot since last December. That bill would amend a total of 21 pieces of legislation that would have provided for nurse practitioners to perform an even wider range of tasks to take the pressure off our doctors for the benefit of all of us here in New Zealand. The Government should have stopped its dilly-dallying in this area and simply adopted the Hon Annette King’s bill in 2002. It would have been law by now. Labour supports this bill.SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): I am delighted to take a call in this first reading of the Health Practitioners (Replacement of Statutory References to Medical Practitioners) Bill in the name of the very good and competent Minister of Health Dr Jonathan Coleman.The previous member Jenny Salesa was obviously receiving some kind of incentive or reward for mentioning a former health Minister in the last Labour administration Annette King because I suspect that probably every mention received a chocolate fish or something along those lines. I counted about five or six mentions. Of course some of us have been involved in the political system long enough to remember that when that member was the Minister of Health we had people lined up in corridors under fluorescent tubes for days on end at North Shore Hospital waiting to get a place in a hospital. It was a shocking and dreadful shambles. So this Government has been busy reforming health making health more efficient and getting it so that for instance New Zealanders no longer have to travel overseas to receive cancer treatment as they did during the time of the Hon Annette King’s administration. This bill particularly is of importance because it is reflective of the changes that have been occurring for a long number of years in our medical and health systems.My late mother was a registered nurse. She practised her nursing at Waikato Hospital. I well recall the many stories that she used to tell of how in those days the most important things that nurses seemed to do was to starch linen and make beds and do everything that was ordered literally by the doctors who were like gods if you like in our medical system. The nurses did the menial tasks and the doctors and the senior medical physicians really did sort of administer a regime that was strict and controlled. Their judgment was never questioned—their judgment was always the be-all and end-all of any medical intervention. Things have changed a lot since the days that my mother was practising nursing at Waikato Hospital.Andrew Bayly: And for the better.SCOTT SIMPSON: And indeed as my friend and colleague Andrew Bayly says for the better. And much for the better because these days there are so many aspects of our health interventions and procedures that can be done by very competent skilled and well-trained people in the medical profession who actually are not general practitioners or doctors as such but they do have the registration and the current education and training to ensure that they can provide all sorts of services and support for people needing that from our health system.This bill I want to make very clear as I understand it makes absolutely no increased risk of harm to the New Zealand public with the scope of practice being set in every instance that this bill envisages by the relevant responsible authority and the professional accountability of each practitioner to be responsible for their actions and their deeds. So although we are moving forward in this area there will be no lowering of standards or lack of protection for members of the public.It is an omnibus bill and it effectively amends seven statutes which enables a wider range of suitably qualified health practitioners as defined under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003 to undertake a wider range of functions than they are currently able to do and that are currently restricted to medical practitioners.This Government has spent a lot of time in its 7 years of Government in ensuring that our health dollars go further and that we get better results because under the last Labour administration we had a doubling of health spending but a reduction in actual results for New Zealanders and that of course needed to change and it needed to change in a significant way.I am very proud to be part of a Government that has worked diligently both during the time of the Hon Tony Ryall—during his administration as the Minister of Health—and that is now being carried forward by Dr Jonathan Coleman in his areas of portfolio responsibility.This is a Government that is completely committed to delivering much higher-quality services for all New Zealanders no matter where they live. A previous speaker in this debate my colleague Jacqui Dean who like me represents a provincial rural electorate—these are matters that are of concern to constituents in seats like the Coromandel because often the bricks-and-mortar hospitals are actually quite a long way physically from where the patients are. So the increasing focus is upon ensuring that people can receive the benefits of health and medical advice and intervention in their own communities or indeed in their own homes.What this bill seeks to do is to provide a much greater role for community health providers like our nurses and our pharmacists. Nurses and pharmacists of course have an ability to operate neatly and easily within communities—local communities—often in places that are geographically isolated and some distance away from base hospitals. So by making these changes and by ensuring that we have a greater role for for instance pharmacists and nurses there will be a better supply of health benefits to a wider range of people in our more far-flung rural and provincial communities. This is a Government that is just as concerned about supplying good public services to people in the provinces as it is to supplying them to the cities.This National-led Government of course has put a very big emphasis on increasing the number of doctors and nurses within our health system who are now able to be working within our broader communities. They are working hard to ensure that better services are provided to a much wider range of people. We have now over 3000 enrolled nurses registered to practise across all areas of our health sector. There are 3000 enrolled nurses—Chris Bishop: How many?SCOTT SIMPSON: 3000 Mr Bishop and that is a large number of capable talented professionally competent nurses who can do a whole range of things that have previously just been the protected preserve of the medical practitioners. We now have a total of more than 40000 nurses. So the 3000 enrolled nurses make up the total of 40000 nurses working in New Zealand’s health system and they of course perform a very vital role. So the changes under this legislation will allow this highly skilled workforce with the appropriate knowledge training and professional background to treat and look after patients within our communities and I think that that is a very good step. It is something that has probably been in the wind for a long time but we needed to make sure that it was the right time to introduce this legislation.As a member of the Health Committee I am very much looking forward to a thorough and diligent investigation of this legislation. I know that committee members on the Government side will be doing that and I hasten to add that the Health Committee is a very collegial committee. I know that with the support of Labour members who have indicated that they are going to support this bill through the House I think that we will ensure a very good select committee process under the capable chairmanship of Simon O’Connor.One of the things that has been most obvious over the last few years is that in many other countries health spending has been cut and services to health have been cut. That has not occurred in New Zealand. I am very proud to be part of a Government that has—during the very toughest of economic times when there has been enormous global financial pressure—in every single one of its seven Budgets increased health spending and increased the effectiveness of services to New Zealanders who require the use of our health system.This appears to me to be a very good bill. I am looking forward to the scrutiny that the select committee will give it and I commend it to the House.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I noted the words of the member Scott Simpson who has just resumed his seat when he said that he was going to do a thorough rigorous and diligent perusal of this bill at the select committee and I commend those wishes. I wish he had done half as much of that on his attack—unfounded ill considered and factually wrong—on the former Minister of Health the Hon Annette King. That member should look up the facts before he starts attacking other members of this House because what goes around comes around and it will be his turn very very soon.When we were elected to lead the Government in 1999 we had a total of 43 radiation therapistsin New Zealand—43. Is that enough radiation therapists to service the needs of New Zealanders who have cancer? I will give you a clue. The answer is either yes or no and it is not yes. The answer is no.What does a Government do if someone presents at a hospital or at a doctor’s with cancer but there are no trained staff available to treat them? Should we send them home? Should we send them to the backblocks of Coromandel where Mr Simpson comes from? Shall we send them home or shall we pay for them to go to Australia—where they will get their treatment—until there are enough trained staff in New Zealand? So what is the answer—what is the answer? Scott Simpson has not got a clue. He has just demonstrated that. There were 43 radiation therapists when his party left Government in 1999 and within 3 years that number had doubled—[Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Now I want the House to settle down. We do not have comments like that. Speaker’s ruling 48/2 refers to that. We will not have that again.Hon RUTH DYSON: Thank you very much Mr Assistant Speaker. This bill is another contribution to being able to ensure that we can provide health services to people who are in need of them. But before I get back to the specifics of the Health Practitioners (Replacement of Statutory References to Medical Practitioners) Bill—that has got to win the award for the longest title of a bill so far this year—and to support the legislation can I add another warning to Mr Simpson. Just 9 or 10 months ago his Minister of Health received exactly the same warning about the shortage of trained staff able to treat New Zealanders with cancer as the previous National Government had received in the late 1990s and he ignored it. The then Minister of Health between 1996 and 1999 got the warnings in writing from the Ministry of Health saying: “You will not have enough trained staff to treat cancer patients in New Zealand. There will be a crisis.” That Minister of Health did nothing and that is exactly what Tony Ryall and Jonathan Coleman have been doing in the last 2 years. There were exactly the same warnings in writing to the same Ministers and they have been ignoring it.Hon Member: What a load of rubbish.Hon Annette King: We will table it.Hon RUTH DYSON: We will certainly table it Mr—I cannot remember his name—whatever.It is not very usual with the current Government that Labour is able to support legislation. For example earlier this evening we had a couple of hours of debate about how National is proposing to sell off our State housing stock. It tried it in the 1990s and it is doing it again now. Those members have got all sorts of magical words that they are weaving around it but in the end they are hocking off a significant asset putting some of our most vulnerable individuals at risk—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! That is not part of this debate.Hon RUTH DYSON: So we could not support that legislation but we are able to support the bill that we are debating at the moment. It has taken an awfully long time—7 years—to bring this bill to the House.I could give the Minister of Health and his predecessor some advice. They should have just looked in the members’ ballot because Annette King has already got a member’s bill in the ballot that does considerably more than this. This amendsonly six or seven pieces of legislation. Annette King’s member’s bill without the resources of the huge Ministry of Health amends 21 pieces of law in exactly the same way as this health practitioners amendment bill does. In fact there are 59 pieces of legislation that need amendment in this way and we have managed to get only seven out of this current Government. They are good moves; we certainly support them. But why has it taken the Government so long and why is it such a shonky little bill? It is not nearly robust enough—seven legislative changes instead of what the Ministry of Health recommended which was changes to 59 pieces of legislation.So how does this issue come about and why are we debating the bill? Well the issue comes about because years and years ago the only people who had the training to enable them to do some jobs in the health system were doctors. They were the only people who got the training. Over the last few years particularly since Annette King was the Minister of Health and we had the introduction of extended scopes of work and new titles—for example nurse practitioners—we know that now nurse practitioners as one of a few examples are trained and are competent to deliver their scope of work but they are not allowed to within the law. There are some things that they are trained and are competent and able to do but the law forbids anyone but a medical practitioner from performing them. That is just because the statute never caught up with the practice and that is what we are fixing today.I hope that during the select committee process there will be some pressure put on the Ministry of Health and indeed on the Minister to get the rest of the legislative changes on to the floor of Parliament because it is clear that all parties agree with these changes. I imagine—I have not heard from Mr Seymour from ACT. It is fabulous to have your presence with us tonight unusual though that is in the Chamber. But I am hoping that even Mr Seymour will be supporting this legislation. It is certainly sensible.So I do not know why we have not got all 59 needed legislative changes included in this bill. I do not know why when there was a priority of 10 identified in the regulatory impact statement that we ended up with only seven and I certainly do not know why it has taken 7 long years to get to this state. I know that it does not assist with training the additional cancer specialists whom we are short of but I do know that it will help relieve the huge—and predicted to be increasing pressure—that we have on our doctors. This will enable competent qualified trained “other” health practitioners—and they are described in this legislation as health practitioners sensibly in my view to avoid future extensions of scope that might allow other than nurse practitioners the ability to perform these tasks.It does not explain why we have not covered off all the necessary changes. But the ones we have got in this bill are changes to the Accident Compensation Act which are primarily around a health practitioner having input into a rehabilitation plan and to the Burial and Cremation Act which will allow a qualified person other than a medical practitioner to certify that someone has actually died—David Seymour: You’ve run out of steam.Hon RUTH DYSON:—and I hope that they do not take too close a look at the member who is interjecting.There are amendments to the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act for medical examinations of children and to the Holidays Act so that a health practitioner can testify that someone is actually too unwell to be able to go to work—they might be too busy on public business across the road to be able to go work but you do not need a health practitioner to be able to do that. Also there are amendments to the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act—changes to that and changes to the Misuse of Drugs Act.So as I said at the beginning this is a bill that we strongly support. It is long overdue. It is short in terms of the breadth of legislative changes that are needed which were recommended by the Ministry of Health and without any explanation were not presented to us. I look forward to its progress in the House.Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): It is a pleasure to stand and speak positively and affirm this bill the Health Practitioners (Replacement of Statutory References to Medical Practitioners) Bill. Fundamentally and substantively this bill is administrative renaming the term “medical practitioner” as “health practitioner” thereby increasing the scope and the number of people who can be engaged. The purpose of this will be to increase efficiencies in the health system and it will do so in several ways.First of all health practitioners will be able to deliver better end-to-end service without having to do segments of care then have a medical practitioner intervene and they then complete their care onwards. So end-to-end care is better preserved.It also prevents skill dilution. When you have highly skilled practitioners who have to undertake sometimes labour-intensive repetitive work you get what is called skill dilution. They lose their career path and they lose interest. They move out of what they are doing. So a bill like this also prevents skill dilution.Most important what it also does is that it allows more clinical people to do more things. I think this is useful in resource-depleted areas particularly. One of the things that this bill will do is amend the Accident Compensation Act 2001. This allows a health practitioner leading the case to be involved in individual rehabilitative plans. Many times that practitioner may actually be a physiotherapist a podiatrist or maybe even a chiropodist. The health practitioner is also able to prescribe various aids and appliances. So the theme here is that the health practitioner with the most knowledge is able to contribute and I think that is the way that it should be.The Burial and Cremation Act 1964 is also amended. Particularly it allows nurse practitioners to complete certificates of causes of death. This is a very important function. The certificate of cause of death is very important for epidemiological studies. It gives us some sense of trends of death and trends of disease over time. It is actually also very important for closure for patients. I have often found that when they have got their certificate of death in their hand they can look at it and in amongst their grief that episode of sadness reaches some level of closure. New section 46B in clause 9 addresses this and talks about how a medical practitioner or a nurse practitioner can complete a death certificate.If I could just go over some of those clauses—first of all it applies to a person who dies of an illness so if you succumb due to an accident you go to a coroner’s inquiry. It also says that the death has to be a natural consequence of illness and the section also says that a health practitioner has to reasonably consult with any other health practitioners who have been involved in the last illness.There are some safety clauses in this section as well. A health practitioner or a nurse who attended the person may refuse to give a certificate of death if a previous practitioner cannot say: “Yes I think this was due to illness.” Another safety clause is that a medical practitioner or nurse practitioner must not give a certificate of cause of death unless they have taken into account previous medical records and the circumstances of the death and of course they have examined the person’s body. The final safety clause in this section is that the certificate of cause of death must not be given if a death must be reported to the New Zealand Police or to a coroner. So I think there are a number of safety clauses there.When you do a certificate of death it is actually quite a time-consuming event. You need to coordinate with the funeral director to be at the funeral parlour. So you coordinate schedules you go in and the very first thing you need to do is to certify that the person is dead of course. There are a number of ways clinically to do that. What you then do is you complete some documentation that asks whether this person had a notifiable disease or any sort of disease that the funeral home might need to know about or that the public needs to know about. You are then asked whether they had a pacemaker because if they are going to be cremated you cannot do that because pacemakers explode under cremation. Then you actually do the certificate of cause of death. In my experience this takes probably 30 to 35 minutes and sometimes three-quarters of an hour and to have this done by an appropriately qualified person I think is a really good thing.New section 46B also specifically talks about nurse practitioners and our colleagues across the House have talked about them today. These are indeed highly trained professionals many of whom actually have prescribing rights as well. In fact just on Friday I tried to persuade the Tāmariki Ora nurse in Nelson to become a prescribing nurse practitioner with Te Piki Oranga the service she was with and we have tried to enlist nurse practitioners up into some of our resource-depleted areas in Northland. Nurse practitioners really do have a high scope of practice. They are registered with the Nursing Council in a registered scope of practice they have had a minimum of 4 years of experience in specific areas of practice they have actually completed a clinical Master’s and they have passed an assessment panel as well. When I looked at the Nursing Council website a few days ago there were actually 116 nurse practitioners.We have just talked about the Burial and Cremation Act and it strikes me that there are three registered nurse practitioners who might especially benefit from that Act. These are nurse practitioners with scopes of practice—there are only three of them—in palliative care. The three of them come from Auckland Canterbury and Southland. Auckland and Canterbury may well be well served by medical practitioners in other services who can complete certificates of cause of death but I am pretty sure that Southland would be very pleased to have a nurse practitioner who can complete some of this documentation.This bill also amends the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989. Health practitioners are able to prescribe and undertake medical examinations. The duties of care are also amended so that health practitioners are aligned with medical practitioners.I am always sort of interested in what health policy we enable and how many people it might actually touch—is it a few or is it many—and I think it is actually the amendments to the Holidays Act 2003 where this legislation may actually touch the most New Zealanders. When we look at the efficiencies that this bill creates—let us take your standard practice and how we actually complete a sick note. The patient comes in you then consult with them and what most of us would generally do is then show the patient through to another room and the nurse completes the sick note. They then will be required to come back to you for you to sign it and then it is complete. Well that could be 45 to 50 minutes for a patient—that is a lot of time. What could happen here now with the work flow is that they could be seen and diagnosed by a nurse practitioner or an appropriate health practitioner. The sickness certificate could be done and that could all be completed in 15 minutes. This is particularly so if the nurse has high skills in some of the more frequent things that we see sickness notes for like a urinary tract infection for example. This can often be point-of-source tested in the surgery. The patient does not need to see the doctor but can see an appropriately—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair.Debate interrupted.The House adjourned at 10 p.m.