Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeEstimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 01 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19044. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Estimates DebateIn CommitteeThe CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The House is in Committee for consideration of the Appropriation (2014/15 Estimates) Bill. The Standing Orders provide for 8 hours of debate on the estimates. Each member may have no more than two speeches of 5 minutes on each vote. The estimates debate should be relevant to the Government’s current spending plans as contained in the Estimates of Appropriations. All votes except Vote State Services and Vote Sport and Recreation are available for debate. The votes will be called in order of seniority of Ministers commencing with the Speaker’s votes except for Vote State Services and Vote Sport and Recreation which will be considered at the end of the debate. A compendium of the reports of select committees on the votes is available on the Table.Vote Audit agreed to.Vote Office of the Clerk agreed to.Vote Ombudsmen agreed to.Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment agreed to.Vote Parliamentary Service agreed to.Vote Communications Security and IntelligenceHon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Leader of the Opposition):New Zealanders have a lot of unanswered questions about our intelligence and security community. Over the last couple of years New Zealanders have been very disturbed at the lack of assurance from the current Government about the protection of their privacy online and in cyberspace. They have had grave reservations about the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) legislation that was passed by this Government through this Parliament and the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act which provides for the intercepts that support it. At the start of this debate I want to revive and reaffirm Labour’s commitment to two things: firstly on our taking office a thoroughgoing and urgent review of our entire security establishment; and secondly an absolute comprehensive and unshakeable commitment to the principle that no New Zealand citizen will be subject to blanket surveillance or any surveillance by a New Zealand security service without a judge’s warrant—no ifs no buts no maybes. That review will absolutely assure New Zealanders that there are no gaps workarounds or other exceptions in the legislation that would ever allow such unwarranted surveillance to occur.There has been a great deal of discussion about New Zealand’s security arrangements with other countries. This is a sensitive area. The Labour Party recognises that we live in a complex and dangerous world. We recognise that there is a legitimate and appropriate place for well-governed security services but we do not accept that as a member of an international agreement that governs these services we should or could give a blank cheque to our partners to use New Zealand - sourced intelligence in any way they see fit. It is absolutely appropriate that this Government is transparent with New Zealanders about the governance arrangements and policies within limits and within the need for operational sensitivity that govern the use of New Zealand - sourced intelligence.New Zealanders are rightly concerned that our security establishment is not up to snuff. Today the Government has released and it is on the State Services Commission website the Performance Improvement Framework: Review of the agencies in the core New Zealand Intelligence Community. For an unclassified document it is a remarkably interesting one. On the business strategy and operating model the reviewers say that the establishment needs to first clarify priorities and the scope of the role of the security agencies. In other words they are in a muddle. They do not know what their priorities are and they are ineffective.Grant Robertson: Who’s the Minister for that?Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: And who is the Minister? The Prime Minister.Second it must ensure that the intelligence community works effectively together the conclusion being that currently it does not. Third it is to establish customer-driven priorities and practices. They make the point that if nobody uses their reports they are not worth producing and note that there is a huge gap between the level of interaction between community partners such as New Zealand companies and the agencies in New Zealand and their analogous agencies in the UK or Australia. It says that basic business systems are “weak and require attention. Financial and managerial control systems have not been maintained”. For goodness’ sake! These are supposed to be some of the most sophisticated agencies in the New Zealand Government and they can barely run their own budgets—they can barely run their own budgets. They are to establish a common workforce plan and ensure continued legal compliance.Well there the rubber meets the road because the GCSB could not even in its last annual report get to within about 50 percent accuracy of the number of intercepts it has actually done. It was out by a factor of two—unbelievable. The Auditor-General was called in to explain why our spies could not count to 50. It is embarrassing and the Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service should be able to take a call right now and explain to the Committee why some of the most sophisticated agencies in the country cannot count past two hands and two feet. It is not good enough Mr Chairman and it is not good enough Minister.They are to improve the public mandate—well there is an understatement. The agencies concerned do not have one because the Government’s policies are not clear robust and transparent.Vote agreed to.Vote Prime Minister and Cabinet agreed to.Vote Security Intelligence agreed to.Vote TourismHon TODD McCLAY (Associate Minister of Tourism):It gives me pleasure to take a call on tourism in this part of the debate. The reason for that is that tourism is so very important to our country. Indeed it is so important to our country that the Prime Minister himself decided to give it the honour it deserves and take on the responsibility for tourism. That is very good news for all those who are involved in tourism in New Zealand. The Government’s commitment to tourism over the last 6 years has been greater than any Government’s ever before in this country.What does this mean for Kiwis on the ground in New Zealand? Well it is very simple. It means greater effort into the local economy and it means more jobs—that is right; more jobs in tourism for New Zealanders. At the end of May this year almost 2.8 million visitors had come to New Zealand an increase of some 6 percent. In part that is because of the great work the sector has done and the very important work and commitment on the part of the Government. But it is really about a new relationship where the tourism sector businesses up and down New Zealand have joined with the Government to put New Zealand’s best foot forward and to promote the great things that we do here to the rest of the world.I asked earlier what this means to the economy. Members opposite keep squealing about jobs. They are disappointed that job growth in New Zealand is on the way up and unemployment in New Zealand is on the way down. During that same period of time up to May 2014 there was an increase in spending of 9 percent on the part of those visitors. That means more people are coming and they are spending more than they were before. Again in every part of New Zealand from our largest cities to our provinces and certainly in regional and rural New Zealand that is really really good news.A quick note shows that over the last 6 years the Government has committed and spent $600 million on the promotion of tourism in New Zealand. That is very important when one considers where those visitors are coming from and why they choose to come to New Zealand. We know it is a beautiful country. We know they have a great time when they are here. We know it is a safe country to visit under this Government. But here is where it gets really interesting. Do you remember those movies that were made in New Zealand that members opposite did not want to be made?An increasing number of visitors to New Zealand when they get off the plane say that the reason they have decided to visit New Zealand with their families for a holiday and to spend money here is that they have seen the Hobbit movies when they have been sitting at home in their own countries. That is a great way that the Government has leveraged the use of taxpayer funding to support up to 5000 jobs being created in New Zealand as part of the film industry. Now more people are visiting New Zealand because they have seen films that feature New Zealand and they are staying for longer and spending money in all parts of our economy which boosts jobs grows jobs in our regions.I want to pick on two parts as an example. The first is our traditional markets. The Government in the Budget last year committed an extra $134 million to spend in a number of areas of tourism. That certainly looked at where growth and potential will come from in the future. We committed $34 million to significantly expand focus on international business events—very important for our cities particularly—and $44.5 million has been allocated to attract visitors from emerging markets like India Indonesia and Latin America.Next year New Zealand will co-host with Australia some of the games of the Cricket World Cup. That is one of the largest sporting events. It will be watched by people all around the world. We have agreed with Australia on a border policy whereby people who come from India can if they have a visa for Australia travel to New Zealand without getting another visa to come and look at our country and to watch these great games of cricket. That is going to be really very important for us and it shows that the Government is focused on the future in terms of where demand will grow in some of these countries that have a lot of interest in New Zealand.But we are also spending time and effort focusing on the existing markets of the USA of the UK and certainly of other parts of Europe. Here is a really interesting statistic: growth over the last 12 months of visitors from the US was 9 percent but their spending was up by 55 percent. So 9 percent more of them came and 55 percent more was spent in our regions. The Government is committed to tourism. The Prime Minister as the Minister of Tourism is doing more work in tourism than any other Minister has done before. Our economic commitment is there. We have joined with the sector. It is good news because it is about jobs it is about the local economy and it is about our commitment to growing New Zealand.Vote agreed to.Vote FinanceHon DAVID PARKER (Deputy Leader—Labour):I rise to take a call to talk in the estimates debate on Vote Finance and related items. This was reviewed by the Finance and Expenditure Committee. One of the things that some members of the committee noted was that inequality in New Zealand is increasing and many New Zealanders are not benefiting from the growing economy. It was noted that some measures indicate that 46 percent of workers have had no pay rise in the past year. It is against that background that we need to judge whether the proposals that are brought forward through Vote Finance for the country are right. I would like to contrast them with some of the proposals that the Labour Opposition is making.Last week we proposed our alternative budget. That alternative budget has gone down pretty well. There are a few headline messages there. First of all everything is paid for and we are in surplus. So we can get down to a debate—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: 10th surplus.Hon DAVID PARKER: A 10th surplus; that is right. It would be the 10th surplus in a row for Labour Governments given that in the last Labour Government we ran nine surpluses in a row and reduced gross Government debt from 38 percent to 18 percent of GDP and net debt down to zero—net debt down to zero. It is clear that whether it is Labour in charge of the Treasury benches or National you are unlikely to have a fiscally irresponsible Government in New Zealand.Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: I don’t know about that!Hon DAVID PARKER: The Minister in the chair says he does not know about that but the truth of it is that we actually have not had a fiscally irresponsible Government since Muldoon’s National Government in the 1980s left New Zealand with Government debt that was amongst the highest in the world which took subsequent Governments be they National or Labour a generation to pay off. So we know the ills of unbalanced Budgets. This Government has not yet run a surplus. It is true that some of those deficits were a consequence of a global recession that affected New Zealand and also the cost of the Canterbury rebuild. That is why we do not whack Government members around the ears too much about the deficits that they have run but we do know that it is time to get back to surplus and we would too.Our numbers show how it would be done. The commentators who have been through those numbers—produced not 3 weeks before an election but 3 months before an election—have given them the tick. They said: “Clean bill of health here. It is obviously clear that you’re not going to be fiscally irresponsible that you are going to run Budget surpluses and that you are going to pay down debt.” In a fair society everyone should get their fair share and everyone should pay their fair share. One of the provisions that we have got in this alternative budget is to shift the economy away from speculative activity towards the productive economy. There is no doubt that one of the reasons that we over-invest in property-based assets is that the tax system encourages it. Just about everyone now accepts that except for the Government. The OECD says it the IMF says it Treasury says it the Reserve Bank says it the Labour Party says it the Greens say it and just about every other developed country in the world says it. We need to have people investing in the productive parts of our economy not chasing tax advantages in the speculative economy.That is why if there is one policy that should be looked at really carefully this coming election—and I think the people of New Zealand are up for it—it is the question of whether we should change our tax system and tax capital gains excluding the family home.Hon Gerry Brownlee: How is this relevant?Hon DAVID PARKER: How is this relevant? You could take a call. You can see that one of the issues that was raised in the financial review by the Finance and Expenditure Committee was that the absence of a capital gains tax means that we have got an economy that is out of shape that invests too much in the speculative sector and not enough in the productive sector. We have got higher house prices as a consequence of the investors in rental housing piling in particularly in Auckland where homeownership rates are the lowest they have been in 50 years and still dropping.Our alternative budget makes it clear that we are fiscally responsible that we are not going to be writing cheques that we cannot cash and that we will be back into surplus. You know National has racked up $60 billion worth of debt just about—$60 billion worth of debt. It made it worse through tax cuts where 40 percent of its income tax cuts went to the top 10 percent. It quotes tax figures excluding the burden of GST.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Associate Minister of Finance):I think you can hear with that speech by David Parker the problem that Labour has. It has got a finance spokesperson someone who wants to be the Minister of Finance who cannot finish a speech on time cannot articulate an argument and cannot get a key point across. It is a big problem. What he did say was that whoever gets into Government will be a fiscally responsible Government. Well I can tell you that we have a 6-year record showing that we are fiscally responsible.What he did not actually tell you was that if these people were part of the Government they would be there with Russel Norman pulling the strings. The big question is whether the tax rates that Labour would impose would be high enough for Russel Norman. Would the punishment of hard-working Kiwis be tough enough? Would Russel Norman be laying into the people he does not like hard enough? He would be putting a lot of pressure on David Parker. So in the end all that stuff that David Parker is saying is absolutely and completely irrelevant. If as Chris Finlayson says the multi-headed Hydra gets into Government I do not know whether there would be room for even old Clayton Cosgrove in Cabinet. He would probably find his place taken by the American lady from Mount Eden who would suddenly become the spokesperson on small business.Russel Norman could take David Parker’s place. Old Annette King there—well I mean it will probably be the bald-headed guy from the West Coast. He would end up being the Minister of Health. So you start to see the picture of a very different-looking Cabinet if these people got in.Hon Annette King: What a nasty thing to say.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: It might be nasty but it is true.Hon Phil Goff: Stop all the personal attacks.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Phil Goff would actually finally want to retire. The problem is that these guys have not come up with a single bit of policy. Do you know what their economic development idea for this week is? It is to bring back the moa—to bring back the moa from extinction. I think it would be far better if they worked on something like bringing back David Lange or maybe bringing back Michael Joseph Savage because frankly without someone inspirational from the past chromosomally re-engineered these guys have absolutely no hope at the next election. If they ever got the Treasury benches I can tell you that the Budgets would be bad bad news for New Zealand.And then if you look at what we have basically we have nearly 4 percent economic growth over the past year the third-highest rate in the OECD and 1500 people every week moving off welfare and into work—1500 people. So actually we are getting the country moving ahead. There were 84000 new jobs in the last year. That is growth. That is economic development. That is responsible fiscal management. There is a very coherent plan there. But look at the Budget—through tight economic times what have we done? We have preserved the entitlements for the most vulnerable New Zealanders. We have a $500 million package there for families with free general practitioner visits for under-sixes paid parental leave—Simon O’Connor: Under-13s now.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Sorry under-13s—even better news. So you know we are focusing on getting the country ahead at the same time as protecting the most vulnerable.Gerry Brownlee’s $220 million regional roads package was announced at the weekend. That is infrastructure that I can tell you the Green Cabinet would stop because the Greens do not like roads. They do not like the regions. They do not come from the regions most of those people except for the bald guy from the West Coast.Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I would have thought you would stop that sort of behaviour. Naming a member of Parliament in that way is just not acceptable.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I thank the member. It is not necessary. [Interruption] I am on my feet. I would ask the Minister to confine his comments to the estimates. I remind members of pages 128 and 129 of Speakers’ Rulings. That is the debate that we are on. Although some latitude is allowed I will ask the Minister to bring his focus back to the estimates debate.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I know you would not have been so sensitive Mr Chair about that sort of matter—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! [Interruption] I am on my feet. The member will apologise for those comments.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I apologise Mr Chair.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): You cannot comment on anything that the presiding officer says which you did do.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: So when you look at this you see that it is a carefully thought-out package focused on the needs of New Zealanders. I can tell you that when you look at what these guys have come up with the one idea that David Parker has personally come up with is something called “the big tool”. What you do is you use people’s KiwiSaver to control inflation. Well how is that going to appeal to Labour’s core base out there? In the end what it means is its core voter will be told: “Sorry inflation is going up. You are going to have less money in the pocket to spend each week.” It is absolutely nuts. David Parker is the architect of that. You can tell how agitated these guys are getting over there because they are under real pressure. It is falling apart in their caucus. They have got no plan. They are deeply frustrated—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Back on the estimates.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Oh come on! This is—[Interruption]Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Point of order Mr Speaker.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No no. The member will sit. Earlier I mentioned relevancy and coming back to the estimates debate. You are in the final few seconds and this is a peroration of your 5-minute speech to bring together those points that you want to make relevant on the estimates. I would ask the member in the last few seconds to confine his comments to that.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: The point I am making is that you should look at the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance managing the economy very soundly for 6 years. It is a very sound economic plan which has delivered for New Zealanders. These people can shout as much abuse as they like but out there we are connecting with the electorate. The National Party is objective—Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green):On behalf of the Green Party I want to make a few comments about the estimates with regard to finance. The thing about the finance estimates is that they do not just include the issues of economics and the fiscal position of the Government they also impact on the environment and society more generally. The Green Party has a view that what we need in New Zealand is a cleaner environment a fairer society and a smarter economy. For those reasons we think that we need to change direction. Unfortunately this Government—[Interruption]The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry. The member will sit. Members—[Interruption] I am on my feet and when the presiding officer is on their feet that is it. I will ask the member to apologise for that comment.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Which one?The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The very unparliamentary comment you interjected with that called the Minister Jonathan Coleman a word that should not be used in this House. The member will withdraw and apologise for those comments.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I withdraw and apologise.Dr RUSSEL NORMAN: Unfortunately we have heard from Associate Minister of Finance Coleman a long personal attack on various people instead of debating the real issues that are before the country such as the issue that we have got a Government that continues to rack up massive amounts of debt and continues to criticise the previous Government yet it was the previous Government that paid down debt. That is the reality. The previous Government with the support of the Greens voted for Budgets that reduced debt and National at that point told us time and time again to not pay down debt but give tax cuts to the wealthy. But of course Labour with the support of the Greens New Zealand First and others said: “No no. We are responsible about this. We intend to pay down debt.”So in 2008 when National came in it inherited a position of very low Government debt. Since then it has increased debt dramatically and has not run a single Budget surplus. Except for the last one in the 2014-15 year where there was a wafer-thin surplus every other Budget that this Government has run has been a deficit Budget. It has built up nearly $60 billion worth of debt—$60 billion worth of debt—under the watch of John Key and Bill English. They tell us that they are great fiscal managers. These are the people who have built up nearly $60 billion worth of debt and who through the course of all of the previous Government time and again through nine Budgets opposed the attempts to reduce Government debt because it said: “No surpluses should not be used to pay down debt; surpluses should be used to give tax cuts to the wealthy.” That was the argument of the National Party during those 9 years.Fortunately everyone ignored the National Party because it does not know anything about fiscal management. When the global financial crisis happened in 2008 there was very low Government debt and the Government we have now was lucky enough to inherit that very low Government debt as a result of the very good fiscal management of actually the Labour Government. We have been critical of Labour on many things on various occasions but you would have to say that when it comes down to looking at the Government’s debt position and fiscal management when you compare the record of Clark and Cullen versus Key and English it is miles apart. Clark and Cullen paid down massive amounts of debt. Key and English have built up $60 billion in debt. Sure some of that debt was unavoidable—no question about it—but let us look at which bits were avoidable.How about the $5 billion that the National Government gave to the top 10 percent of income earners? Was that avoidable debt? Remember it had racked up $5 billion worth of debt in order to give tax cuts to the top 10 percent. That seems to me not a very good reason to rack up $5 billion worth of debt—to give tax cuts to the wealthiest people in the country—yet that is what the National Government is proudest of. It tells us time and again that it is very proud when it looks at its fiscal position. It says: “We added $5 billion of debt to the Government books in order to give $5 billion in tax cuts to the wealthiest 10 percent in New Zealand.”This is at a time when most ordinary families half of all workers have not had a pay increase in the last 12 months. This is at a time when housing affordability is going backwards. Housing affordability is going backwards not just because houses are getting more expensive under National but also because wages are flat-lining under this Government. Ordinary working families’ wages are flat-lining under John Key and Bill English house prices are going up and the Government says this is a sign of success. Well talk to ordinary people. It is no sign of success. Their household budgets are under enormous pressure because electricity bills keep going up housing bills keep going up and their wages are flat under this Government. There is no increase for ordinary families. That is at a time when we are not dealing with some of the great issues facing the country—for example climate change.The Green Party put forward a plan of a climate tax cut. We put a price on carbon and returned it in the form of income tax cuts and company tax cuts. That deals with environmental issues and economic issues at the same time. That is a much more sensible direction than the one in which this Government is going which is more debt—environmental and fiscal.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I call Andrew Little. Oh sorry—I apologise. Sorry to the member. I made that mistake the other day when I called Andrew Little Andrew Williams. Andrew Williams you have the floor.ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First):That is right. I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on the Appropriation (2014/15 Estimates) Bill in regard to the finance debate. It is most disappointing as a New Zealander to have to look at the figures that this Government puts up because much of it is a litany of lies. The reason I say that is that New Zealanders have been robbed for the last 5 years of Government contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. This National Government has not contributed 1 cent to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund for the last 5 years and this Budget and the estimates going forward also do not provide for any contributions for the next 5 years. For a whole decade under this Government New Zealanders are being robbed of their future retirement fund.That retirement fund to the year ended 31 May 2014 is currently worth $26.14 billion. The average return of the fund since its inception under Dr Cullen when he was Minister of Finance has average 9.74 percent. The last 12 months the fund has returned a 17.2 percent return to the fund after costs. And in the last 5 years the New Zealand Superannuation Fund has returned a 16.8 percent average over those 5 years. These are incredible figures. In the 1 month alone of May 2014 when the finance Minister was issuing his Budget the fund made 2.57 percent return—for that 1 month. Yet the Minister of Finance tells us that it is poor fiscal management to borrow any money to put into the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. When the Government can borrow funds in the order of 3 or 4 percent per annum and when a fund is returning 17.2 percent in the last year basically this Government is robbing the people of New Zealand in order to falsify the books and make sure that the Budget looks OK.At the same time during that same period when the Government sold the State-owned assets it promised the people of New Zealand that it would get between $5 billion and $7 billion for those assets. That is what it sold the promise on. It ended up with a miserable $4.5 billion from the sales—some $2 billion to $2.5 billion less than what it promised the people of New Zealand. It said originally that it would use the funds to pay down debt but what did it do? In the meantime the debt carried on mounting. It took on a debt 5 or 6 years ago of about $6 billion when it left the Opposition benches and became Government. That has now gone up tenfold to $60 billion under this National Government. At the same time it said that it would put that $4.5 billion into new projects such as 21st century schools. It said it would put it into 21st century schools. But what is it actually doing? It is putting the money into fixing leaky schools—hundreds and hundreds of leaky school buildings. There are over 300 leaky school buildings around New Zealand. That is where the money is going—again to make up for an error of the National Government from the 1990s when it allowed the leaky building programme to get under way.At the same time where has the rest of the $4.5 billion gone? Well $120 million went to the sharebrokers who sold the shares in the first place. So this whole Budget and estimates have come out showing that the Government has a $372 million surplus and showing how wonderfully it is doing as managers of the economy but $120 million - odd in the last year has just gone to the sharebrokers—the friends of Mr Key and Mr English—just to sell the shares. At the same time another $40 million went to pay for free bonus shares for those who bought into State assets. Is that not incredible? The Government gave away another $40 million to the 2.5 percent of New Zealanders who bought into the shares. Previously the shares were 100 percent owned by you me everybody else in this room and everybody else around this country and now 2.5 percent of New Zealanders own those shares and $40 million was given to the asset buyers to help pay for free bonus shares in the coming year.At the same time another $100 million went into shoring up stricken Solid Energy another State-owned enterprise—another $100 million. Most of these figures are just absolute nonsense. This is an absolute smoke and mirrors Budget. The estimates going forward are absolute hogwash. This Government makes out that it is running a surplus but in actual fact if the media was to jolly well do some proper research—some proper investigative research—and show how the Government is not putting any money into the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and how most of the money—PAUL GOLDSMITH (Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee):Well we have certainly seen a vision of the proposed new Government. First we had David Parker saying that there is no problem in the world that cannot be solved by a capital gains tax. Then we had Russel Norman who wants higher wages but who has no solution other than higher taxes and somehow that that is going to lead to higher wages. And then we had Mr Williams who gave us a lecture on economics and said that we should be borrowing more in order to invest in the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. So why do you not just go out and borrow $100 billion and put it all in the New Zealand Superannuation Fund if that is such a sensible idea? I do not think many households go out borrowing money to put it on to the stock exchange. It is not very sensible. I only wonder what Hone Harawira and Kim Dotcom would add to this mix in a proposed new Government.This has been a successful Budget that has seen the finances of the country restored. It has seen 3.8 percent growth in the year to March which is the third-highest among the OECD countries. It has seen average wages rising faster than inflation. It has seen 84000 new jobs being created and this is a result of 6 years of working for New Zealand. The question that New Zealanders will ask is: “Well what is next? Who do you trust best to carry on the good work?”. I expect from National—if we are fortunate enough to get more time in Government—an extension of the strong stable predictable Government that has generated confidence in this economy over the past few years. It is confidence that leads to investment it is investment that leads to jobs and it is jobs that lead to higher living standards for all New Zealand families. That is what we want to see.So what we will continue to see is more disciplined spending such as we have seen over the last few years and in this Budget. We will see a continued effort to build a stronger and more competitive economy that underscores the living standards that we all hope to enjoy—and the Business Growth Agenda is the core source of direction in that area—investment in infrastructure such as in regional roads which is opposed all the time by the Greens; and investment in skills. There is no better way to solve worries about inequality than by ensuring that everybody has access to a quality education system and that involves good quality teachers and investment in good quality teachers. It involves trade access and it amazes me that the Greens are opposed to free-trade agreements all the time. New Zealand has benefited enormously from the free-trade agreement with China and I was glad that Labour stood for that back then. Nobody is quite sure where it stands now.Capital markets—increasing the depth and variety of capital markets in New Zealand and that has been greatly assisted through the share programme that we have had in the past 3 years. Natural resources—it was amazing to see that all the Opposition parties were opposed even to collecting the dead trees from the forests that had been blown over in the wind. That seems to epitomise their attitude towards making use of natural resources in this country. Finally the sixth area of the Business Growth Agenda is innovation where this Government has been pouring huge resources into ensuring that New Zealand companies have access to skilled and innovative people and that we support them in their work in research and development to grow their businesses to employ more New Zealanders and to create more wealthy New Zealand families.The other thing that we have been focusing on and that I expect we will continue to work on is getting better results from the investment that the Government makes in public services. We have seen that through much higher immunisation rates. We have seen a massive reduction in teen pregnancy which will see much reduced costs over the length of time in the area of welfare and it will also see many New Zealand families avoiding the problems that have been created through unwanted teen pregnancies. In the welfare area through the investment approach when we see what the expectations were around the cost of welfare back in 2008 we have lowered that by more than $1 billion and that has led to more New Zealand families seeing the benefit of work and being encouraged into work.Another area which I have heard about for as long as I can remember is the need to ensure that prisoners who are suffering from drug or alcohol addictions are getting access to programmes to improve that situation. This Government again has massively increased the number of programmes available for prisoners.So it is about doing the job of Government well working out what the key drivers—Hon DAVID PARKER (Deputy Leader—Labour):You know that the Government has run out of ideas when the Minister in the chair the Minister of Defence just takes to insulting members of the Opposition from the Greens and the Labour Party rather than addressing the issues. It is also somewhat ironic to hear the Minister in the chair criticising potential coalition parties when his own coalition is in disarray with the ACT member having resigned for election-related fraud and United Future’s Peter Dunne having had to resign because he leaked a Government document and now they are trying to shoehorn Colin Craig in—a man who believes in chemtrails who does not believe in evolution and who is not sure whether a man landed on the moon.One of the reasons why our alternative budget went down pretty well was that journalists believed it. They believed it on the basis of the numbers that were presented and our record when last in Government. The Dominion Post said: “The party’s approach is moderate and centrist and so there is no reason why it should frighten off middle-of-the-road voters. … Perhaps however policy will … become a serious part of this election campaign. At that point the voters might see that Labour offers a wide range of genuine policy alternatives to National. And then perhaps there will be a serious debate about what really matters for New Zealand and its future. At that point clichés and outdated slogans might give way to actual debate.”That is what we are trying to do through our alternative budget: get through to a debate where we can talk about the widening gaps in New Zealand. It is not just the Labour Party saying that; the head of the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research its chief economist said that the gaps are widening between rich and poor suburbs in Auckland between the regions and the large cities. We have got the lowest rate of homeownership in 50 years. We have had a trebling of luxury car sales. We have got increasing income gaps between wealthy suburbs and poor suburbs which have shown up in the census figures and we have got more children than ever living in poverty. Against that background we should be having a debate at this election as to whether the policies of the current Government are making those gaps larger or reducing them. And the reality is that we know that they are making them larger. That is why Labour’s economic plan which we can now talk about because we have got past this tax and spend nonsense from National—that accusation has been laid out for the public to see that it is just a hoax.We can talk about what we need to grow the depth of capital markets. We need to have everyone in a universal KiwiSaver scheme like they have in Australia. Of course today is the seventh birthday of KiwiSaver. If you go back 7 years who voted against it? The National Party. Who voted against the Cullen fund which National members now say is one—the National Party. National called it a dog. It gets these big questions wrong all the time. Who voted against the surpluses that we ran when in Government to reduce Government debt? National members wanted tax cuts weighted to the wealthy as they always do.Having built pools of capital in the same way that they do in Australia through universal work-based savings you then need to get it going into the right part of the economy. Under National too much of it goes into land speculation and that is one of the reasons why we have the highest-ever houses prices on average in Auckland. A capital gains tax helps push that money that is currently chasing a tax advantage—Hon Dr Nick Smith: Rubbish. Hasn’t worked in Australia.Hon DAVID PARKER: Look Dr Smith you are so so wrong. That is why the IMF the OECD the Reserve Bank Treasury and other countries disagree with you.You also need to have some more money spent on innovation. So we say that we should recycle some of that money through a research and development tax credit. Bring forward more investment in productivity and improve equipment in the likes of the forest processing industry so that we do not export as many raw logs but instead cut up timber and make finished products. Those are the sorts of policies that the Labour Party is promoting for this election. Indeed following our forestry upgrade launch one of the forest processors has said: “Oh give us this policy package and we’ll invest another $100 million in an expansion a very significant expansion in our factory.” That would of course bring more export earnings and higher-paid jobs.The gaps are widening under the current Government. There is no doubt about that. Seventy-five percent of New Zealanders think that that is true and those New Zealanders do not like it. They want a fair society. They know that these sorts of widening gaps do not make any one better off; they make us all poorer because the economy does not go as well. National is conservative. All it does is trim expenditure. It never makes any significant changes to economic settings. That is why when the cycle turns it is up to Labour and our allies to make the changes our country needs.SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki):Well it is fascinating that we have just heard from the Labour member David Parker that same sort of empty rhetoric that Labour has been accusing the National Party of—and it finished in fact on the idea that the National Party because it is conservative does not spend money. This Government has spent over $500 million extra in this Budget to support Kiwi families particularly children and parents—Dr Cam Calder: The most vulnerable.SIMON O’CONNOR: The most vulnerable. This is one of the fundamental differences between a left-wing and a right-wing Government: the left wing is great at talking but never walking the walk that is required.Dr Cam Calder: We target the expenditure.SIMON O’CONNOR: We target the expenditure but we actually do it. We have heard for weeks members on the other side say: “Oh let’s put together a whole lot of measures on child poverty let’s put a whole lot of reports together let’s just make numbers stack together.” The National Party through the likes of Vote Finance has walked out and actually walked the talk. There is $500 million more for families and the most vulnerable are targeted.Dr Cam Calder: Free GP visits.SIMON O’CONNOR: Absolutely—National has funded as my colleague has just noted free general practitioner visits until the age of 13. It is about actually doing things.But what about members on the other side? They were talking about wood just a little bit earlier. This seems to be the great solution. I remember being at a social justice talk with Labour and the Greens which was hilarious—they have no idea of what it means to be social or just but anyway there they were. Their great solution to the economy just like we heard before was logs. Logs are the solution. Of course last week this Government was passing the West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill—under urgency rightly—to take native timber that had been downed and felled by nature. You would think the Greens would love that. But only this side of the Chamber moved that bill and supported it. All these others—oh yes they say logs are our future—voted against it. There we go New Zealand—Dr Cam Calder: Just slugs and bugs.SIMON O’CONNOR: Absolutely. This is the side that actually makes the difference and you know you are making a difference when you talk in this Chamber and they start getting fired up. Again they talk but they do absolutely nothing.We are very proud of what we are doing. I found over the past few weeks campaigning around my electorate of Tāmaki including last night at an excellent public meeting that people are grateful for what this Government has done in the financial spaces. We have an incredibly well-performing economy which is growing at 3.8 percent. We had average wages increase by $3000 in the past 2 years and 84000 new jobs have been created.Dr Cam Calder: How much was that?SIMON O’CONNOR: That was 84000 new jobs created. These are real things. These are measurable statistics that you can bring out. Not just measurable; what I am finding from people in my electorate is that they are experiencing it. In fact a number of people in my electorate are some of the top earning people. And do you know what? They are happy to pay their taxes and their fair share and they are paying even more than their fair share now. Through National’s comprehensive tax cuts right across the board those top income earners—and there are a good number in my electorate—are now paying more taxes. Do you know why they are prepared to pay them and they are happy to pay them? Because they are with a party that cares about and tries to help people.Once again we have seen those moneys given to the most vulnerable. I keep talking rightly about the parental tax credits the extension of paid parental leave the general practitioner visits for under-13-year-olds that are now free and more money into schools. Unlike the member from New Zealand First Andrew Williams who complained that it is just about repairs to leaky schools we are actually investing in new—Dr Cam Calder: Did he say that?SIMON O’CONNOR: He did—it is shocking that that member of all members would talk about leaks. But that member forgets that we are pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into new classrooms like the ones at St Thomas’s School. Look at something like Stonefields School in my electorate which is now a green school. The way it has been designed under the governance of this Government is as a school of sustainable quality. That is a new school with new innovations new technologies which this Government has championed.In Vote Finance National walks the talk. We walk the talk. We actually make a difference. That is why we poll the numbers that we do and that is why we see that others are not seen as relevant. Coming back to my electorate it understands day by day that the changes that have been made are making a difference. I think even of an area like Glen Innes. For me that is a wonderful community in my electorate. They are experiencing this change. Hundreds of new homes are being built a number of those State houses. They are warm and modern created—Dr Cam Calder: Healthier and drier.SIMON O’CONNOR: Healthier and drier absolutely. They are raising the options for people and that is moving right across the sector. There is an enormous amount of positivity happening here.Vote agreed to.Vote Canterbury Earthquake RecoveryHon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills):Thanks very much for the opportunity to take a call in the estimates debate for Vote Canterbury Earthquake Recovery. Nowhere in New Zealand in my view is it more needed than in Canterbury for people to have a bit of support a bit of a vision and something positive to look forward to. We have been through a lot and where that vision that support and that hope for the future could have been provided there is a big empty space. People are looking for local jobs for local people. They want to have training opportunities for young people in our city so that they can go on with a passion and stay in our communities.We want homes that are affordable. I have watched the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery wash his hands of any concern at all about the situation that people are finding themselves in. I have said to the Minister that I do not care what he calls it. He argues about whether or not it is a crisis. I do not care about the description. The fact is that people in our communities cannot find an affordable home to rent. From my perspective that is a crisis and the Government has done nothing.I see that the Hon Dr Nick Smith is about to make a major housing announcement in Canterbury over the coming week. I look forward to something positive. Do you think anyone will be a little bit suspicious that 3½ years since the February quake after constant denials from the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery suddenly—what a coincidence we are 80 days from an election—we have the Minister of Housing giving a toss about our housing situation? I think that would be greeted with the cynicism that it deserves.The National Government has walked away from the hardest part of the Canterbury earthquake recovery. That is what I have previously found so frustrating but that frustration has now been trumped because what we learnt during the estimates was that Minister Brownlee and Minister English have used the Canterbury earthquake recovery as a way of fiddling the books and putting on the table a Budget surplus. It is not a true surplus. We will not know the true figures involved in the central government contribution to the earthquake recovery until—when? Ah the end of the year. It is a deliberate decision by the Hon Gerry Brownlee that there would be no auditing of the costs until after the election. This is a cheap and nasty way of producing a Budget surplus on the back of tragedy. On behalf of my constituents I resent that.The Minister debated this—not very strongly admittedly—at the select committee with my colleague David Parker my other colleague Clayton Cosgrove and me during the estimates consideration. But we produced a document that is a minute of a meeting between Tony Marryatt and Bob Parker—the former chief executive and the former mayor—and the current Minister. It said this: “Following discussions with the Minister it was felt that due to the possible negative impact on the cost of borrowing for the Government following an audit opinion that highlighted the uncertainty of the Government’s share of the response and recovery cost a long-term plan process should not be undertaken by the council.” The Hon Gerry Brownlee said to the Christchurch City Council: “Do not get your books audited before the end of 2014.” and Bob Parker and Tony Marryatt went along with that direction from Minister Brownlee. No wonder Minister Brownlee got so upset when the current council commissioned the KordaMentha report which gave robust figures about the council’s need and the ratepayers’ need for contribution towards our recovery.We know that it is not all good news in Canterbury—we do not expect it to be—but we deserve the truth. We do not deserve having Ministers poncing around our city going to the opening of an envelope and misleading us about the costs that our contribution will require let alone using shonky figures to put on the table a Budget surplus that is made up. I think that people all over the country should resent that happening. The estimates on the Canterbury earthquake recovery show a shallow Minister and a shallow department with huge expenses—nearly $100 million to run the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority to produce well-being surveys—and on the back of the recovery costs it was denied a robust audit having shonky Budget figures. I do not think that is good enough.Hon NICKY WAGNER (Associate Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery):I am very pleased to be speaking on this Appropriation (2014/15 Estimates) Bill. I want to start by thanking the Prime Minister and the National Government for their consistent ongoing and future support for the recovery and rebuild of greater Christchurch. The appropriations for 2014-15 are $570.4 million as part of a multi-year appropriation of over $15 billion with the total expenditure on the Canterbury rebuild including insurance payouts private sector investment and local government expenditure being $40 billion. That sort of investment in our community over the next few years underpins a very positive future for Christchurch and the Canterbury region.After the earthquakes there were some very dire predictions about Christchurch—that people would leave the city in droves that businesses would close that insurers would pull out and that the city would die. Thanks to some very careful and hard work by this Government 3 years later it is a very different story. The population of greater Christchurch is growing there are 11000 new businesses registered GDP growth is more than 6 percent and unemployment is just about 3 percent. The rebuild is well under way—in fact the city is pumping.Just before I talk about the tangible signs of restoration and rebuild in Christchurch I want to look at the human dimension—to look at the restoration and the rebuilding of individual and community well-being. Christchurch people have supported each other throughout the earthquakes and on into the recovery period. Funded by the Ministry of Social Development—and I want to thank the Hon Paula Bennett—local and central government community organisations and neighbourhood groups have collaborated and worked hard together to support anyone and everyone who needed it. This is set to continue with the new Community in Mind Strategy and $13.5 million for ongoing services to make sure that all those people who are still adversely affected by the earthquakes are supported as they recover.Let us get back to bricks and mortar. The number of homes that have been repaired and rebuilt has accelerated recently. The Earthquake Commission has rebuilt 60000 homes and that is nearly 80 percent of the claims. Families are moving into their new homes every day. I just want to make the point that although there has been pressure for temporary housing the Government has built four temporary villages and introduced—The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order! I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. I advise members on my left to have a look at Speaker’s ruling 60/5. Interjections are to be rare and reasonable and if at all possible witty.Hon NICKY WAGNER: Just to reinforce for temporary accommodation four villages have been built and we are entering into a housing accord with the city council for 200 more units.Let us look at SCIRT—the Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team. That has been a very innovative and successful project. It works on the city’s underground infrastructure and the roads above it. Almost 50 percent of its work has been completed and the rest is well under way. That is good news because we all know that the long-term prosperity of Canterbury and of the South Island around that is based on the rebuild of Christchurch as it is the tourist gateway and the export shipping hub for the whole South Island. But right now the central business district is full of cranes diggers hard hats and high-vis vests. Over 200 building projects are complete or are under way within the four avenues. The publicly funded Avon Ōtākaro River Project is almost completed and that will provide a people-friendly public space and a waterfront for the central business district.The Re:START Mall which has actually become world-renowned as a symbol of Christchurch coming back has for the last 3 years provided the retail anchor for the city and ensured that people have come back into our city. Now it has been relocated because new construction dominates the three blocks round that area. The future for retail looks very bright in the central city. Thank you.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable member Denis O’Rourke.DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First):A good choice Mr Chairman thank you. There is now a very large question over whether the Government resources allocated in the Canterbury recovery are anywhere near adequate. The member Nicky Wagner who has just spoken constantly looks at the Christchurch recovery through rose-coloured glasses seeing only some of the good things—and yes there are good things—but never acknowledging the problems the many problems that are still with us in Christchurch.We all know that billions more will be needed for the recovery—the Prime Minister himself has said so—but there is nothing to indicate that in what the Government has allocated currently for the rebuild. It has been 3½ years since the February 2011 earthquake. We are now in a fourth winter. Thousands of homes in fact are still unrepaired. Bare-section and self-insured landowners are taking the Government to the Supreme Court over the illegal offers made to them and the legality of the red-zoning itself is in question. Dozens of homes are still expected to be flooded yet again before the winter is over. Port Hills residents are still in limbo awaiting a decision living in rented accommodation while their own homes rot. A massive housing crisis in which people simply cannot find an affordable home to buy is getting worse by the day. For those who need to rent—well that is a nightmare. Even if they can find a home to rent they would have to spend something like $1000 a week for an average three-bedroom house. If that is not a housing crisis then I do not know what is.But I especially want to talk about the Earthquake Commission and its treatment of the owners of units and multi-unit dwellings. No Minister could be satisfied with the progress of the commission in the settlement or disposition of the claims made in respect of multi-unit dwellings. Where the units and multi-unit dwellings are assessed by the commission as being under the $100000 cap per unit but the damage claimed is greater than this and when the cost to repair the building as a whole would exceed the total of the Earthquake Commission - assessed damage for all individual units together then that situation is currently in an absolute shambles. In far too many cases the Earthquake Commission is resisting a realistic sum for repairs of whole buildings where they are multi-unit buildings.Only yesterday in my office there was a case where the Earthquake Commission had failed to assess adequately the cost of repairs to all of the units in one small six-unit building in the central city. It had failed to offer nearly enough for the repairs to obvious damage to each unit but it had also failed to assess the building properly as a whole leaving the owners to take legal action. In that case the total assessment was only $350000 which is clearly grossly insufficient to repair all six units so the total for Earthquake Commission purposes had to go under the $600000 cap for all six together. And that did not take into account repairs that needed to be made to the building as a whole to make it leak-proof again or to the land and driveways and many other issues. The inadequate assessment by the Earthquake Commission in those cases means that the private insurer takes no part and therefore the owners are left to battle the Earthquake Commission on their own.Private insurers would be much better taking over the process in those cases for the full repair or replacement of the whole building but this is prevented by the Earthquake Commission’s intransigence and inadequate technical assessment. Its only interest appears to be to find a way to justify keeping the costs under the cap. The Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery as well as the Earthquake Commission seems careless about the people who are caught in this trap of an inadequate offer by the commission for repairs. The commission insists that units are under cap when they are clearly not leaving the owners to pay tens of thousands of dollars to engineers and assessors to do the commission’s job for it as well as to pay lawyers’ fees.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour):One of the ways you measure recovery is by looking at the number of people who are settling claims. I will concede one thing in Nicky Wagner’s speech—although after that speech I have to say I have got a bit of sympathy for Gerry Brownlee having to work with her—which is that the Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team is going well. I think the team is quite an outstanding example of community engagement and communication despite the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority’s intransigence. I think it is a good example and it is a pity that the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery did not follow the same pattern with his own department.Mr Brownlee is fond of making statements and he has claimed from time to time of course that—in fact I will read his quote—“Only a small fraction of outstanding claims are in dispute and there are a range of appropriate channels to deal with complex or disputed insurance claims.” Well one of them is the court and we propose—and we will implement it when in Government—an earthquake court. It will be a division of the District Court—a lean mean fighting machine to get claims through. Mr Brownlee’s response to that was to say basically that he believed that “lawyers would have a field day at taxpayers’ expense.” That is what he said. The point I would make to Mr Brownlee is: what about the insurers having a field day at the claimants’ expense which has been going on for 4 years?If the insurance industry which he is very fond of sucks up to and puts his arms round is doing such a great job then why is it that only 44 percent—44 percent—of claims are settled? That is on the authority’s own website. There are 10000 outstanding claims and the census tells us that there are two and a half people per household on average so that is equivalent to the size of Timaru—25000 families and households in dispute. They have still not settled their claims with those wonderful people from the insurance industry nearly 4 years down the track so we say it is time to do something about it.What we should not keep hearing from this Government is how well these guys are doing because every insurance company in this country has let down its claimants. Every insurance company in this country is in breach of its contract because insurance policies say that claims should be settled in a reasonable time—not 1 year later; not 4 years later. Mr Brownlee’s answer is that his department says it is all OK there is no problem there is a bit of an advisory service here and if you have got enough money over and above all the other things that you are grappling with you can toddle off to court. He also says of course that most claims do not get to court. Well that is true because people cannot afford to go to court and in another 2 years’ time the Limitation Act says that if they are still in dispute with the insurer they then lose all their rights if they have not lodged a court case. So Mr Brownlee does not connect the dots. He says that very few cases end up in court—that is correct—but they do not end up in court because people cannot afford the means to get there.So what is their alternative? Oh a bit of disputes resolution a bit of mediation—sit there and wait 4 years later. We say that we will set up the Earthquake Court. The Crown will hit the bill and then pass it on to the Earthquake Commission and the insurance industry. There will be compensation payments to the claimants if the insurance companies delay. Mr Brownlee I am sure will get up and say: “Oh we don’t need more lawyers. We need more plumbers we need more sparkies we need more carpenters working on these houses.” He is right but the only way you will get more plumbers and sparkies and carpenters is if the people have the money from their insurance claim and the Earthquake Commission to then rebuild or build their houses and employ those sparkies and carpenters and plumbers.If they cannot get the money out of the Earthquake Commission and they cannot get the money out of their insurance company and they cannot afford to go to court on their own volition—and under our policy it will not cost them a dime—then how on earth does this Minister expect people to get ahead? What are the other appropriate avenues for people as he says to actually get ahead get their claims sorted and get it done and dusted? The truth is that there are none Mr Brownlee—there are none.All we hear from this Minister is that his officials—the Earthquake Commission officials—and the insurance industry are working tirelessly as he said on 31 August last year to get these claims settled. Well here is the problem: 44 percent—that is it. There are 10000 outstanding big claims not to mention some of the other ones. Then we have the privacy breaches the obfuscation by the Earthquake Commission the lack of information and the inconsistent information and people still languish. So I say to Mr Brownlee let us hear your solution for the person who has no money whom the advisory service cannot do a lot for who cannot go to court and who has nowhere to go—Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery):This afternoon the Committee has been regaled with a number of terribly inaccurate statements from members of the Opposition and I am going to deal with them back to front. The first point is that the Government has been deeply involved in the recovery in Christchurch since the outset. There was a comment made by the Hon Ruth Dyson in which she claimed that I had instructed the Christchurch City Council not to have an audit of its books because it might affect the Government. Well any analysis of the documentation that Ms Dyson has will show that it was in fact the council itself that was facing significant uncertainty about the interest rates that it might have to pay on lending that existed pre-earthquake and it knew that it had some expenses that were coming. It has been long established that there is a cooperative arrangement between the Government and local bodies. It is roughly a 60:40 split on horizontal infrastructure but no one knew exactly what the problem was.So I am pleased that the Opposition has said that the Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team is doing a good job. I believe that it is.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Always has.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I believe that it is—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: It’s nothing to do with you.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: —and I am very pleased that I was the Minister who negotiated that particular body’s coming together. Actually under the structure Mr Cosgrove for your information—which you should have known because it has been provided to you—there is an alliance board there is a governance group and over and above that there is the Minister quite simply. So what we have is an Opposition—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: That’s why they’re getting things done and you’re not.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: —and particularly Opposition MPs who know that they are not going to win their seats back and are now trying to create an environment that essentially is based on mistruths. It was unreasonable for the city council to have to go through an audit process in the uncertain environment that it was in and the council unanimously voted to take that particular course of action. There was no direction from the Crown for it to do so.The next point was the suggestion that the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority itself is an organisation that is taking up too much of the Government resource and that it should in fact start to pare itself back. So there you have a totally contradictory argument right from the start: “It is not doing enough. Let’s not make it do any more.” But can I point out that its current budget is about three-quarters of 1 percent of the Government’s total spend in Christchurch and it is about one-quarter of 1 percent of the expected cost of Christchurch across all sectors. So I think it is doing a very good job through the management of recovery programmes of community engagement of working through the council where it has got difficulties etc. etc.Then there was this issue about housing raised by our friend Mr O’Rourke. I note that if you do not want to know the truth in any circumstance do not hang around to listen to it and that would be a doctrine that is clearly taken up by the last two speakers in this debate. It is unfortunate that when we get to factual information it gets in the road of the story so they take off. Well right now in this instant in this Chamber I am able to show that there are 1182 houses in Christchurch City for rent and that half of those—half of those—are being rented out for less than half the rent that Mr O’Rourke was talking about a few minutes ago. So there you have another construct a mistruth being thrown into the Committee etc. etc.The Government has engaged in quite a significant amount of activity in trying to alleviate some housing issues in Christchurch. In the end it will be the build that gets there. Part of that is the Land Use Recovery Plan but a huge part of it is the work that the Earthquake Commission is doing to get people back in their houses and then there is the work that the Hon Dr Nick Smith has undertaken with the housing accord; the temporary villages at New Brighton and Linwood and in Kaiapoi; the temporary accommodation at Rangers Park which will eventually come on to the market for sale; and the opportunities that he is currently pursuing out at Awatea where there will also be several hundred affordable houses built. But in addition to that 700 new State houses will be built in Christchurch over the next 2 years and 5000 State houses will be reoccupied as Housing New Zealand brings them back up to a much higher standard than they were before for the occupants.In addition of course there is the problem of the Christchurch City Council always railing against housing issues with the Labour members on that council particularly getting on their high horse but in fact the Labour chairman of the housing committee is doing absolutely nothing. A mere five houses have been repaired I understand over the last 4 years out of the 250 that the council has got. It is unbelievable.Hon Ruth Dyson: Where’s the EQC money?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Of course the Earthquake Commission has paid out. The commission has paid the council nearly $30 million so far—$30 million for five repairs. That is a really really good result! It is one that Labour would of course be impressed by but I think it is utterly pathetic.Mr O’Rourke talked about the thousands of people living in Christchurch in broken homes in cold circumstances. Over the last few winters we have partnered with NGOs and we have had our own programmes running where we look for people who might be in difficult circumstances where that has not been reported. This year there has been with the Wider Earthquake Communities Action Network what I think is a very good programme. It calls them the lost 900. It went out to see who they were. It thought that there might be 900 houses out there in trouble. It found a much much lesser number where there were some instances of trouble and so all of those are being dealt with. Across the whole time around 20000 heat appliances have been put into Christchurch homes no questions asked—“If you are cold you get warm with this new heating appliance.”Then the issue of flooding was raised by Mr O’Rourke—“Mr Doom and Gloom”—over here. Unbelievable comments were made about that. Well I can say to this Committee that on 5 March this year the Government was in town—the Prime Minister other Ministers like Nicky Wagner etc. and I were saying to the council: “We want to help. What do we do?”. And I have to say we are still waiting for the full details. Last week we got the papers asking us to extend the temporary accommodation assistance available to these people. We have done it. And that really also gives the lie to a lot of what Mr O’Rourke was saying because we do have temporary accommodation assistance at very very good levels available to everybody regardless of income.Then there is the Canterbury Earthquake Temporary Accommodation Service—CETAS. There is the residential service etc. etc. It goes on and on—good things happening as Canterbury works itself to get itself out of a difficult circumstance.Then we come to the beauty of them all. Clayton Cosgrove having railed for the last 4 years about all sorts of things—David Shearer: “The beauty”? I wouldn’t call Clayton a beauty.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Yes I am the only one who sees it—I am the only one who sees it. But it is let me say exceptionally ironic in my expression. He has railed for the last 4 years on all sorts of issues. He has never once come to my office with a constituent issue that bore any resemblance to the public position that he was taking—not one in 4 years. Then we come to the issues. He is saying that there are 10000 people out—[Interruption] See? Those members do not like it. I tell you what when you are losing you struggle—when you are losing you struggle. He is saying that 10000 people want to go to court because I think his term was they had outstanding claims. Well a claim is outstanding until the keys are handed over to the occupant—a claim is outstanding until the keys are handed to an occupant.I have got some figures in my pocket here that come from some of the houses that are being built in Christchurch at the moment and there are hundreds that are in that category—almost ready to hand over—there are thousands in the process of being built and there are thousands where people are making choices about what they have in their plans. It is not unusual where someone is getting a new house built that they might say: “Well hold on. You’re up for this much. If we put this extra in can we have an extra bedroom? Can we have an en suite? Can we have a flasher kitchen?” or whatever. Why would they not? I think it is a good thing. To say that there are 10000 people out there who have outstanding claims and who are waiting to go to court is a gross exaggeration. The numbers of people who are going to the courts are exceptionally low and it is not because they do not get a hearing; the courts have bent over backwards to create a bench. There have in fact been only 270 cases out of all those thousands—170000 damaged homes—that have gone to court with some application. Many of those have been settled.Vote agreed to.Vote TransportDAVID BENNETT (Chairperson of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee):It is a pleasure to speak on Vote Transport. This is one of the good news stories that we will be promoting during the campaign. Last weekend the Minister made another announcement in regard to transport around regional State highway projects. That is something of interest to many New Zealanders and something that will continue to build a stronger economy for our country going forward. It is all about working for New Zealand. It is a good news story in transport for our communities. Not only have we got the roads of national significance which are in the predominantly urban environments but they are very successful roads. I know in the Waikato that we look forward to the roads of national significance continuing. Our danger is that if there is a change of Government those roads will not progress. I see the Greens smiling over there because they know that they do not want to build those roads in Hamilton. That would be a great shame for our region which has waited 30 years to get the opportunity to build that road.We all know that in transport the Greens lead the policy of the Opposition. The Labour Party is a little puppy dog really—just coming along and doing what the Green Party says. Whatever Labour members say in this area is to be taken with a grain of salt because they cannot deliver on it. If they ever did get near the Treasury benches with say 30 percent of the vote and the Greens at 15 percent then we know who would be the Minister of Transport and we know who would be running the transport portfolio.When we look at the roads of national significance they are huge projects and they are delivering major economic benefits for New Zealand going forward. But we also often hear of regional funding and we often hear of arguments that there is not enough spent in the regions. That is simply not the case. The regions get a huge amount of the transport budget that is spent each year. Not only is there investment in local road maintenance which translates to between about $550 million to $595 million per year over the next 4 years there are also those local road improvements which go from $190 million to $250 million over those 4 years. Then we have the R funds which is the $360 million that has already been announced and then the accelerated regional roading programme that was announced this weekend of another $212 million for our regions.Those projects that were identified in the $212 million were significant projects in different parts of the country. I am going to leave it to my good colleague from the north to explain some of those. I know that he has been advocating hard for some of those projects. It is good to see that they have come forward for the two members from up north who have done such a great job in advocating for transport projects.We also have significant funding in walking and cycling and public transport. We will hear from the Labour and Green parties that there is no money going into public transport and all of these things—simply incorrect again. There is huge money going into public transport—$350 million in the Government policy statement for the year coming and going forward into 2017-18 and that rises to $410 million. That is a significant investment in public transport contrary to what those other parties will say.We have a balanced approach to transport spending. We take into account the needs of the communities around road rail and other infrastructure. We look at what is in the essence of building economic growth and something that will deliver on a day-to-day basis as well. We do not go out there and promise pie-in-the-sky events which the Green Party will do. It has now been overtaken by New Zealand First which wants passenger rail from every town or city in New Zealand basically and by the Labour Party which is stagnant in its transport policy and has no idea what is going on.We give real and constructive policy that delivers real and constructive results to our communities. It is not false promises. It is not leading people down garden paths that have no sense of reality or sense of being able to be delivered. We deliver real promises in real time for real New Zealanders. That is the difference when it comes to transport funding that New Zealanders will see as we go through this election process. Just to recap: this is a Government that has invested heavily in transport. It has invested in a balanced way that has taken into account all the different modes of transport and delivered for them. Through rail with our KiwiRail—JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green):Today the Government raised the petrol tax yet again. The reason it has had to raise the petrol tax is that there has been a deficit in the money that is coming into the National Land Transport Fund because New Zealanders are actually driving less. They have been driving less for 7 consecutive years now. There is not enough money coming in to spend on what the National Government wanted to make a priority.When the National Government came in I remember it very clearly because I was working as a transportation consultant for the New Zealand Transport Agency. I remember being there in 2008 when the people working at the New Zealand Transport Agency who are experts in this were saying it was very very disturbing because the National Government was coming in and wanting to prioritise a few very expensive motorways that simply did not make economic sense. They had not been funded for precisely that reason. So the National Party went ahead—it was in Government—and it decided to try to build a few of these big expensive motorway projects that carry a very small percentage of daily vehicle trips at great expense. It is spending the largest share of the transport budget over 10 years on these motorway projects. It is going to be $12 billion to $14 billion on just a few projects that carry less than 4 percent of daily vehicle trips. So the motorways are not going to improve the commute of the vast majority of New Zealanders. They are not even going to affect most of the freight that is being moved around the country.At the same time road use has been declining. It has been declining for a number of reasons around all the rich countries. One of the reasons is higher petrol prices. As petrol prices go up people look for alternatives. Of course in New Zealand they do not have many alternatives because successive Governments have built a very unbalanced transport system. Unlike comparable rich countries we do not have the same good public transport options—good buses and trains—and safe walking and cycling that they have in other countries.As petrol prices go up—and now the Government is putting up the petrol tax so that will mean petrol is even more expensive—road use does decline. It has been declining for 7 years now. So the Government had the option of perhaps revisiting its transport projects which it did not. Because there was not enough money in the transport budget to pay for the Government’s crazy motorway promises and to also do the standard upkeep that was needed on our regional roads the maintenance that was needed around the country the Government was then forced to put up the petrol tax firstly and that is what it is doing. It is also now using the money from asset sales to pay for projects in the regions. Some of these road projects in the regions might be of very high value. I do not know because the economic assessment is not available really on the website. I did see one project that has a benefit-cost ratio of 0.5 which means that it is not worth even half the cost of building it. Hopefully some of the other ones are very good projects that are going to improve road safety. The Green Party absolutely supports spending on our regional roads and putting more money into road maintenance in particular and safety upgrades.Now the Government has announced this regional package which apparently has been chosen—just like the roads of national significance—entirely by focus groups. That is simply not a responsible way to handle the transport budget. It is not one that is going to have long-term economic benefits for New Zealand. Although the Green Party does support looking after our regional roads and in fact getting better use out of our existing roads—and we can do that at low cost—we do not support this irrational irresponsible pork barrel politics approach to prioritising transport projects. That is clearly what the National Government has done.It is the perfect time to be investing in smart alternatives. That is what New Zealand is missing. All across the country it makes sense to invest in safe walking and cycling facilities so our kids can walk and cycle to school. That reduces congestion reduces the transport bill and it frees up the roads for those who need to drive. In our larger cities it makes sense to invest in better buses and trains so that more New Zealanders have the option of getting to work without having to pay a high petrol bill and so they can talk on the phone and get some work done instead of just sitting there behind the wheel stuck in traffic. That is the best way to deal with congestion. That is a smart modern green approach that countries all across the world have successfully implemented. We want to see more choices for New Zealanders here. That is what the Green Party is campaigning for. It is not unrealistic is it entirely achievable and it is really a shame that National is wasting this opportunity.MIKE SABIN (National—Northland):I am very pleased to take a call in this particular debate on Vote Transport. I wonder whether the member Julie Anne Genter can explain to the children in Te Kao how they will make it to school in Kaitāia. It is about a 1-hour one-way trip. So what are we going to do with them? I would hazard a guess that if the member actually went—I do not know—outside the city she might find that the rest of New Zealand has a contrary view about what is important in terms of roading infrastructure. This Government actually understands that and that is why this Government has made a substantial and significant contribution to roading and transport throughout its entire term.Another point that was raised by the Green speaker was the fact that there is less revenue being gathered in terms of petrol excise and so on and so forth. There are a number of reasons for that of course and a couple of good ones are that this Government has invested in substantial improvements in roads and therefore the roads are improved and fuel efficiencies are established as a result of that. So what we are also seeing is the benefit of the very thing that the Greens would knock back—that there is greater efficiency in the roading network. After decades of underspend what we are now doing is actually catching up on a lot of that.A good example of how successful this Government’s approach has been is the very area that the Opposition members like to beat up against and that is the regions. They are saying: “Oh the regions have been left out. They’ve been forgotten.” Well I will speak to you from a region that is growing at 7.4 percent year-on-year growth from a region that has had six successive quarters—and thank you Mr Mitchell from Rodney my partnering MP. He is just south of me—“South Northland” I like to sometimes refer to it as. There are six successive quarters of growth. We have business confidence up and unemployment down. Although Hone and “Sideshow Bob” up there are sort of—The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order! The member must use a member’s full name or title not just their first name.MIKE SABIN: Certainly Mr Chairman. Hone Harawira from the Mana—well I am not sure whether it is the Mana-Internet-German party. I am not sure what it is called. Anyway that is the sideshow that is the far north. The fact is that people like them will stand up there and protest against the idea of—I do not know—the gas and oil exploration and the billions of dollars of revenue that will make its way into New Zealand into the community as a result of that. But although they will stand there and vote against every initiative of this Government that looks to grow the economy to invest in roading infrastructure to invest in ultra-fast broadband and to invest in the things that make an economy worth engaging in and worth investing in from a business perspective this Government is getting on with business.Let us just have a look at what that looks like in terms of Northland. We have a primary growth initiative under way. We have a regional growth study under way. We have that gas and oil exploration but also we have onshore mineral exploration under way. We have a Primary Growth Partnership in avocadoes in the far north looking to quadruple returns in that particular area and an aquaculture strategy that will see $300 million added to the New Zealand economy and 700 jobs in the region over the next 10 to 15 years. We are working on the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act / Maori Land Act to ensure that the productivity of that land can be better realised to return productivity and jobs to those who most need it in these more vulnerable communities.Look at the work that is going on with Treaty settlements. This Government has actually got on with the job that the former Labour Government spent about 9 years talking about and doing not much with.Dr David Clark: Oh all that member’s own work—all that member’s own work.MIKE SABIN: Well if the member David Clark would like to come to the far north I would be very very pleased to host him in the far north. Perhaps we could go around and have a talk to a few of those—what spokesmanship does he have? He has small business or something does he not? Actually that would be a great area. Let us book that in. Let us make that a bit of a bromance date sort of situation there Mr Clark. Come on up and see what is happening at the other end of the country where of course the sun shines for about 18 hours of the day. I would be pleased to host the member.But in all seriousness in the draft Government policy statement that was recently announced we are looking at $360 million of additional contestable funding $212 million going into 14 specific projects and almost $1 billion a year of investment in regional roads. That is a substantial investment and the Pūhoi to Wellsford motorway the fast tracking of that has said to everyone in Northland that Labour and the Greens would get rid of it but that this Government believes in Northland and believes in the economy and invests in it and continues to invest in it.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Associate Minister of Transport):As the Associate Minister of Transport I think it is really important for us to understand that the building of infrastructure certainly has an issue from an economic development and a movement of people perspective. I think it is also very important to understand that good roads mean better road safety. The delegation I have as Associate Minister of Transport is for road safety and it is with that in mind that I want to talk about some of the announcements that have been made both through the Budget and in particular a most recent announcement by the Government that it intends to improve the regional roading network with extra funds from the Future Investment Fund.When we came to office it is fair to say that after some reductions in the 1980s and 1990s the road toll effectively flat-lined. It was stubbornly stuck at around 400 per annum. It is true that road vehicle kilometres travelled increased in that period but we were making no significant inroads into the road toll. I do not think there is a family in this country that has not been affected by the trauma of serious injury or death on our roads. So it was very pleasing to see that when the Safer Journeys Action Plan was introduced and the 2-year safety strategy under the previous transport Minister Steven Joyce was implemented the effect was nearly immediate.Last year I am pleased to report we had the lowest road toll in this country since 1950. If one uses the measure of vehicle kilometres travelled it would have been one-sixth of the road toll of 63 years ago. So we are making progress but I think it is important to reflect on what happens next. The 2-year action plan has an engineering aspect to it recognising that human beings as we are will make mistakes on the road and the important thing through Budget 2014 is to ensure that the engineering of those roads is as good as we can afford and that drivers purchase vehicles that are as safe as we can afford.I think we have a bit of a mind-set issue in this country around road safety in that we tend to tolerate or accept that there is going to be a level of death or injury on our roads and the idea is to try to minimise that. I want to challenge that view. I think that we can through good roading engineering good technology with our cars and intelligent transport systems—which are not just things of the future but are available today in our lifetime—set a goal of zero for car-to-car road collisions. There are already technologies available that will prevent drift from one lane to another and there is adaptive cruise control that will slow a car down automatically if the car in front is slowing down. I am about to make some announcements around electronic stability control or ESC to ensure that over the next few years it becomes mandatory for all cars to have it.The Minister of Transport Gerry Brownlee has taken a test drive in California in a virtual driverless car. He of course released the intelligent transport systems map which sets out what those technologies could be both now and in the future. I think there is a very very real likelihood that in the not too distant future we will be able to say that on our roads in New Zealand the goal is zero for car-to-car collisions.It is a different thing when one introduces the issue of cycle motorcycle and truck safety into the discussion but I am also pleased to report that the Ministry of Transport is looking at and investing in—thanks to Budget 2014—significant investments in safe walking safe cycling and strategies in combination with ACC to improve motorcycle safety. There has been plenty of work going on including in the technology area to improve truck safety. Of course the introduction of very large trucks has reduced the number of truck journeys taken and made our economic performance more productive. I think there are very good strategies at work but I am disappointed to note that in the first 6 months of this year we have backslid slightly on our road toll. I hope we are able to make that up before the end of this year.The mistakes we are making on our roads are the same: distraction fatigue not wearing seatbelts speed drugs and alcohol. We know what causes death and injury on our roads and we need to continue to redouble our efforts. I think the engineering cycle safety and road transport safety elements of this Budget go a significant way toward achieving that goal.JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany):I just briefly want to take a call to say that it is telling in this Parliament that we have a situation where transport was the most talked about topic of the weekend and one of the big funding boosts in the Budget and there has been not a single call from the Labour Party on it. The Minister of Transport Gerry Brownlee and Associate Minister of Transport Michael Woodhouse know that this country requires investment in transport and this Government is doing that.As an Auckland member of the National Party I am very proud of the fact that this Government has legislated for significant funds towards boosting and speeding up some important projects in our region. You would know very well in fact Mr Chairman that the southern motorway in Auckland is in desperate need of widening. This Government is delivering on that. The Committee will also know that State Highway 20A to the airport needs to be upgraded.Phil Twyford: Your constituents are wanting public transport and they’re not getting any.JAMI-LEE ROSS: Guess what Mr Twyford—this Government is delivering. Aucklanders also know that where State Highway 18 meets State Highway 1 significant works are going on and are very much required. Labour never delivered; National is delivering.At the weekend Gerry Brownlee and the Prime Minister announced significant funding for the rest of New Zealand as well—much-needed funding to progress important transport projects that New Zealanders in the regions know are required and know that National is delivering. We are working for New Zealanders. Labour has had nothing to say on transport. I am very keen to hear from the transport Minister Gerry Brownlee so I will let him have a go now.Vote agreed to.Vote Economic Development and EmploymentGRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central):When we were looking at the estimates for Vote Economic Development and Employment we learnt a very interesting piece of information: that to keep the wheels whirring in the mind of the Minister for Economic Development it requires 56 spin doctors—56 spin doctors. Twenty of them are devoted to Mr Joyce alone—20 of them are devoted to Mr Joyce alone making sure that the spin keeps on going. My assessment is that it took the best and the brightest of the 56 spin doctors at the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment to come up with the lines to try to explain why it was that hundreds of thousands of dollars were to be spent on the Motu Bridge only for the dynamite to come along and for it to be blown sky-high within a couple of years to build another road and another bridge across there. That is what they came up with. So here is the line. The line from Gerry Brownlee is that it was OK to build a bridge and then blow it up a couple of years later because it would deliver “instant dividends”. That was the line—56 spin doctors at the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and they came up with “instant dividends”.Well I challenge the Minister for Economic Development to tell me in the Committee today whether or not he could assure New Zealanders that the instant dividends made up for the hundreds of thousands of dollars that have been spent on the “Bridge to Obsolescence”—the Motu Bridge. He cannot guarantee that because it is a terrible terrible mess that the National Party has made trying to indulge in a bit of election year pork-barrel politics and bringing up these ideas that remember had been rejected by the Government. The Government had sent them away. It had said: “No that’s not part of it.” But it comes back to New Zealanders and says this is the regional economic plan. This is the turbocharging of the regions: a bridge that has already been built and that Meng Foon the Mayor of Gisborne said was pouring money down the drain. Steven Joyce challenged me on that quote today. It is right there in black and white from Meng Foon—pouring money down the drain.Bear in mind that this is the hallmark of this Government’s approach to regional economic development. This decision about a bridge to be blown up and replaced by another bridge came in the middle of a consultation process between the New Zealand Transport Agency and the Gisborne District Council about what the important roading developments for economic development were. What is the point Minister in consulting with a region about its economic development when you come to your National Party conference and you just make the announcement anyway? That is the hallmark of this National Government when it comes to regional economic development—Hon Member: Arrogant.GRANT ROBERTSON: —arrogant and out of touch. It is not actually engaging with the regions. It is wandering around claiming there are silver bullets for the economy in oil and gas: “That will be the answer. Everyone get on board every region. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t suit you.” That is not an approach to regional economic development that is going to work. An approach to regional economic development that is going to work is actually getting alongside regions and industries to help them grow sustainable jobs. That is the Labour Party’s plan in regional economic development. We have already put out our economic upgrade and it is based around the three i’s: innovation industry and investment. They will be the core: investing in these regions and investing in those industries to make sure they can thrive.We have already talked about forestry. Forestry is a good example of where this Government has taken its eye off the ball. There have been hundreds and hundreds of job losses in the forestry sector under this Minister’s watch and there is no plan to deal with that. Forestry needs an upgrade. It needs some certainty about the development of skills. It needs the infrastructure from forestry roads. That is what the Gisborne District Council wanted to talk to the Government about: how it was going to upgrade the forestry roads. But no instead Steven Joyce knows best—Steven Joyce knows best. That is the National Government’s economic development strategy: one man who knows better than anybody else and who can dictate to regions. Well that is simply not good enough.This vote we are looking at today covers both economic development and employment. I want to mention something about employment and in particular the complacency of the National Government when it comes to unemployment in certain communities. We have this great slogan of “working for New Zealand”. Well it is not working for New Zealand when nearly a third of young Pasifika women are unemployed. It is not working for New Zealand when 75000 15 to 24-year-olds are not in education employment or training. That is the future of New Zealand. I can guarantee this to New Zealanders: the next Labour Government will make it an absolute priority that every person who leaves school is going into work or further education and training. That is our absolute cast-iron commitment and it is where this Government is letting down the next generation of New Zealanders.It is all very well to stand up in the House as Mr English and Mr Joyce do and trumpet the great economic indicators that are going to show that the economy is improving. Well it is pretty hard to argue with somebody who has made 100 job applications—like the person who came into my office the other day—and cannot get a job that the latest GDP statistics are something great for them. It is quite hard to argue with a family that is struggling to pay its bills that there is a new economic indicator that is going to be good for them. A new economic indicator will not pay a new bill for the car when it comes in and you have not got the money to pay the mechanic. That is the reality for many New Zealanders—that they are struggling to make ends meet and that wages are not keeping up with their increasing cost of living whatever statistics the Minister might want to throw around.When we look at those communities—Pasifika Māori young people and certain regions of New Zealand—this Government is not working for them. This National Government is working for its mates. It is focused on the economic indicators and not on the outcomes in the regions or the outcomes for young people across New Zealand. The Labour Party will have a comprehensive plan that we will be taking to the people of New Zealand to ensure that every young person gets those opportunities and that we encourage development in our regions.I want to pay tribute to my colleague Dr David Clark the MP for Dunedin North for the campaign that he has run on the Invermay Agricultural Centre because that sums up a major issue for this Government. It stands by and it washes its hands of the problems that are happening in the regions. For Dunedin and for Otago that region has been struggling with a loss of manufacturing capability. That is another result of the Government taking its eye off the ball when it comes to procurement policy. So jobs went at Hillside and the economy in the Otago region has struggled and those jobs have been lost. But the one thing that those people in the Otago region said to me when I went down there was that they have got that commitment around research—they have got the university. They can leverage off that; that is where a Crown research institute comes in. Steven Joyce sits there and lets the jobs at Invermay disappear despite the fact that all the evidence shows that that kind of work will flourish and the New Zealand economy will flourish with the kind of work taking place at Invermay. We need proper regional development that builds on the strengths of regions like Otago and builds on something like the Invermay programme.Instead what we have from the National Government is a belief that the recovery from the earthquake in Christchurch is enough to sustain those statistics. It looks good. Unemployment is down in the South Island says Mr Joyce. Well of course it is because we are recovering from one of the largest disasters of all time but that is not a sustainable economic development plan. A sustainable economic development plan should be about creating good and decent jobs right across New Zealand by working with industries like forestry like manufacturing and like information and communications technology to help create those jobs. The Government must be a partner in that not a bystander and not sitting there coming up with silly pork-barrel politics 3 months out from an election to try to make itself feel better. That is not an economic plan.In these estimates we went looking for the National Government’s plan. Steven Joyce will get up in a moment and he will talk about the nice glossy document that he has. Well Mr Joyce it is not good enough. The people in the regions of New Zealand are not impressed by a glossy Business Growth Agenda document. What they are looking for is the commitment of the party in Government to help create jobs to be a partner in their community to support the industries that need support and to provide infrastructure that will actually add to jobs—not to come up with silly roading projects.This particular piece of the estimates Vote Economic Development and Employment is a huge huge disappointment. It does not address the issue of creating jobs. This complacent Government leaves 75000 young people not in work employment or training and more than 157000 people out of work. New Zealand needs a Government with a policy for full employment and that is the Labour Party’s policy. John Key thinks it is too difficult to get to. He says we will have to wait for 4 percent further down the track. That is not good enough. If New Zealanders can work they should be able to work. We need to ensure that we are providing the skills and the training to give people the opportunity to take up jobs in the new economy. We have not seen that from this Government; we will see that from a Labour Government.Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development):With the greatest respect to Mr Grant Robertson his argument is as always a mile wide and an inch deep. He actually does not do any work. He criticises the Government for not working for New Zealand yet he still has not actually got off his chuff and read the Business Growth Agenda at all which could never be described as a Labour Party - like glossy document because it is written in a font that is too small for Grant to be able to read. That is the challenge for him. He has not done any work and his party has not done any work over the last 5 years and now they are turning up with some platitudes.He says that Labour will have a full employment plan. Well let us go back a little bit. Just at the beginning of the global financial crisis Labour’s numbers were already worse than the numbers that we have got now as the recovery continues. He brings up Dunedin. Well with the greatest respect Dunedin’s unemployment rate—currently the Otago unemployment rate is 4.6 percent. It is apparently a disaster—4.6 percent is a disaster according to Mr Robertson. Well he should go down there. He should go back to where he came from. I think the last time he went back there he tried to run a student protest when I was there and he was heard to lament that the students did not turn up—the students did not turn up. The world has moved on since Grant was there. Well I tell you Mr Robertson the world has moved on from your view of economics. The world has moved on to understand that things do change over time.In the case of Otago University and Otago research the good news is that there is a lot more money going in. The Health Research Council has just given the university the biggest amount of research money that it has ever had in one year. We have introduced two new centres of research excellence in Dunedin. There is lots of additional investment going into that region.The difficulty I have with Mr Robertson’s approach—in fact with the whole Labour Party’s approach—is that his view is that nothing should change. It is completely what could be described only as preservational economics which is that nothing should ever change—no matter whether the world has changed and things need to be done nothing should change. Labour members have actually taken it even further. They have gone to resuscitation economics where they now propose as their big economic proposal to bring back the moa. I think that is at least innovative which is more than we can say for the last 6 years of Labour Party policy. It at least has the merit of being something that is new and not being tired rhetoric. But I hate to refer to that particular example too much because I think I need to point out to the member who raised it that Jurassic Park was a movie not a documentary. It was a movie and not a documentary so sadly for the member’s idea I think it falls apart about there. Nevertheless he should at least be rewarded for coming up with it. I imagine he will get a promotion back to the front bench on the strength of the moa resuscitation plan but maybe it is something he will have to wait for until after a certain election event coming up.The other thing that Mr Robertson raised was the performance of young Māori and Pasifika. I personally believe that this Government has a lot to be proud of in terms of improving the training outcomes and study outcomes of young Māori and Pasifika. Today between 3000 and 4000 more young Māori people a year are studying at university than when those guys were in Government in 2007 and there are 3000 or 4000 more young Pasifika. Their completion rates are improving dramatically—they are not there yet but improving dramatically—from where they were when that lot disgracefully left them when they left office. Also we have many more initiatives like the Youth Guarantee like the Māori and Pasifika trades training initiatives and like the trades academies which are lifting the skill levels of young people of all ethnicities and ensuring they have the opportunity to participate in this recovery. The recovery by the way has generated 84000 more jobs in the last 12 months—84000 more jobs. What is going on there?The other thing that Mr Robertson was talking about was that somehow the roading projects announced at the weekend constituted the whole regional development strategy of the Government. Well it is one of those things where you create a straw person and then you knock it over. In Mr Robertson’s case that is something he does all too regularly. He does it all too regularly and yet it is all rubbish.Actually this Government has a comprehensive economic development strategy. I went through some of it in the House this afternoon. The limitation of time stopped me going through all the rest of it. I am happy to add a little bit more for members at the moment because it is really important. Our strategy is around providing opportunities for New Zealand companies to be more competitive wherever they are and in whichever region. Different regions need different things. This Government is working with every region and that is being well received by the local councils including in Gisborne. With the greatest respect to Mr Robertson if he wants to make the case that the Motu Bridge should stay that way for ever then I invite him to go to Gisborne and say that. Actually nobody believes that. It is a one-lane bridge. It is a one-lane bridge—Mark Mitchell: They’ll never see him again.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: They would never see him again—that would be the reality of it. Anyway there is a whole range of things.In the innovation space there is the Primary Growth Partnership and research and development funding through Callaghan Innovation—miles more than was ever done under Labour. Now Labour members are saying they will have an innovation plan and that it is part of their economic upgrade. Well first they have to explain why they did not do very much at all during all the time they were in Government. They also have to explain why the only policy they have announced in the last 6 years—nine separate times—is their research and development tax credits which have been well overtaken by time. They need something new.Also in the skills space they are going to do all these things about skills but so far the only thing they have said in that space—the only thing they have said—is that they are going to bring back some of the adult and community education funding that was withdrawn in 2010 which was the stuff that could be described as hobby courses. So the big innovation for Labour is that it is going to bring back the hobby courses. Good on Labour—that is the skills space.Meanwhile we are doing the Youth Guarantee the New Zealand Apprenticeships the Māori and Pasifika trades training the trades academies—all these innovations including working with the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs and all these things—and the Labour Party is stuck in 2008 once again not having done the work. But it is worse than that. It is worse than that because Labour says it will get alongside the regions. Well explain to me New Zealand Labour Party and your mates in the Greens how a carbon price at five times the world price would ever constitute getting alongside New Zealand’s regions. I hope you promote that strongly both of you in the election campaign. I know Labour has been very quiet so far—neither confirm nor deny—but that is the Green Party’s policy and Labour has not backed away from it. Labour has not come out and said it will not support that and the regions are noticing.The second one is having a capital gains tax on every productive business and farm in this country supported by both of those parties. They say it is all about discouraging investment in property and encouraging investment in businesses. Well how do they explain the fact that it is a tax on 100 percent of businesses and only about a third of housing? How does that simple explanation work? That is the second area that the regions will be looking at and going: “I don’t think so.”Then there is the small matter of trade which of course is hugely important to our export-focused regions and one of the reasons they are doing well at the moment. Well in the trade space the Labour Party says: “Oh we’re not sure about the TPP. Don’t know whether we’ll do that.” The Greens are flat out against it. The regions notice that too.And then there is the small matter of the dairy industry and oil and gas. They are not the whole story of our regions but they are significant in some regions so let us have a look at them. Anti - irrigation and water storage; anti-dairy in fact; anti - oil and gas; and anti any form of international investment. Apart from that they are really in favour of the regions. So apart from the capital gains tax the carbon price the wind-blown timber on the West Coast the rolling back of the Resource Management Act reforms trade investment oil and gas—I think that is everything but there might be more. Apart from all of those things they are well behind the regions. They are all supporting the regions apart from all of those reasonably crucial things that most of regional New Zealand is noticing.Here is the good news: this Government is not going to do any of those things. Oh there is another one: the high water-resource levies that are being promoted by the Greens and the Labour Party. They are also not on the policy list for this Government. This Government has 350 separate initiatives in innovation in skills in opening up markets for our exporters in providing capital and yes in infrastructure which is very very important.JONATHAN YOUNG (Chairperson of the Commerce Committee):As we look at the economic development estimates for this Government I think we can be very encouraged to see a very proactive plan that is going to make a huge difference for this country and in particular the regions. We know as the Minister for Economic Development has reported today that the regions have led New Zealand out of the global financial crisis and into a very strong recovery. We want to see that continue. We want to see a sustainable growth path for New Zealand’s economies and our regions.The Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment is tasked with that sort of work. Since its formation in July 2012 it has according to its statement of intent for 2013 to 2016 “consolidated related business-facing functions and created new opportunities for delivering policies and services to advance New Zealand’s prosperity and wellbeing.” I believe that it is doing a great job on that and I believe that this Budget is investing not only money but the right sort of thinking into enhancing New Zealand’s success not only domestically but globally.We all understand that we live in a global environment that is highly competitive where innovation is absolutely essential. This Government has been building the innovative base the work base of this country very very significantly. It is critical to our country’s competitiveness in a global economy that is crowded with goods and services. If we are going to enjoy the First World lifestyle that we have been used to in decades past and that we feel is our right as New Zealanders then it is very obvious that we have to continue to earn that First World income. That does not come about by just doing the same thing year after year after year. We have to keep that edge. We have to keep innovating. We have to develop businesses that are looking all the time at how we can improve our productivity how we can improve the products that we do sell internationally and how we can improve our market place and space.Callaghan Innovation gives businesses a single front door to the innovation system. It works in partnership with New Zealand Trade and Enterprise economic development agencies business incubators universities polytechnics Crown research institutes the venture capital community and of course industry associations right throughout this country. Callaghan Innovation named after one of our leading scientific innovators is critical in the success of this nation and it is something that I know that the Minister has spent a huge amount of thinking time and work on in terms of developing. It connects businesses with research organisations across the innovation system. It manages more than $140 million a year in Government funding and grants to support this innovation and capability-building.Innovation is a central driver of economic growth and development. Firms rely on innovation and related investments to improve their competitive edge in a globalising world with shorter product life cycles. Innovation has the potential to mitigate some of the emerging problems related to health energy and the environment that are faced by both richer and poorer countries. We have got to see that innovation is critical to the modern way of life and that through it we can not only improve the health and lifestyle of people and bring people out of poverty and into production and employment but we can receive premium prices for the products we sell on the international stage. It is all of these things that I believe are very very important to our country.The previous Government seemed to think that a research and development tax credit was going to do it all—that that was all that was needed and that it was going to be the biggest driver for innovation in the New Zealand economy. What we were concerned about with that sort of thinking was that that tax credit could have been paid out on standard operating expenditure that was recharacterised as research and development - related expenditure—essentially being a cost to the Government for a research and development purpose without any significant added research or development actually occurring. So we would just be treading water without anything being achieved with the Government giving a benefit to companies that was essentially a handout.Our approach has not been that. We have ensured that especially in this Budget we are freeing up cash flow for innovation in a far more effective manner. Our goal is to see research and development spend or investment be 1 percent of our GDP.SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country):It is a pleasure to rise and speak in the current debate. It has been interesting to listen to the Opposition spokespeople speak about what they will do for provincial development. Let us just start at the beginning and look at some of the facts. Something like 72 percent of the country’s gross export earnings comes from our primary sector. It will come as a surprise I know to the likes of Grant Robertson that these businesses and industries are based out in the rural provinces and the small-town areas of New Zealand.It will also come as a big surprise to the likes of Mr Robertson that those sectors particularly in areas such as Taranaki - King Country where I come from represent about 95 percent of what the economic activity is in those areas. Let us just look at Taranaki in terms of GDP per capita by region. Taranaki produces per person about $560000 in export earnings. Compared with most other areas of New Zealand that is substantially ahead. I will just ask the simple question: why is that? Well it is because over the last 7 or 8 years particularly in the time of this Government there has been massive development in the sector that produces the wealth—that is obviously the dairy industry and also the oil and gas industry. Those are the areas ironically that our colleagues on the other side of the Chamber particularly in the Green Party have a great aversion to. They are constantly saying that we need cleaner smarter and more sustainable activities in the area.Let us just look at what—[Interruption]. Well OK if that is a fact why do we not use some facts and measure against that? What the Green members are saying is that industry that grows in non-rural areas is cleaner and smarter yet actually our agricultural sector particularly our dairy industry has the lowest carbon production of any dairy industry in the world. We have the lowest carbon production of any industry. In Taranaki we have the cleanest water of any other agricultural sector in the world where that activity takes place and we have 22000 kilometres of fencing and planting which the Green Party never touches on.We have some of the smartest technology innovation—companies like Tru-Test and C-Dax which has invented a machine for measuring grass growth and the metabolisable energy of the grass so you know what you are growing and how much nutrient it uses to grow it. We are world leaders in this area. At our processing end we have some of the most sophisticated some of the largest and some of the most efficient processes in the world which produce sophisticated smart products like nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals.Here is a question for the Greens and their Labour colleagues. Apparently the American company New Holland has developed a tractor that will run on hydrogen. When did the Green Party last promote that? Yet we have a forecast of something like 200 billion extra people in the world who will need feeding by the year 2050 who are going to have to have smart technology to feed them. What is the Green Party saying about that? When did I hear about that innovation recently? When did they promote that? They would not know about it. The real irony of those members’ debate is that they have never been there they do not know they live in cities but they throw stones at those who are out there doing it.So what is the alternative? The Minister in the chair the Hon Steven Joyce touched on some of the alternatives that the Opposition has put up. It intends to introduce a capital gains tax. It is going to introduce a methane tax on methane emissions from animals. It is going to lift income tax. It is going to have a higher company tax. It is going to put limits on livestock numbers. It is going to limit nitrate use. It is going to do away with the 90-day trial period in employment. It is going to do away with the reforms that we have made to the Resource Management Act. It is going to bring in higher ACC charges. All of these things according to Grant Robertson are standing alongside industry helping industry to grow. Well it will come as a big surprise to someone like Mr Robertson who lives entirely within the beltway and never sets foot outside it that industries require innovative focused Government policy that allows industry to get on. In fact what industries want more than anything else is for the Government to get out of their way and to stand back and let them grow and do what they are good at—and they are the best in the world—not put up further hurdles in front of them. The Government has invested a lot of money.COLIN KING (National—Kaikōura):It is a pleasure to take a call during the Appropriation (2014/15 Estimates) Bill debate. I just want to focus on the fine job that is being done by this Government around education and skills training. It is not an easy part to get right. When you look at the transitions between our compulsory education and our tertiary education it has always been a challenge. However it would have to be said that the National Government is a far better and far more trustworthy steward of the nation’s economy and of managing this very very challenging situation and location within the education system.Our Youth Guarantee scheme has proved to be very successful. It has been a difficult area because some people learn far better in the workplace or in the tertiary education sector than they do in the compulsory education sector and that is what this Government has done. Any individual between the ages of 16 and 19 who wishes to avail themselves of the opportunity can get tertiary education to level 3 for free. That is a great step forward. Vocational pathways have been structured with the—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. We have a vote specifically on skills and employment which comes under Vote Tertiary Education and the member is actually moving into that area now when this vote that we are discussing is economic development and employment. So I do not know whether the member was intending to focus on the whole area of skills and employment which will come up shortly or whether he has something else to say on economic development. So I am just inviting the member to come back to the substantive matter of Vote Economic Development and Employment.COLIN KING: When we look at the development of 84000 jobs in 2013 one does certainly see how the Government’s agenda around training for skills and employment is very appropriate. When you think about what contributes the most to the economy of a country it is very important that those people who come through our education system present themselves to our employers as ready and fit for employment.When you think of a country that is 4.5 million people in size with a workforce to support a First World economy it is very important that those who are going through our education system are fit for purpose. We have got to not just look at those people who are fit for employment but also find ways to improve outcomes for all of our young ones as they leave school whether they are European Asian Pasifika or Māori. It is a piece of work that has been done very successfully by this Government and Budget 2014 keeps building on the progressions that have been made. It is with great pride and confidence that we see that trades and skills are being promoted in such a way now that they are truly recognised as contributing to economic development. It is so very very important.When you look at what the Government has done it has incentivised training in five specific areas and those specific areas are to do with economic development especially in construction infrastructure manufacturing technology and primary industries. It is also very interesting to see that the Government is going one step further with a six-part vocational pathway into employment which is going to further contribute to the nation’s economy and that is in the creative industries. Effectively we can see that the Government is very focused on ensuring that everybody lives up to their potential and that economic development encompasses not just building bridges building primary industries or increasing technology but that it is also directly linked back to our education system whether it be early childhood education the compulsory sector or our tertiary education. It will ensure that we do have the right number of engineers coming forward and that we do have those skills appropriately anchored back into our education system so that we can build an economy that will not only take us forward in economic development terms into the future but well beyond that.When we stop and really analyse the whole question of economic development it is tied back into the nation. It is a very fundamental and basic principle that you have got to have the qualifications and skills to be able to carry that on with a passion and that those people whom you put up for employment have the various opportunities that should be available to them.Vote agreed to.Vote Science and InnovationDAVID CLENDON (Green):I am pleased to take the time to make a few comments about science and innovation in part to reflect on the importance of science and innovation historically in the present and all being well into the future. We know that the New Zealand economy—the Pākehā or European economy—was first established on an extraction model which was a very basic extractive economy and we know that the member for Tauranga Simon Bridges might choose to return us to that unhappy situation. Most of us though would like to see the future development of a modern economy.New Zealand’s pastoral economy our manufacturing and the wealth we have as a country have to a large extent been built on a very positive collaboration between public sector science and private sector innovation entrepreneurship and capital and that has served us very well historically. Institutions like the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and the old MAF the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries contributed a great deal to the creation and the success of the pastoral industry. We have had some extraordinary innovation like the HamiltonJet the electric fence—all of these remarkable New Zealand - based innovations and creations. And more recently Fisher and Paykel with its medical appliances and companies like Buckley Systems have relied on good basic science good engineering and some entrepreneurship in selling into a very difficult market.It is important that we continue to base our economy on science and innovation—more so than ever perhaps because we know that despite the protestations of some we cannot and will not build a rich and prosperous economy by trying to increase the export of high-volume low-value goods. Inevitably we will hit very solid environmental constraints and physical constraints. We will not become a rich country by selling more and more milk powder or more and more pine logs. We do need to move to a knowledge-based economy a much smarter economy that relies on niche manufacturing on the provision of services and on weightless exports. We want in this way to create sustainable long-term employment not simply short-term jobs endeavouring at great risk to life and limb to rip out logs from the conservation estate or to cut down more pine trees. This is not the way forward for a modern prosperous economy. We have a very low-productivity economy a low-wage economy. The smart application of good scientific research innovative thinking and creative thinking can break us out of that downward spiral which we have been on for several decades it has to be said.I am sure that very few people in the Chamber would for the most part disagree with my comments that we need to move towards a much more sophisticated high-value economy that is based on knowledge based on science and based on innovation. Unfortunately what we have seen of late is that we are in fact moving away from that and that we are doing very little to support the development or the future of such an economy. In all sorts of ways large and small we are not enhancing the probability that we will enjoy a good economy a cleaner economy and a smarter economy based on science and innovation.One has only to look at some of the primary providers of science in New Zealand the Crown research institutes which it must be said are in something of a muddle. The model has never been particularly robust. We know that Crown research institutes since day one have had to commit far too much of their time and energy to chasing short-term funding. You cannot do long-term strategic science if your funding is for only 1 year or at best 3 years. We have seen the shambles that has evolved from the proposed restructuring of AgResearch the loss of a significant part of the scientific capacity. We have seen objections from the farming community which knows that the science that is being done on behalf of farmers has to be done close to where they live.Despite a number of comments from some of our National commentators this afternoon I actually live in a provincial area as does my colleague here Catherine Delahunty from the buzzing bustling metropolis of the Kauaēranga Valley. We understand very well the challenges in the primary sector. Advances in that sector will not be about volume; they will be about adding value and smart processing and we do have some very good examples. We think of what Barker’s has done in Canterbury. It has created some really high-value products based on research and development some very hard work and local high-quality product.The Crown research institutes are not in good shape. Morale at the universities is as low as I have ever seen it in 20-odd years of association with the tertiary sector.Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Science and Innovation):I just wanted to make a few comments on the matters the member David Clendon has raised. Firstly he finished I think by having a swipe at university morale. My view—and I think you can see it in the universities—is that actually they have worked very hard and done well out of Government funding over the last few years despite the global financial crisis. The reality is that the university sector is probably more positive about its funding than it has been for a significantly long time.I can agree with the member on some things in terms of the importance of innovation and that is something that this Government is investing hugely in. In fact the example he raises of Barker’s is just another of the companies that benefits from the research and development co-funding of Callaghan Innovation. Hundreds of companies around New Zealand benefit from that support as a result of this Government’s work.Where I cannot agree with him is the suggestion that somehow New Zealand is getting less innovative and that innovation has been downgraded in the last several years. There is no evidence to support that rhetoric at all. He needs to go across to the Fieldays in the last couple of weeks where there was amazing innovation on display. In fact if you talk about the productivity of the agricultural sector it is a story of a history of innovation. If they had taken the view a hundred years ago that he is taking today which is that there is no further innovation in the primary sector then we would be a lot poorer now because they have had a trajectory of innovation and productivity improvement over that time.He also raised productivity and said we are a continually low-productivity economy. Well I bring good news for him. Our productivity in the 12 months to March 2013 has improved. It had a 2 percent in front of it—one of the highest numbers for a significantly long period of time. So it is very encouraging that we are making good progress in the productivity space as well because we are very focused on this innovation.And I bring good news to him as well on the information and communications technology sector and the high-tech manufacturing sector which are continuing under this Government to grow from strength to strength and which now represent something like 8 percent of our total goods and services exports. That actually has them already up to numbers that are significant alongside some of our primary sector exports. We have wonderful companies like Xero and others that are succeeding under this Government with the support alongside them from New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and Callaghan Innovation but also importantly an environment that allows them to be competitive on the world stage with the sorts of economic settings that ensure that we have a sensible policy that delivers lower interest rates over the cycle more opportunities in the skill space and in hiring people and so on. That is what is occurring under this Government.But I also wanted to touch base briefly if I could on the National Science Challenges because they are an important part of the Government’s programme. They are on a range of research areas such as the deep south high-value nutrition resilience to nature’s challenges ageing well and a better start. I was looking down the list earlier and I thought to myself that there is one there—New Zealand’s biological heritage—that is a very topical subject today. I can report to the Committee that we have had a very recent additional application in regard to New Zealand’s biological heritage where we have had a proposal from a gentleman to actually reinstate New Zealand’s biological heritage in a sort of Jurassic Park model. His intention is to recreate the moa. Look I think that is a very aspirational target but I say to the member: why stop there? If you are going to start bringing back animals and people from the past why not bring back some people as well? Why not get the DNA of some New Zealanders and perhaps some Labour Prime Ministers from the past who have passed away; you could bring them—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!Hon STEVEN JOYCE: —back to life so that there is—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!Hon STEVEN JOYCE: —this is very important science—more talent on the Labour benches. I think that would be quite exciting and I am prepared to support that sort of innovation. I know Labour needs it and I would be happy to help. So I invite a proposal from the Labour Party in that regard alongside everything else we are doing in science and innovation.Vote agreed to.Vote Tertiary EducationTE URUROA FLAVELL (Co-Leader—Māori Party):Tēnā koe Mr Chair. Kia ora tātou katoa i tēnei ahiahi. On behalf of the Māori Party I am pleased to take a call on the 2014-15 estimates for tertiary education to respond to the report of the Education and Science Committee. It would not be too much of a surprise that the Māori Party believes that if you put the learner first everything else will fall into place for achievement for the nation and for generations to follow. If it is important to have an educated population as a precursor to economic prosperity we say that we must address student debt at the core. Since 2012 any domestic student after earning above $19084 must make compulsory repayments of 12c in the dollar on their student loan. The 12 percent repayment rate makes our student loan scheme one of the most regressive in the world. This compares negatively with our Australian neighbours. Their student loan repayment scheme starts at 4 percent after a graduate earns over $53345. It is nearly three times our level. By freezing the repayment rate in New Zealand at a level below the full-time minimum wage payments are imposed on those people who have the least ability to repay. That for us is a real concern.The Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment announced that he expects to save another $72.6 million over the next 4 years because of additional funding freed up from reduced demand and the suspension of inflation adjustments. If effective Minister Joyce you will have to cut according to our estimates $144.2 million and in that regard the word “effective” is questionable we suggest as your cuts basically have cut potential students out of the tertiary education sector. The total student debt in Aotearoa is over $13 billion and climbing and Māori students take up over 22 percent of that total. They are also more likely to take longer to complete study more likely to staircase from lower level to higher level qualifications over a number of years and more likely to be parents when they return to study plus have relatives from their extended family living at home with them. They are more likely to access the student loan scheme loans allowances course-related costs and bank overdrafts and more likely to be older mature students who are limited in their ability to access loans and allowances.Looking at the tertiary sector we support a student voice by and for students. We would say that they are the No. 1 stakeholder in education and the passing of the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Act 2011 has further compounded the loss of voice the loss of infrastructure and the loss of important services that serve the student body. In fact for Te Roopuu Māori Ngā Tauira Māori and other Māori students associations this action breaches Te Tiriti o Waitangi. From the Māori Party perspective we would say that we will repeal this Act if we are given the chance.We support he tauira mō ake—for ever learning—because we acknowledge that many students choose to study as adults as parents or as grandparents. The system needs to accommodate the demand from mature students generally and learner-centric policy to protect the mana of each student. We support professional development opportunities for staff in education and certainly in the tertiary sector to attend local and international forums to increase research opportunities and to have for learner-centric development in teaching and learning. We support the implementation and resourcing of Te Kaupapa Whaioranga: the Blueprint for Tertiary Education. We support equal outcomes for all students to achieve in education.To end on a positive note the Education and Science Committee also draws attention to centres of research excellence. A fund was established in 2001 to encourage the development of excellent tertiary education research. Budget 2014 includes an additional $53 million over 4 years for existing centres. The Government intends to fund four additional centres from 2016 towards an eventual total of around 10. Three of the new centres will be funded from new funding with the fourth being funded from existing allocations. One of the new centres will be dedicated to Māori developmental research. This was a huge win for the Māori Party—$12.45 million over 4 years to enable a Māori-focused centre of research excellence that will produce research beneficial to whānau hapū and iwi.It is appropriate to be talking about this today 1 July as this is the day that Associate Professor Tracey McIntosh has officially commenced her role as Director of Ngā Pae o Te Māramatanga New Zealand’s indigenous centre of research excellence. She is taking over the role from Professor Te Ahukaramu Charles Royal. We acknowledge her for that achievement. Ngā Pae o Te Māramatanga consists of 12 contributing and participating research entities and it conducts research of relevance to Māori communities as well as contributing to global indigenous research and affairs. Since 2010 its research has focused on Māori economic development fostering health and prosperous whānau and enhancing Māori distinctiveness particularly mātauranga Māori. Research priorities have included models for educational success traditional child-rearing practices Māori language revitalisation resilience of whānau following the Christchurch earthquakes the restoration of the marine environment following the Rena grounding in Tauranga Māori men’s health markers and models of flourishing whānau and much much more. This type of research is really important for growing our knowledge economy.I want to finish by also using the opportunity of the date of 1 July to note that today is the first official day of operation of the Whānau Ora commissioning agencies Te Pou Matakana for the North Island Te Pūtahitanga o Te Waipounamu and Pasifika Futures. This is yet again another key milestone achieved in the relationship accord we negotiated with the National Government to support the evolving focus and ongoing implementation of Whānau Ora. Today marks the day that its annual investment plans become operational. This is about ensuring Whānau Ora continues its amazing momentum throughout whānau hapū and iwi. We believe that the Māori centre of research excellence could be a key player in enabling the stories and the successes of Whānau Ora to be available to a much broader audience. That is why we paid so much attention to ensuring that particular Ngā Pae o Te Māramatanga was included in our Budget allocation and we are pleased to support that outcome.Vote agreed to.Vote ACCDAVID BENNETT (Chairperson of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee):It is a pleasure to take this call on Vote ACC. I know that other members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee will also take a call on this vote—and very fine members they are as well with a special interest in ACC—so they may be able to delve into a little more detail and go through some of the further issues.Essentially one of the big things we need to look at is the indication that there is further room for ACC levy cuts. That is something that Budget 2014 indicated. The Accident Compensation Corporation is on track to provide further levy cuts for New Zealanders of around $480 million in 2015-16. That is because of the great results that ACC has had but it is also a result of the Minister for ACC and the Government sticking to the funding package that could have been thrown away 3 or 4 years ago if we had listened to what the Green Party and the Labour Party said which was to have a non - fully funded Accident Compensation Corporation and one that was paid for by taxpayers’ funding. That is what the Greens and Labour have promoted in the last term or so of this Government. Imagine if that had been the case. Not only would you not be able to deliver levy reductions but you would have put New Zealand in a situation where it would be constantly funding accident compensation through its tax funding. It would have led to higher taxes on New Zealanders if this Government had followed the approach taken by the Opposition parties.The Labour Party to be fair was actually quite reasonable about that for a certain period of time but then it gave in to the Greens as we normally see it do and decided that it would follow the Green Party policy of not seeking the full funding. This was a disappointment from the Labour Party but really shows that it is not willing to be constructive and take into account the New Zealand industry going forward.Hon Annette King: The biggest lies told about ACC.DAVID BENNETT: Did you have something to say there Ms King?Hon Annette King: Yes I’ve plenty to say. Just wait—give me a chance.DAVID BENNETT: Yes OK all right. Eventually there will be another turn-round from that member because I am sure that she will be coming in here and saying: “Although we were all in favour of fully funding and all those things”—which is not the case because they gave in to the Green Party. Just remember that. Just remember your press release when you gave in to the Green Party.Hon Annette King: Who’s “you” Mr Assistant Speaker?DAVID BENNETT: You see the member has to go to technicalities because she cannot handle the pressure of it but that is the nature of that member.OK when we look at it that $480 million is a lot of money and it is money going into New Zealanders’ pockets from the good economic management of this country by this Government. If we remember what we came into when we came into Government and see the checklist of things that this Government had to deal with—look at the way that New Zealand was in recession before the rest of the world when Labour was in control.Moana Mackey: Because we had a drought.DAVID BENNETT: It was not because of the drought. We have had two droughts since then and we have not had a recession of that nature have we? So that member there would have no idea. We were in recession because of poor economic management. That is the reality of it. Food prices were up 10.9 percent in the last year under Labour and were up 1.5 percent under this Government. House prices went up 96 percent over the 9 years of Labour and went up 28 percent under this Government. Electricity prices went up 72 percent under Labour—Simon O’Connor: How much?DAVID BENNETT: —72 percent under Labour. That is how much electricity prices went up. The current account deficit—this is the Greens’ mantra of economic management. They keep on referring to the current account deficit. It was at 7.9 percent—7.9 percent—and it is at 3.4 percent under this Government. Maybe the most telling of those signs was the number of New Zealanders leaving to go to Australia. We in this Government turned round those economic indicators and by turning round those economic indicators organisations like ACC were able to deliver these levy cuts going forward.That is the nature of good economic management. It is making the right decisions at the right time and building a strong economy so that we can go forward and deliver those results. The decision on how that $480 million will be attributed is going through a process at the moment but you can anticipate that the bulk of it will be in motor vehicle levies along with possibly a levy reduction for employers and the self-employed.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I call Simon O’Connor.Hon Member: Oh God!SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki):Do not be so disappointed across the other side. It is amazing how hearing works quite well for some members particularly on this side of the Chamber. We hear the needs of New Zealanders which is very pleasing. But hearing the small talk from the Opposition you learn quite a bit.I will get back to hearing in a moment because I want to continue the contrast noted by my colleague from Hamilton David Bennett the very fine chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee which has considered Vote ACC. What we have seen really is an ACC scheme under National that is working very very well a board that is working well and the staff and wider teams of ACC working very well. If I can I will just say thank you to those staff particularly those on the front line at ACC who are working through those claims day after day—that can be very difficult. I acknowledge too though that there are often Kiwis who still find it difficult engaging. That is always a challenge but it is something that the National Party hears and this Government hears and continues to work positively towards.We have turned ACC round. Before we took over the Treasury benches it was pretty clear under the previous Government that ACC had lost its focus. In many ways it had just become about pouring in more money but not actually getting claimants back to their independence. That is analogous of course with the approach of previous left-leaning Governments—to actually keep people dependent rather than independent in this false belief that if you just throw enough money at people everything will be solved and fixed. Whereas on this side we understand—and it is our approach to ACC as well—that the absolute key is to get someone back into work and to give them that opportunity to re-engage with themselves their family their community and their workforce.Just to illustrate that the cost of claims under Labour increased by 57 percent in 4 years—the cost of claims went up 57 percent. Again we have had it analogously across a number of portfolios in this House where a Labour Government and a Labour-Greens Government believed that more money would make a difference. What we saw in portfolio after portfolio—and ACC is no exemption—was that more money went in but there were fewer results.This Government is proud to have turned that round. It has turned that round. We have seen enormous changes and about $387 million less in ACC levies. Since 1 April 2014 so only a few months ago New Zealand households have been keeping over $200 a year and businesses are about $180 better off—that is small businesses because larger ones are about $6000 better off on average. That is substantial money back in Kiwis’ pockets which enables them to continue to make their decisions with their money. We are very mindful that although we are proud of ACC and the work that it does—a scheme that is in some ways the envy of the world—and we want it to be there we also understand that it is funded by Kiwis for Kiwis and so we do not want to have to levy them any more than required.The really good news is that as we approach this new Budget year we are expecting further reductions in ACC levies. In fact one of the ways you will find it directly manifest will be actually within your private motor vehicle costs which could drop up to about $130.Paul Foster-Bell: How much?SIMON O’CONNOR: It is $130 I say to my fine colleague Paul Foster-Bell who is working here in Wellington Central and across the country. So this is great news. We will actually directly experience that and that is fantastic.But we are also focused on getting people back into work so there has been a lot of action in the rehabilitation space. I have got some statistics in front of me and we can see that long-term outcomes for clients here in New Zealand are 5 percent higher than those of our Australian counterparts and that more people who have been off work for more than a year have returned to independence. This is absolutely critical.One of the things that we have manifested through ACC and other areas was for under-6-year-olds. This was one of our first steps. If you were under 6 years of age you could get free care at the general practitioner or free after-hours accident care. Of course we have now extended free care from general practitioners and free prescriptions for those up to 13 years of age.I mentioned at the start about hearing and that the Government has heard and I think we just want to note the excellent announcement today by the Minister for ACC around hearing loss and the extra money and support we are putting in.Vote agreed to.Vote JusticePAUL FOSTER-BELL (National):I am delighted to be able to take a call in this debate on the Vote Justice estimates for the 2014-15 financial year. I would like to begin by paying tribute to the Ministers who have led this sector so effectively and so capably over the past term of Parliament. They have truly been working for New Zealand and working very hard indeed to achieve such positive outcomes.I would like to acknowledge hard-working colleagues on the Justice and Electoral Committee—our chairman Mr Scott Simpson MP for Coromandel; the Hon Kate Wilkinson MP for Waimakariri; and Alfred Ngaro and Jo Hayes National list MPs—for their dedication in scrutinising and fine-tuning the legislation that underpins and implements this Government’s policies in the justice sector.Crime rates have dropped to 30-year lows court waiting times have plummeted and reoffending rates have been slashed thanks both to innovative approaches in rehabilitation and also to some simple common-sense measures like boosting drug and alcohol treatment and rehabilitation literacy courses and work in prison programmes. There is no doubt that Budget 2014 and the funding voted to the justice sector programmes contained therein further advance this good work.But this is not a Government that rests on its laurels and this year’s estimates promise that we will be working even harder for New Zealanders in the year to come. This may be a concept that some on the Opposition benches struggle to grasp but modern Budgets are about more than just spending money; they are about more than just inputs into the departments; they are even more than just about the outputs achieved by the departments. They are about achieving real outcomes for New Zealanders. Paramount is the real-world results that Kiwis—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.PAUL FOSTER-BELL: I was saying just before the dinner break that I was absolutely delighted to see that in spite of the efficiencies and savings in some areas and falling crime rates the number of real Kiwis who are benefiting from our policies in the area of victim support is growing. After providing support to 32000 victims in the last financial year provision has been made this year for 35000 victims to receive that level of support. I am of course referring to page 112 of the Estimates justice sector B5 volume 7 for the members opposite who may not be keeping up with this speech.Of course we hope that there are fewer victims of crime and thanks to proactive policing and a Prevention First strategy that is proving to be the case. But having widened the definition of who can receive victim support and extending it to for instance children who are witnesses to domestic violence in the family home it is right and proper that we are making budgetary provision to support this wider group. Similarly there is more provision for the victims of sexual assaults and abuse domestic violence murder and other serious crimes.It is great to see that having achieved a 100 percent success rate in delivering crucial services in a timely fashion in the last financial year—for instance processing victims’ assistance scheme grant applications within the 10-day period of their submission—we are resourcing once again a 100 percent timeliness standard this year. That is outlined on page 111 of the Estimates. This is yet another example of how we are a practical Government that is working for New Zealand and putting real-world concerns ahead of the political dogma ideology and out-of-touch theories so favoured by our opponents.Finally I would like to touch on the Hutt Valley mobile community office trial which has been deemed so successful that Budget 2014 provides funding for it to be rolled out more widely throughout the country. I know it is something that our candidate for Hutt South Chris Bishop will be referring to on the hustings. The mobile community office is a wonderful example of how by working together and hunting as a pack agencies can achieve much better results than if they were to do their own thing. One just wishes that members opposite from the Hutt Valley paid more attention to these excellent projects as contained in the 2014-15 Estimates than they do to reincarnating extinct ratites. This is a Government that is achieving results and I am very proud to be part of team Key which is working for New Zealand every day.Hon CHESTER BORROWS (Associate Minister of Justice):I would like to draw attention to a number of initiatives within the courts space that we on this side of the Chamber are very proud of and also to the excellent work of the team at the Ministry of Justice building on changes made within legislation over recent times. Under this Government the Ministry of Justice has turned round rising court waiting times. In 2013 for instance we cut the age of cases before the court. For all court cases the averages are down 8.9 percent. For criminal cases the average is down a staggering 18.3 percent and disputes tribunal cases are down an average of 21.2 percent. Over the course of the last few years we have introduced audiovisual links into prisons and 11 courts and with crime at historic lows there were 86000 fewer court cases last year than in 2011.Today is the anniversary of the introduction of the Criminal Procedure Act and after a year’s implementation there have been 176000 new charging documents issued under this new legislation. We are getting better at enforcing court fines as well with $250 million less owed in fines since National came into office. When we came in the number of outstanding fines was over $800 million and now it is just over $500 million and that is good news for the taxpayers of New Zealand because that is money we can spend in other ways particularly around the social sector. Specialist courts have brought down their number of days in consideration and waiting times. Coroner’s court cases are down 54 days. We all know the devastating effect that dragging out coroner’s court cases has on the families of those who have passed away. Employment Court matters are down 85 days and the Environment Court is down 64 days. Māori Land Court matters are down 69 days. Time waiting to get in front of a court is dead time and it is a huge frustration.Within the youth justice space we have applied a number of initiatives introduced with the Fresh Start policies in 2008. They were quite contentious as they traversed through the Social Services Committee but based on court data from June 2011 to June 2013 youth crime as measured by Youth Court prosecutions has dropped 27 percent from 3345 cases down to 2490. These are young people for whom their appearance before the court is delayed or does not occur. The best way as we know to keep young people away from a career in crime is to prevent them going to court the first time.So there is excellent work by Police for Alternative Action and the excellent work by Child Youth and Family in dealing more appropriately with young people as they come before the court. The result of a family group conference review found that family group conferences had a number of improvements that they could make in terms of the timing of those family group conferences; the venue where they were held in regard to being off Child Youth and Family premises and into the neighbourhoods and communities; the use of lay advocates to assist families to come to good resolutions in their decisions as to what should happen to their young people who were offending; and the encouragement of bringing complainants before the family group conference to enter into the restorative justice process. This has seen far better resolutions.When I was in Opposition attending for instance the youth justice residence at Rolleston the very sad thing that we found there was that most of the vast majority of young people incarcerated were there on their fourth or fifth stint of 2 months. Fresh Start applications—which allowed people to be sent to the youth justice residence or to have supervision with activity for slightly longer periods but also to add on to the back of those sentences drug and alcohol therapy and intensive supervision—means that those people are not coming back and in the meantime are not creating further victims for which they are incarcerated.It gives young people significant hope. It gives their families help through mentoring and parenting programmes. We are very pleased with the results that we are seeing there with 27 percent fewer young people appearing before the Youth Court. Thank you.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable member—what is Scott’s name—Scott Simpson.SCOTT SIMPSON (Chairperson of the Justice and Electoral Committee):It is almost the end of the 50th Parliament and it is nice to be so readily recognised by such an esteemed and long-serving Chair as yourself. It is a delight and a pleasure for me to stand and rise and speak in the debate on the Appropriation (2014/15 Estimates) Bill because as chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee I have been able to see firsthand the very good work that team justice in this National-led Government has been achieving under the leadership of the Hon Judith Collins. The Hon Chester Borrows has been playing a role of course; the Attorney-General has been doing a particularly good job; and then of course in corrections and in police the Hon Anne Tolley is doing a very good job.It is part of National’s role to build a safer New Zealand for all New Zealanders. It is an important part of our plan to provide better public services. Under National recorded crime has reduced to the lowest level in 33 years.Paul Foster-Bell: How long?SCOTT SIMPSON: Thirty-three years. Recorded crime is at the lowest level Mr Foster-Bell that it has been in 33 years. Unlike members in the Opposition we are tough on crime and we are tough on criminals. We make absolutely no apology for putting victims at the centre of our criminal justice system because they are the victims of crime and they are the ones who are in our justice system through no fault of their own. They are there as reluctant participants in a system that sometimes in the past has not treated them as well as it perhaps could.I want to spend a minute or two just going over some of the methods and some of the pieces of legislation—some of the things that team justice under John Key’s National administration has been able to achieve. We want to continue to reduce crime and the harmful effects that it has on citizens of the nation.What have been some of the key issues and what are some of the key shifts? Right from when this Government took office back in 2008 it has been a priority to focus on the things that matter for all New Zealand. Justice has been an important area for us. It has meant that harsher penalties for the worst offenders have been introduced. It means that we have been focusing on the underlying drivers of crime and better rehabilitation of offenders. We have also been ensuring that the justice system better helps those people who are victims of crime. As I said earlier we make absolutely no apology for placing the victims of crime at the centre of all we do in the criminal justice area. Labour remains to its shame soft on crime and soft on criminals.There has been a vast amount of legislation and legislative change. We have for example strengthened the bail laws. We have given police greater powers to take on and tackle serious crime. We have brought in alcohol reforms that give local communities the option of having a tailored alcohol regulatory environment that tackles alcohol-related issues in their local communities.There has been just as much practical operational and even attitudinal change within the ministries. This National Government introduced Better Public Services or the BPS targets in 2012 for key public services that would make a real difference for all New Zealanders. In the justice sector the main agencies are the Ministry of Justice New Zealand Police and the Department of Corrections. They were all set ambitious targets for reducing the rates of total crime violent crime youth crime and reoffending by 2017.I am pleased to report that all of our initiatives however have been about reducing crime and improving front-line results and the results are very very good. I am pleased to report that our target for the reduction in overall crime was 15 percent by 2017 and as at December 2013 it was down by 14 percent. So we are well on the way to achieving that. As well as that the violent crime rate was down by a full 10 percent and overall reoffending was down by 11.7 percent.These are just a few of the measures that team justice under the John Key National administration has been able to bring about on behalf of all New Zealand in order to make New Zealand a better safer environment for all of us. We aim to continue to ensure that New Zealand is a safe environment for all our citizens. Under the very capable leadership of Judith Collins in the justice sector I think we are going to see an awful lot more of it. It is a key role of the Government to protect its citizens and in justice we have.Vote agreed to.Vote HealthHon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai):Can I first of all say how much I enjoyed Scott Simpson’s speech because he did talk to the estimates and he did talk to achievement and he did not go into a mad rant and rave of personal abuse of the Opposition. That man should be a Minister. But he made one mistake. It is not “Team Key” or “Team Justice”; it is “Team Toadies”. That is what they are—“Team Toadies”. They are a whole lot of toadies all bowing and scraping to Mr Key.I want to talk about the health estimates 2014/15. I want to talk in these estimates about the health workforce. The cost of our health system is made up by our health workforce. About 80 percent of the costs of health come from our health workforce those who provide our health services. Just recently health workers in New Zealand were offered a 0.7 percent pay increase.Hon Trevor Mallard: 7.0?Hon ANNETTE KING: It was a 0.7 percent pay increase. They are rather upset about that because our health workforce believes it is competent it is quality it is professional and it is providing incredibly good health services to the people of New Zealand. I agree with it.But you have to ask why such a small increase is being offered to our health workforce. It is because the truth is the health budget has been reduced in real terms. The members do not like to hear this but before they say I am wrong I suggest they read the Budget documents. The health budget was reduced in real terms by 2.3 percent. They are Treasury figures. They are in the Budget documents. But worse than that go and look at the graphs in the Budget documents. Treasury is saying that in 2015/16 health will be reduced by 3.7 percent in real terms in 2016/17 it will be reduced by 3.6 percent in real terms and in the 2017/18 financial year by 3.1 percent. So we have a pathway for health under a National Government of year-on-year cuts in real terms.So I am saying to the health workforce in New Zealand that it is going to be a rocky road should this Government be re-elected and it is going to be a rocky road for New Zealanders receiving health services. We are facing some huge health workforce shortages. I draw the attention of members opposite to the Ministry of Health’s report that it put out just last week. It is warning that there will be a serious shortage of cancer specialists looming in this country. It has said that over the next decade cancer in New Zealand is going to increase by almost a third and by 2022 there will be a shortfall of seven radiation oncologists 30 medical physicists and 25 radiation therapists. It said that there were only three trained in New Zealand but we would need six in every year to cope with the demand over the next 10 years. It said that since 2009 six of the 13 medical physicist graduates had gone straight overseas. It said it had been warning of this problem since 2012. What we do know about a health workforce is it takes times to train them—you just cannot pluck them out of the air—and there is an international shortage of a cancer health workforce.What I say to the Minister of Health is can we not learn from the past? I have had to listen to the Minister of Health say how under a Labour Government cancer patients had to be sent to Australia. I tell the members opposite that one of the first decisions I had to make as Minister of Health was to approve sending patients to Australia in early 2000. Why? Not because of anything a Labour Government had done but because report after report on the health workforce had been provided in the 1990s to the previous Government about the shortage of radiation therapists—that we were not training enough that we had ageing linear accelerators and that we needed to take this issue seriously. We did not.It was not until 2000 when we increased the number of radiation therapists who take 3 years to train and we started to buy new linear accelerators that we were able to start to cope with our own treatment of cancer. I am asking why we have not learnt. Why did we not look ahead and see what was happening? We are now told that we are facing a serious nursing shortage in New Zealand—a serious nursing shortage—not a serious doctor shortage. There is a shortage of general practitioners yes but there is not a shortage of doctors overall and there is going to be a surplus out of Australia anyway. But we face a serious nursing shortage and we are told that we should have started providing for that in 2012.I have to say that I am really disappointed in Health Workforce New Zealand. We were told that it was going to be the organisation that would solve all our problems for our health workforce. I have to say that it has come up pretty much with a lemon because there have been no serious decisions made around our nursing workforce. It is still deciding on that. There have been no serious decisions made about how we are going to be able to offer cancer services going forward. I have to tell you: this is an organisation that is costing taxpayers an awful lot of money for a few pieces of paper and some ideas about physician assistance some American idea that it wanted to try when we ought to be building our health workforce training them and upskilling them here in New Zealand.I was staggered to read that over the last 5 years the chair of Health Workforce New Zealand has been paid $743138—$743138—in fees and in reimbursements. The chair of Health Workforce New Zealand is paid $13000 a month. Our senior citizens single superannuitants or old veterans are paid $19000 a year. So we are paying all this money for an executive chairman of an organisation that is not addressing the health workforce issues this country faces—serious issues. I have not even talked about what is called the unregulated workforce the place where most of our health care is provided—in the home and in the community for our older people. Almost no work has been done by Healthcare Workforce New Zealand on that issue. It is not good enough. I think it is time that we took health workforce issues seriously because we do have highly competent highly trained and quality health care workers in New Zealand whom we need to value. But we will not if we underpay them and if we do not value them. They are overworked and stressed because there are not enough of them.Unfortunately that is the picture that is emerging under Minister Ryall so I would like to put to rest once and for all this nonsense that a Labour Government left a shortage of a workforce. We were the first Government in living memory to try to address the health workforce by increasing the number of doctors. The first increase in the number of doctors training was in 1981 until we became the Government. We increased the number of radiation therapists nurses nurse practitioners and many others including dental therapists my own old profession. We took the health workforce seriously. That has not been what has happened under this Government. So if we are facing according to Treasury year-on-year cuts in the health budget under a National Government the ability to pay and hold that health workforce will diminish year on year. Once again we will be forced to send people to another country.BARBARA STEWART (NZ First):I am very pleased to take a call on behalf of New Zealand First in the Appropriation (2014/15 Estimates) Bill. Each year in the estimates debate on the health budget we anticipate that it might focus on some preventative health measures. In this Committee we all know that prevention is far better than cure. We need that vision. We know that the health budget is reducing in real terms year on year and the Hon Annette King also spelt that out very clearly. Spending on prevention is logical. It will work towards preventing an increasing burden on our already strained health budget. Yet these estimates hold very few thoughts for preventative strategies which is a shame. We were expecting this. Why are there not any plans? We know that there is an obesity and diabetes tsunami actually coming to our country—just about to pass I would say. We must praise the Government in one area and that is for the free doctors visits for under-13s. That is a preventative measure. We are very pleased that National is looking at New Zealand First policy and starting to implement some of our health policy.We would also have liked to see in the estimates an attempt to reduce the hospital waiting lists perhaps by having additional staff to help out. We see the media highlighting the plight of people who require surgery but who do not qualify for the waiting list. Effectively they are waiting to get on the waiting list. Every member of this Parliament receives letters from people saying they have been waiting for months and months and some even for years. In the end they have to revert to living with pain or borrowing money to pay for the surgery that they need—some are lucky enough to go to a charity hospital to get the operation that they need.It is really disheartening that the Government has set a test for the level of need for surgery when clearly many thousands of people are actually left off the waiting list and yet are in dire need. The people who do not win this game of roulette often end up loaded up with painkillers and other drugs that they need. While they are waiting to go on the waiting list their health will deteriorate and their quality of life will be compromised. By the time they finally get to have the surgery the toll on the health system’s dollars will be vastly more than if the surgery had been done earlier or when it was initially dated for them to have it.The number of people waiting to get on the waiting list is a ticking time bomb and it really requires urgent action by the Minister of Health. The sad part of this is that nobody really knows the extent of this hidden list. Even the medical profession is speaking out and questioning the management of the health system pointing out that there is a hidden waiting list and saying that doctors themselves are very frustrated by the constraints imposed by the Government’s targets which looks at outputs rather than outcomes. This is a problem that disproportionately affects seniors which is particularly concerning given that we have an ageing population here in New Zealand.New Zealand First would rather see an ailment checked out with a general practitioner at an early stage before hospitalisation becomes necessary. It is far less expensive. The rising costs associated with this costlier health care will drive the district health boards’ books persistently into the red unless further action and fiscally neutral health plans are actually actioned. We know this is going to happen we have all the evidence and yet there is nothing on the books to try to sort this problem out. We pride ourselves on being a First World country so this level of Government disassociation around our health system is not good enough. Nothing appears to be planned either to ensure that we have a workforce for aged care. There does need to be parity between those who are working in private rest homes and those who are working in district health board rest homes. We all know that caregivers are absolutely essential in rest homes.Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (Chairperson of the Health Committee):It is indeed a great pleasure to speak on these estimates in Vote Health because this year the National Government has committed to an investment in Vote Health of $15.6 billion an all-time record. National has indeed managed to achieve an increase in productivity and an increase in outputs over the last 5 years.What is really important to realise in health is that right around the world there is almost infinite demand and finite resources. And in stark contrast to the National Government’s achievements the previous Government failed on all accounts. It doubled the health expenditure decreased outputs and indeed decreased productivity. If indeed Labour’s spending record had continued at year-on-year 8 percent increases in a few decades’ time Vote Health would have made up 60 percent of the entire Government spend. It was absolutely absolutely unsustainable along that trajectory.So it is a great worry when I hear Annette King once again shroud-waving about the achievements of the previous Labour Government in this area. Just to remind you they were to double the expenditure decrease productivity and decrease outputs.Hon Trevor Mallard: That’s just untrue.Dr PAUL HUTCHISON: Yes she was. She was saying that Labour had achieved a lot. She was saying that it was not the Labour Government’s fault that women were heading to Australia for radiation therapy. Once again she showed the absolute inability of the previous Labour Government to be realistic about sustaining a value-for-dollar health system.But the record of the National Government over the last 5 years has been 40000 more elective surgery outputs per year since 2008 and I would like Barbara Stewart to take note of that. There have been 1000 more doctors and 3000 more nurses. We have heard Annette King talking about her health workforce but for the first time in the history of New Zealand there have been more medical graduates available than there are jobs in the resident hospital training programmes available in New Zealand. This is an incredible achievement. But the reality is that workforce planning is extremely difficult because international conditions change. Australia has indeed trained a great deal more doctors and now New Zealand doctors are wanting to stay here. There is still a great attraction for doctors from Britain Canada and South Africa to come to New Zealand.One of the clear focuses of the National Government has been the introduction of taxpayer-funded free access for children under 13 to general practitioner care. It was good to hear Barbara Stewart saying what a great National Government this is for introducing this policy. At the beginning of this year David Cunliffe with a blare of trumpets and sirens announced a $1 billion package of unmitigated baby bribes—a non-directed untargeted baby bonus. This was a clear example of a party and a leader that have no cognisance whatsoever of making sure that every health dollar counts. In contrast in this Budget the National Government announced a very well-directed and very practical family and children package. Amongst it of course were the free access and the $90 million that will go towards ensuring that children right around New Zealand will be able to access primary care keeping them out of hospitals.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable member Jian Yang. Ni hao ma?Dr JIAN YANG (National):Wo hen hao xie xie. It is a pleasure to take a call in this estimates debate. Again congratulations to the Minister of Finance the Hon Bill English and our Prime Minister John Key on delivering a great Budget 2014 and also on 6 years of strong and stable leadership.New Zealanders want a Government they can trust. Our Prime Minister John Key has led the country from recession to sustained growth. The National-led Government has delivered for New Zealand and our hard work is paying off for New Zealanders. Our books are now back to surplus—a $372 million surplus next year growing larger in the coming years—and there will be 2 percent to 4 percent economic growth in the next 4 years. In the past year alone 84000 new jobs were created and Budget 2014 forecasts an additional 170000 new jobs by mid-2018.The feedback from the Chinese community has been very positive. The Chinese community is confident that our National-led Government is delivering on issues that matter to them. Indeed in Budget 2014 we focus on the issues that matter to ordinary New Zealanders and that will make a difference to their lives. This Government has been looking after and supporting New Zealanders from day one. It is also about growing the economy to the benefit of New Zealanders and that is why in Budget 2014 we are investing $500 million in a package of practical support for young families and vulnerable children most in need. This includes free general practitioner visits and free prescriptions for all children under 13.I am particularly pleased to see increased spending in health. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our Minister of Health the Hon Tony Ryall and also the chair of the Health Committee Dr Paul Hutchison for their wonderful work. It has been a great privilege to work with them. Unfortunately they will be retiring from politics. I wish them all the best.National is spending more on health than any other Government in New Zealand’s history—$1.8 billion of extra investment over 4 years. That takes health spending next year to a record $15.6 billion. This includes $90 million for free general practitioner visits and free prescriptions for all children under 13 which I just mentioned; $112.1 million for disability support; $96 million for increased home-based support services; $40 million for additional support for the elderly; and $33 million for faster cancer treatment. There is also $20 million for the rheumatic fever prevention programme; $6.3 million for bilateral cochlear implants for children; and $40 million over 4 years for the new Healthy Families NZ anti-obesity initiative which is expected to reach around 900000 New Zealanders.Also the Government will spend $110 million of new money over the next 4 years to provide even more New Zealanders with elective surgery including hip and knee replacements. The National-led Government has provided record numbers of New Zealanders with the operations they need and has provided them faster than before. Over the past 5 years the number of patients receiving elective surgery has lifted from 118000 in 2008 to 158000 in 2013—40000 more patients are now receiving elective surgery each year. As I am on the Health Committee I have been particularly interested in people’s stories about the health system.Vote agreed to.Vote EducationCHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka):I am looking forward to speaking on Vote Education tonight. It is one of the most important votes in this year’s Budget as it is in any Budget because it is where we think about the future and we think about the legacy that we will leave for future generations of New Zealanders. I have to say that in that regard this current Government’s priorities in education have been woefully inadequate and completely wrong.The education portfolio starts in early childhood education. In fact if we want to ensure that every young New Zealander gets the best chance in life through education that starts with a quality early childhood education. That means investing in quality: investing in making sure that we have really good teachers in early childhood education really good centres and that all of those centres are well supported. This Government has not been doing that. If there is one area that is the clearest example of how Government funding is not keeping up with increased demand is not keeping up with the cost pressures that centres are facing it is early childhood education.Tim Macindoe: Rubbish.CHRIS HIPKINS: Government funding simply is not keeping up. Every early childhood centre will tell Tim Macindoe who has got his head in the sand that on a per child basis early childhood education funding is declining under this Government. It is declining under this Government and those members have their heads buried in the sand. They simply do not want to know.Parents are having to pay more for early childhood education. Of course the Government did away with the “free” in free early childhood education so it is not surprising that parents are having to pay more. The Government has failed to keep up with the targets to increase the number of qualified staff in early childhood education. Its idea of expanding provision is to go along to Kidicorp and basically say that the Government will fund it twice for building the same early childhood centres. This is a Government that is failing to meet the needs of the future in early childhood education.In schooling we know what the challenges are. Quality teaching—we should be backing quality teaching and professional development for teachers. We need a high-trust aspirational model for the way we do that. This Government has no trust in teachers. It says to parents that teachers cannot be trusted. We have got a power-grab from the Minister of Education who wants to wrench away control of the entire teaching profession and put it under her thumb by not even giving teachers any say over how their own profession is regulated. This is a Government that thinks that bigger class sizes are the solution to underachievement in the education system. This is a Government that thinks that charter schools—importing a failed charter school model from overseas—are the answer to underachievement in our education system. We know that that is simply not the case. We know that that is not the case. This is a Government of course that thinks that spending up to five times more money on a handful of students going to charter schools is a good use of public money when every other school in the country is struggling for resources.We know that they are struggling for resources because donations by parents to New Zealand’s public schools are now about to top $100 million a year. That is a 30 percent increase in the 5 years that National has been in Government—a 30 percent increase. The reality is that that is because the overall education budget when it is adjusted for population growth and for inflation has gone backwards in four out of the 6 years that National has been in office. The money has gone backwards. National has been taking money out of education.Yes the overall amount of money has gone up but that is because the number of people in the education system has gone up and because like everything the costs go up. It is called inflation and it seems to me that this Government struggles with that. To say that it is spending more money on education than ever before is ridiculous because there are actually more people in the education system than ever before because the population has grown so it stands to reason that more money will be going into the system. But on a per student basis it is going backwards. On a per student basis the funding is going backwards in the education system. It is simply not keeping up with inflation and with the growing population. Instead we are seeing the Government trying to carve up the education system through privatisation through the introduction of charter schools and public-private partnerships.In the meantime it is ignoring the needs of the future. It is failing to help the education system and to support the education system to adapt to the needs of the 21st century. Instead it is continuing to refine the education system that we needed in the last century. We actually need something different now. As Alvin Toffler said the new illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn unlearn and relearn. Actually that is what schools are focused on. They are focused on giving kids the knowledge and the competencies that they are going to need to survive in the 21st century and yet so much Government policy is getting in the way of that.The narrowing of the focus of the curriculum has been one of the worst things that this Government has done in education—narrowing the focus of the curriculum away from a rich diverse education down to something that simply is not going to cut it. When I go and talk to employers I ask what they want people to leave school with—what the competencies are that they are looking for. They talk about creativity. They talk about collaboration. They talk about problem solving. And yet all of those things are being distracted from by this Government’s very narrow focus—the very narrow focus of this current Government. And of course what have we seen? A litany of failures in this Government’s education policy: school closures in Christchurch closing special education schools around the country Novopay and Hekia Parata’s bizarre plan to increase class sizes supposedly to improve the quality of education.There is a better way. There is a better way in all of these areas. Positive progressive change in education is what I think New Zealanders are looking for and I think that is what they are going to get when they vote for a Labour Government—a Labour-led Government—at this year’s election. We will put the focus on quality teaching but not in the way this National Government wants to which is to divide the teaching profession and tell the teaching profession that the Government knows best and try to tell every teacher in the country that it knows better how they should be doing their jobs. We will not do it that way; we are actually going to place some trust in teachers. We are actually going to say to teachers that we think it is fantastic that they have an aspirational code of ethics for their profession rather than a punitive code of conduct like this Government wants. We are going to say to teachers that actually we trust them to have a say over how their profession is regulated and governed. We are going to give teachers a say in how the Teachers Council is composed unlike under this National Government where Hekia Parata wants to hand-pick every single member of the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand because she will not trust teachers to have a say over their own profession.We are going to say to parents that we recognise the economic pressures that they are under and we recognise the fact that funding has not kept up with the cost of educating kids. We will do something about that unlike this Government which is saying in the words of Bill English that schools are awash with cash. We know that that is simply not the case—in fact funding is not keeping up under this Government. That is something that the incoming Labour Government will do something about as a matter of priority.We recognise that education in the 21st century is going to look significantly different from what it looked like in the 20th century. That means that schools are going to need access to new technology. Kids are going to need access to new technology. Although the current Government—and I will give it credit; this is an area where it has done some good things and we fully support the initiatives that it has put in place in this area but a lot more needs to be done and it will be done under a Labour Government. We will have some more announcements to make on that very very soon as you will see over the coming couple of days. Investment in education is an investment in the future of the country. It may sound like a cliché—it has been said so many times—but this Government does not seem to acknowledge that. It seems to think that the education system can continue to scrape by with less and less on a per student basis in real terms every year. It simply cannot. The funding is not keeping up with the cost of educating kids. The Government has got its head buried in the sand if it thinks it is. It simply is not.So the next Labour Government will invest in quality teaching. We will in collaboration with the teaching profession set very high standards for the profession. We will make sure that we attract the best and brightest into teaching because we know how valuable the work of teachers is. We will then place trust in them to get on with it and to do the job without all of the punitive measures and sanctions that this Government is putting in place. We will commit to the free public education system that New Zealanders have so long been proud of. We will put the “public” and the “free” back into the free public education that this Government is so determined to dismantle. We will make sure that schools are supported to deliver an education that is appropriate for the 21st century. We will ensure that kids get access to the technology that they need and that it is not a lottery of where they are born and how wealthy their parents are that determines whether they get access to that technology. Every student needs to have access to the technology they need to thrive in the 21st century and the incoming Labour Government will make sure that they get that.Education is so important. It is time for positive change and positive investment in education and that is exactly what New Zealand is going to get from an incoming Labour Government.Hon NIKKI KAYE (Associate Minister of Education):I am very pleased to speak in this estimates debate. The reason I am very pleased to speak in this debate is I know that there are many members of this House who care passionately about education. I agree with Mr Hipkins that actually this is one of the most important votes in the country. We all care about young people and want to create the most opportunities possible for every young New Zealander. The question is how you get there. What we will not take a lecture on on this side of the Chamber is around our commitment to that dream the investment that we have made and the commitment to actual life opportunities and results. What we know will happen in the next 3 months is that you will have a party on that side of the Chamber whose basic equation is to tax more and spend more but that will never once require accountability for the dreams the futures and the opportunities of young New Zealanders.What we have said throughout the last 5½ years and throughout this period is that actually we have a responsibility to do more than that. That is about saying every parent has a right to know how their children are doing in numeracy and literacy. We make no apologies for that. That is about saying we are prepared in the most difficult financial situation that our country has seen in a generation to increase the education budget in every single Budget. We are spending $10.1 billion. We are spending one of the highest amounts in the OECD. We have increased that significantly because we understand that we are dealing with the futures of young people and we can be proud of that additional investment.What we have done over this period and what you saw in this Budget is our relentless attempt to try to drive change particularly for our most disadvantaged whether it is the Reading Together programme which is more money to ensure that some of our most disadvantaged families have access to greater opportunities in terms of literary; whether it is $2.5 million for Computers in Homes which means 1500 families will have access to being able to learn online; or whether it is the $211 million that we put in last year on top of another $500 million of investment in actual modern infrastructure to enable that equity of access. Our record is incredibly strong both in terms of the investment and in terms of the ability to drive change to lift opportunity.Look at the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 2 results. They are up for all young New Zealanders. Look also at the results for Māori and Pacific students. They are up as well. At the end of the day what New Zealanders can know is that not only have we spent more money but actually we have seen greater results in NCEA for those students who have not traditionally had those opportunities.What we can also see in the area of early childhood education is another $155 million in this Budget. But what is really important is that we have enrolled more of those young children who have traditionally started off behind in our education system into early childhood education than ever before. We have a goal that every child is not going to have to start 100 metres behind the start line. Our Government has invested more than ever before.In the area of modern learning environments I have no doubt that what we will see from the Labour Party in terms of this Budget is a whole lolly scramble. What we will not see is the ability to hold that accountability and to say that we require more for what we are going to give in terms of this funding. In the area of modern learning environments it is under our Government actually that we have seen significant upgrades right across the country. When you have got 60 percent of your school stock at more than 40 years old it has been our Government that has put more classrooms than ever before in areas of growth. In this Budget alone there is $284 million. That is 148 more classrooms for areas of growth. It is more new schools and it is more site acquisitions. We have also committed to areas like the Green Star building programme to ensure that we have more environmentally sustainable schools.To get a lecture from the Opposition around Canterbury is actually appalling. We have stood beside Canterbury in a very very difficult situation. Of course it has been a very hard time for Canterbury but we have put in over $1 billion to make sure that we build those schools and for many of those schools to be much better than ever before. Today I announced on top of the 23 school pools that we are repairing another 15 pools as well. That is just another example where we are prepared to invest in young people in Canterbury. These are more modern schools. I also announced $200000 the other day around digital literacy and connecting a whole lot of young people in Canterbury.This is about a Government that has consistently demonstrated increases over every single Budget that we have been involved in and an overall increase in the education budget which is one of the best in the OECD. This is a Government that has consistently said that we want more. We particularly want more for our most disadvantaged because the future of New Zealand—having a much smarter more connected country—relies on us changing the script. We cannot as a country have a Government filled with people who do not require basic things like standards in education and that is what national standards have done. I tell you what: if we are around as of 20 September we are going to continue to invest in areas like digital literacy and like modern school environments. We are going to continue to invest in Investing in Educational Success which regardless of the fact there is a very healthy debate about it is basically about saying that one of the biggest things that we can do to help change the future of young New Zealanders is to do everything we can to support the teaching profession to strengthen quality teaching and to strengthen governance in schools.This is a Government that has a vision and has a plan and is committed to investment to lift standards to lift achievement and to ultimately lift the futures and the dreams of so many young New Zealanders compared with an alternative party that believes in taxing more and spending more for no results and continuing on a very old model. I believe when it comes to the election in a couple of months’ time National has a very proud record of raising achievement and of helping our most disadvantaged. I am very proud to be an Associate Minister of Education. I want to finish by saying I believe that the Hon Hekia Parata has an outstanding record in terms of ensuring that young children are engaged in early childhood education ensuring that standards are lifted and ensuring that we are investing in quality education. These are the things that a great education system is made of and we are very proud of that.TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First):Kia ora. It is interesting to follow the Hon Nikki Kaye and I think very highly of this Associate Minister of Education. However she is wrong on so many points that it is a real disappointment.I want to address first of all—so that New Zealand hears this—the fact that the Minister spoke and actually said that it was the National Government that set standards. The suggestion is that education in New Zealand has never had any standards. That is an affront to every teacher who has ever worked in the New Zealand school system which took us to the top of the OECD with regard to our results and our people are highly recognised and our education system is so well-recognised that this Government can sell it. When those statements are made it is said as if we never had standards and as if it took a National Government to put a line in the sand that says: “OK now your children can jump over it.”New Zealanders need to understand that the New Zealand Curriculum had curriculum bands. Instead of saying that every child on this day at this time after this year would jump over this particular line it treated them like human beings. It treated them with a 2-year spread across the academic achievement levels in the New Zealand Curriculum. It was world-recognised and this Government put it at risk.This Government then tried to convince you New Zealand that teachers were untrustworthy. In 2009 this Government and this Prime Minister John Key said that primary school principals lied to parents on report cards and that that was why the Government needed to give them a template that told them exactly where they stood with reading writing and maths. And that was it—no holistic vision and no aspiration in education—and that lack of aspiration is actually carried out and is proven through the estimates.So if people want to go and have a look at page 79 of Vote Education let us have a look at the aspirations—“What is Intended to be Achieved with this Appropriation”—for partnership schools. Let us just have a look. These were the schools that were going to be the silver bullet for our most vulnerable. These were the schools that the National Government wanted to take the credit for lifting achievement for our Māori our Pasifika and our low socio-economic groups. The targets for these schools in this appropriation are that in reading they will have 68 percent of their students at the standard 64 percent in maths at the standard and 60 percent in writing at the standard. I kept hearing “five out of five”. I am sorry but I kept hearing that five out of five were going to achieve these things. What we have got here is a Government that is quite happy to have 40 percent fail the standard. It sets it but it is happy to have 40 percent fail it.Now let us have a look at the targets it has put on mainstream schools. In reading it is 81 percent in maths it is 77 percent and in writing it is 74 percent. So apparently mainstream schools which are not funded to the level that partnership schools are under these appropriations have got to achieve higher targets before this Government will give them any credit yet it is funding partnership schools under this Budget at a ratio of one teacher per nine students. New Zealand have a listen to it. This is the same Government that wanted to up your children’s class size not that long ago. It is funding these partnership schools at a ratio of one teacher to nine students and it has said in the legislation that for 5-year-olds it can be one teacher to 15. This is the Government that wants you to vote for it later on this year because it says it is strong on education—this is what it is.The Associate Minister stood up and said—and National members will stand up again and say—that more money than ever before has gone into education in New Zealand and I am not going to contradict those members. Of course the Government had to rebuild Christchurch. That is in that money. I mean what was it going to do—not build schools down in Christchurch? Do not be ridiculous. Of course there is more money because the Christchurch rebuild is in there. What about the $4.5 million rebuild going on at Mahurangi College—why? Because the buildings are leaky. Who passed that law? Who passed the law that allowed those materials to be used in our State schools so that we have now got to do a complete rebuild?The Minister talked about the number of buildings that had to be refreshed and turned into modern learning environments. That money should have been set aside anyway. There has always been the replacement building fund so that is not new money either New Zealand. Do not let the Government tell you this is new money. But do ask the Government New Zealand—have a look through these appropriations—how much has been spent on the PaCT tool. You do not hear much about the PaCT tool any more. It stands for the progressive assessment something or other tool. It is a digital tool New Zealand that has been created through a computer program so that teachers—not necessarily qualified and registered teachers—can go on and enter data on children.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Chair. Thank you for recognising me and allowing me to take a call.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): You are welcome.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: I knew I would be. The goal of the education system should be to help all kids reach their potential and to create a fairer society for all but unfortunately the Appropriation (2013/14 Supplementary Estimates) Bill fails to deliver on this issue. It is not about disputing endlessly the amount of money because in fact more money will always be spent in every Budget on education otherwise we would be slipping further back let alone standing still. That is just the reality. So there really is not any point in having that debate about who has spent the most money. That is not the issue. We do not need to fight over that.But the estimates have failed to address the elephant in the room that holds back many of our communities which is poverty. While we ignore and deny poverty and say that it is irrelevant to educational achievement we are always going to have difficulties with the education system. It does not really matter how many lime-green squabs and classrooms with sliding doors you create and call it a modern learning environment if the children are arriving at school reliant on charity for breakfast because their parents are not earning enough money. It does not really matter if they are sick and there is no school nurse because she has been taken away and was only part-time anyway to work on the rheumatic fever programme somewhere else. So we have got to acknowledge the context.I think it is really important that we recognise that education is not in a happy state. The Government cannot say that Vote Education has solved the issues. I think the previous speaker Tracey Martin when speaking about the targets for charter schools was reminding us that an enormous amount of money is going intro fringe experiments because the Government says that it has this goal of five out of five. But what it fails to recognise is that five out of five of our children are not getting fed are not well and are not having access to resources and that we have the greatest inequality in this country that we have had in many many generations. I am quite ashamed to live in a country now where I now see older people begging on the streets—that never happened in my childhood—and children going to school hungry.The Green Party recently did a tour where we promoted a very positive response which is not in the estimates and that is the community hubs plan. What that is about is making sure that we provide for kids in school so there is a free lunch there is a school nurse for every 400 children in decile 1 to decile 4 schools and so there is after-school care and free out-of-school care and recreation programmes available to these kids so that they get the things that other children—middle and upper-class children—get as of right: those extra after-school care and activities that you otherwise have to pay for. When we toured those mainly decile 1 to 4 schools it was really interesting to talk to principals and teachers about the issues.Some of those schools did not have lime-green squabs and sliding doors but what they did have was absolutely dedicated principals and teachers who wanted the best academic opportunities for their students. They recognised that without the school having a good relationship with the local community having food there to feed the kids and having an ability for those kids to participate in learning have a good time and have cultural experiences that other kids have as of right there would not be that five out of five. So it is fine to talk about all of these wonderful things—and we support digital literacy and we love lime-green squabs; that is great—but the reality is that we need to listen to what our decile 1 teachers and principals are telling us about the kids.The Government has made a strong argument that things like Te Kotahitanga should be frozen because they are expensive apparently and that building on success is the new way to bring forward cultural inclusion. Well actually Te Kotahitanga has been very successful because just like school hubs it put a person in the school to support the profession to meet the needs of Māori children in particular. So when we start talking about really making a difference it is not going to be about spending money on constantly revising programmes and getting rid of ones that work. We need to uphold the fact that we need people in the school system who have the skills whether it is the school nurse or the Te Kotahitanga facilitator or whether it is quality early childhood education with 100 percent trained teachers. We cannot talk about quality in one breath and in the next breath say that we are going to open up early childhood education to Kidicorp and we are going to allow charter schools from zero to 8 years.We have this very odd estimate in Vote Education this time around the Minister of Education’s new idea which is that babies aged nothing and children up to the age of 8 should be allowed to be in charter schools. We know that it was the Minister’s idea because we have seen on the report that she received from the ministry what she wrote in her own handwriting: “This is the idea. Add this to the criteria.” We see these very odd experimental fringe ideas that come from an international system called “the GERM”. If people are not aware what that is it is the global education reform movement and it is based on the market philosophy that education is the new frontier where we can all make money and turn it all into a franchise. This has been attempted with very minimal success in the United States and Britain. These are not the places we should be using as the models for a modern education system. We need to go back to the fundamentals and the fundamentals are not narrowing the curriculum to a narrow definition of literacy and numeracy.The money that will be spent in the estimates on professional development around national standards will not succeed because those standards are neither national nor a standard. What they have done is reduce children’s confidence in themselves and teachers’ confidence in themselves. If there is one thing we know about learning it is that you have got to be confident. We have to be confident that we can do things. If we are constantly told that we are below standard or that we are failing our children because we have taken kids for whom English may be a second language and moved them up in their ability to learn to read to write to think to talk and to participate but that does not meet the standard then is the teacher a failure? I do not think so. And if the child has come to school with barriers that hopefully no one in this Chamber has ever faced in terms of poverty dislocation transience possibly no English all of those experiences—if those children are expected to meet a standard and are then called a failure when they have hugely improved as a result of the efforts of teachers then we have missed the bus about what learning is.Learning is not a tick-the-box mechanistic exercise. We do not need tick-the-box exercises. We need to take the New Zealand curriculum we need to take the cultural experiences of some of our expert people who are involved in looking at what makes it work and we need to invest in that. Yes it takes money but there is no greater investment than in our children and there is no greater investment than in recognising that children who are hungry and communities that are alienated from education require our attention in the most profound way. It is not rocket science. There are people out there who are growing food in schools who are teaching people to cook in schools and who are building adult and community education back into schools despite the Government cutting it out of the previous Budget in 2008. We are seeing excellent practice going on in our schools and there are people with a lot to tell us. We should be listening to those people very carefully before making up experiments like the charter schools for 0 to 8-year-olds or the limited authority to teach without any professional commitments being allowed to be expanded to 3 years which is what the new Education Amendment Bill (No 2) will do.We are disappointed that the estimates for Vote Education do not meet the real need. We do consider it an underperforming economy when 290000 children live in poverty. It does not matter how many statistics we hear in this House about how successful everything is if our kids are hungry if they cannot learn and if our schools are underfunded. We have to invest in changing that cycle and empowering those kids and their families to believe that they are entitled to participate in society as well as in all the things that the privileged have and that can be done. The Greens have a positive and modern vision for how that can be done. It was awesome to travel and to get positive feedback from all of these people who work at the front line saying “Yes we want to be in that relationship with our communities. We would appreciate your support. We are creative with our funding. We do not expect the earth but what we do want is to be able to build these relationships alongside you.” That is what we believe the school hubs programme and putting kids at the heart of it means. If children rather than rhetoric are at the heart of our decision making we are going to get a different outcome.The school system does need to be constantly scrutinised. It is important that we check ourselves in terms of what we are doing but we should not be adopting the global education reform movement and the fringe experiments simply because they offer an ideological consistency with the idea of education being business and just another market. Thank you.MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore):It is with great pleasure that I rise to speak about Vote Education. I think when we look at the amount of money that has been spent that is one way of evaluating things. The Opposition has concentrated on trying to get a smoke-and-mirrors exercise going so that there is perpetual bewilderment at least on that side of the Chamber about how much is actually spent and where that money is spent.We do not share those confused states. From our perspective it is pretty straightforward. We have put a great deal of money into education—$10.1 billion in the financial year—because we believe that it is the most worthwhile investment we can make. If we want New Zealand to grow and prosper as a nation we need to give our young people every opportunity to get the kind of education that will bring out the very best in what they are able to achieve as individuals.Recently I took part in a gifted and talented children’s political panel where we looked at how that group of people is assisted. There are a lot of areas where the Ministry of Education and this Government are moving towards that are going to encourage those very talented and very gifted children to achieve their best. Rolling out broadband is one thing. The professional development that is put through for the teachers is very important not only in English but also in the medium of Māori and that is working very well.Early childhood education—a lot of people have spoken about it and said that really what we are trying to do is to get that sort of start for as many young people as we possibly can. Our target was pretty well a straightforward one. We wanted 98 percent of children having participation in quality early childhood education by 2016. We are already at 95.7 percent. We are well on track to doing that. What needs to happen with our very young people is that they are made to feel confident and certain that they can with diligence and application get the best education that they possibly can. So yes we have concentrated on trying to bring up to a standard our poorest performing young people because they need that extra assistance. But that must not be at the expense of gifted and talented children or the great mass of children who are really at a similar level with that similar curiosity and excitement.In my North Shore electorate over the past couple of years I have seen firsthand what it is like—that sense of excitement as new classrooms are opened up and rolled out and as the broadband comes through. These are quality teaching environments and quality learning environments. Yes there are sliding doors and yes there are lime green squabs. In fact the squabs are all sorts of colours. That does not matter. These are places that are child friendly and teacher friendly. At Mairangi Bay Primary School for example where I opened a block which is set above the old classrooms the teachers were ecstatic. That is the word I would use. They were absolutely convinced that they had the best possible learning environment for the young people in their school and they were right.Initially when the designs came out these same teachers were a little uncertain as to whether that kind of environment would suit their teaching methods and the children. They were a little change averse let us face it. That is not unknown in the teaching profession and in other professions as well. But really when you look at the results and you look at the outcomes you look at the broadband roll-out—$700 million is being spent there—and at digital learning which has been a very big part of what the Minister the Hon Nikki Kaye was talking about earlier what we have had is at the forefront of where we want to make technology relevant to people’s lives. This has worked in a way that I think has surprised many because it has enabled young people to learn at their own pace to learn from home.The education site gifted.tki.org.nz which is the Ministry of Education site has just enjoyed an upgrade. There were eight different modules in there for teaching advanced mathematics for example and the children were extraordinarily enthusiastic about that and rightly so. They were able in their own time and in their own homes and at their own pace to not have the frustrations of perhaps being held back by other children but were able to carve their own path and be stimulated to the level that they need to be so that they are not bored and frustrated. They are able to share with each other via the medium of high technology their latest thoughts and ideas. I think that has probably done an enormous amount to relieve that sense of isolation that some of these children have had because they have been made to feel different and special but not always in a good way.I think that the various measures that we have been putting into education have worked extremely well. It is why this Government has spent so much money—because we believe that that is the way for the future. Yes we have spent money on infrastructure and health but education has been one of our priorities because we are a Government that cares about families that cares about children and that cares about people. We are not prepared to borrow big and go into a routine where we cannot pay our debts back in order to fund our education and our other excellent policies. Thank you.TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West):It is great to follow on from my very energetic colleague Maggie Barry the member for North Shore and to pick up on her very positive tone. When listening to some of the members opposite you would think that everything is wrong in education but in fact that is not my experience at all. Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting Melville Primary School in my electorate. I think that it is just such a bustling happy and positive environment. There is a great principal there dedicated staff and young people who are all focused on what they need to do and taking advantage of the opportunities they are given.Just before I talk about some of the specific aspects of the education estimates I want to draw attention to a very good presentation that was given in the Grand Hall during the dinner adjournment which I suppose crosses over both the justice and the education sectors. But there is no question that education now is a highly IT-dominated activity. Young children now are incredibly computer-literate and of course there is that great maxim now that whenever people of our age get stuck you need to look for a 21st century kid in order to help you sort things out. But the reason I want to draw attention to that particular exercise that we had this evening is that it was all about cyber-safety and knowing how to use the internet and all the online options safely. A document that has been put out called Staying Safe Online is one that I would strongly commend to all parents and to children who are old enough to be able to make sense of it. It contains a whole lot of tips good practical stuff on how to use the internet safely. Of course that is something that is very important in our schools now.I am sure we are all aware of the fact that some young people have got themselves into incredible difficulty and at times very distressing circumstances when they have misused the internet. This is a document that has been produced by NetSafe in collaboration with Facebook YouTube Google Microsoft Yahoo! New Zealand and TradeMe. If there are parents who are watching who would like to know how to get it I am sure that if you go to the NetSafe website which is www.netsafe.org.nz you will get it from there. It does contain as I say a lot of information that is highly valuable. I want to thank all the presenters tonight for being here in Parliament to educate MPs and others who were present on this rapidly evolving aspect of our lives.When listening to some of the members opposite you would think that education was chronically underfunded and that everything was going wrong. Let me just point out to those who are listening that in the next financial year $10.1 billion is allocated to Vote Education. We have as a Government progressively increased the investment right across the board and tied to that significant increases in our expectations of educational outcomes. I want to acknowledge all of those who are working in the education sector for the significant achievements that they are getting.I was particularly disappointed to hear Mr Hipkins trying to argue that somehow this Government has cut funding for early childhood education. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact in the last election campaign I remember going to meetings with a chart showing the huge increase in our investment in early childhood education over the years of this National Government. I am very proud of that and I am particularly proud that tied to the increase in funding was a particular challenge to raise engagement by Māori and Pasifika families because they were traditionally the families who were the most likely to be not engaged in early childhood education.We all know that those who have a good experience in those pre - primary school days and who are ready to learn hit school running and take off whereas the children who arrive at school having not had that basic education are at a disadvantage from the outset. All the statistics tell us that they are likely to fall further and further behind. I want to commend all those who are working in the early childhood sector for the incredible successes that they are having at the moment where we are seeing Māori and Pasifika levels of achievement and engagement in early childhood education at record levels and pretty much up there now with European Asian and other population groups. That has to be good for every one of us.At the other end of the scale another initiative that I am really excited about is the Youth Guarantee scheme. Youth Guarantee is seeing a large number of young people—teenagers who are 16 17 and now even 18 and 19-year-olds—who have previously fallen out of the education system gone through the cracks and have often been truants or engaged in activities outside school that are unsatisfactory. Now they are getting ahead with Youth Guarantee. It is a system that is working tremendously and it is seeing again a huge increase in opportunities for young people.Vote agreed to.Vote Education Review Office agreed to.Vote Arts Culture and Heritage agreed to.Vote Attorney-General agreed to.Vote Parliamentary Counsel agreed to.Vote Treaty NegotiationsHon TAU HENARE (Chairperson of the Māori Affairs Committee):I want first of all to doff my Queensland hat to the honourable Minister Finlayson who has over the last 6 years shepherded through what can only be seen as and said to be some amazing settlements some amazing negotiations by the likes of former members of this House Rick Barker and Paul Swain and others as well. I want to thank the Hon Chris Finlayson for shepherding negotiations through Cabinet and my thanks also to the select committee which has done an enormous amount of work trying to hurry things through but at such a pace that we do not forget how important it is to do that.I want to make some points. This Government has done more for Treaty settlements than any other Government. People across the way may frown and they may pull faces but that is part of being in the Opposition.Hon Judith Collins: That’s how they look.Hon TAU HENARE: Yes that is how they look. But here is this. It was started by Sir Doug Graham and an enormous amount of work was done on the first part. Labour came along and did diddly-squat. Labour did a couple of settlements. But to be able to do settlements—Sue Moroney: It set up most of the stuff that’s happening.Hon TAU HENARE: Yeah OK. Well it set up some offices—thanks very much. But when you are doing Treaty settlements you have to be one-minded and the one thing in your mind has to be justice. It has to be getting on with it. This Government has shown that we have got on with it. It was about justice. It is about justice. Hundreds of people have been through the process—Sue Moroney: It’s a bipartisan process.Hon TAU HENARE: Yeah I forgot about that—I forgot about that. It is always a bipartisan process when you are in Opposition. But thanks very much—thanks very much for your hard work madam and ladies and men of the Opposition. But the reality is if you do not have a plan nothing is going to come from it. This Minister this Government and the National Party had a plan. They stuck with it and they are sticking with it.As we speak many negotiations are still going on around the country. I am ever hopeful that Ngāti Hine can see their way through to actually working with what is in front of them. They will get their cut of the cake either way. I am sure that Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Hine along with so many others will one day benefit from the negotiations—the Treaty settlement process.Treaty settlements are not made to fix the wrongs of society; they are about justice. And when that happens iwi and people who whakapapa directly to the respective iwi can look towards the uplifting in terms of the economic and social well-being of those same people. Six years of hard work by our Minister have made his name synonymous with success in this area in the Treaty settlement area. I am glad to say that the National Government has got in behind it and has funded more settlements than ever before because it wanted to and because there was a plan—and those are the two things we need when we are looking at settlements. Some will say that it is not enough. It is never enough and we will never ever have enough money to settle some of the grievances before our nation. Finally I say to those who vote against and abstain on Treaty settlements namely New Zealand First that that is an appalling state of affairs.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations):I am sure the Committee will indulge me when I as the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations simply say how grateful I am to the excellent chair of the Māori Affairs Committee the Hon Tau Henare. He and that team in Māori affairs have done a wonderful job and I want to say to him that his best years are ahead of him and I thank him for his service to this country.I also want to acknowledge very briefly Shane Jones who has left us because this is a bipartisan effort and the contribution of Shane to Treaty settlements and the advice he has given me over the years I greatly appreciate certainly in relation to the Te Hiku Claims Settlement Bill which is being introduced to the House. I said to Kelvin Davis for whom I have enormous respect as a person and a parliamentarian that it is a pleasure to work with him and it will be a pleasure to work with him on these matters—unlike I regret to say Mr Harawira who talks big but never delivers. In fact when it came to Ngāpuhi he said to me not so long ago: “I say one thing to you and another thing to others in my family.” Well that is the way he wants to operate but at the end of the day he does not achieve very much and that is why I think that Kelvin leaves him for dead.But this is about bipartisan effort and I want to say that so much good work has been done by the chief Crown negotiators. Mr Henare was gracious enough to mention Rick Barker former Minister in here and Paul Swain who chairs the negotiating panel and does a very good job for me. I also want to mention people like John Isles and also John Wood because together they have been a formidable team and have enabled us to address a large number of matters. I must of course refer to the Office of Treaty Settlements and the very good work that it does. The proof of the pudding as they say is in the eating. Just a couple of weeks ago for example we signed agreements of principle with the Wairoa and Hastings taiwhenua of Ngāti Kahungunu. I am very busy at the present time working with Ron Mark and the team in Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa.We are making very good progress down the East Coast and what I certainly hope is that before this House rises on 31 July we will be in a position where we can sign a deed of settlement with the Whanganui River iwi. That will be a great day for this country because that is in fact 150 years of litigation that went to all the courts of our land and has been a very long time coming. As I understand it ratification is going very well and it will be a tremendous tribute to Mrs Turia to be able to sign that deed of settlement. I see Mr Borrows listening intently—and so he should because it is in his takiwā. It will be great to sign it the day after Mrs Turia says goodbye to this House after what has been an extraordinary period of service.So there is a lot of work to do. Let me emphasise that this Government never said that there was a deadline of 2014. You cannot have a deadline to resolve these hugely important matters. It was an aspirational goal. We have done our very best and the progress that has been made has been phenomenal. Take for example—Sue Moroney: An aspirational goal.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: I hear the sneering of Sue Moroney on the other side. She could not buy into anything bipartisan if she tried. But Hauraki is an example of where there are 12 individual iwi and two collective settlements and with a bit of luck and a good headwind we should be in a position I hope to initial at least 10 of those individual deeds and the two collectives before we get into the campaign season.In the spirit of bipartisanship—it is often regarded as a great weakness of mine but I try to reach out in a bipartisan way—I have to say that I do appreciate the support of the Labour Party and other parties in this House so that we could get the work done. I have nothing but contempt for New Zealand First which took a shockingly partisan approach to the Te Urewera—Tūhoe Bill when it was going through the Committee the other day. Its members were divisive. They had two fundamental problems: they were divisive and unpleasant and they were plain wrong. They did not listen to the facts as they were spelt out to them and instead—Tracey Martin: We stood up for the little guy when you railroaded that through.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON—like that demented creature over there—just yelled and screamed.Vote agreed to.Vote Social DevelopmentSUE MORONEY (Labour):It is a pleasure to rise and speak in the estimates debate on Vote Social Development. I want to start at the beginning which is around child poverty because inequality is growing in this country and New Zealanders are very clear about that. The Government members can carp and wail and moan and cry their crocodile tears about it as they do but the reality is that the vast majority of New Zealanders when asked whether inequality was growing in this country said yes it was. That is because that is what they see day in day out in their own communities and they are not going to be fooled by a Government that first of all says that inequality is not growing and secondly refuses to actually even measure child poverty.I think the country feels very let down by the Government when it comes to social development because the Government seems completely out of touch with the impact of its own policies. I say that because the Government has had some deliberate policies that have grown inequality. Take for example its tax cuts right at the height of a global recession. Who would have thought that tax cuts favouring the wealthy would be the best thing that a Government could come up with as we were heading into the midst of a global recession? None the less that is what the National Government did. Who can be surprised then that inequality is growing? The area where we see that growing inequality causes New Zealanders the greatest discomfort is when the number of children living in poverty grows in this country as it has done under this National Government.So here we are in a food-producing nation—a very wealthy society actually—that has great resources and a good level of wealth and 27 percent of our children live in poverty. Twenty-seven percent of our children—that is more than one in four. More than one in four of our children live in poverty. John Key may well be relaxed about that. He may shrug his shoulders crack a grin and crack one of his jokes but on this side of the Chamber and in the Labour Party we are not relaxed with having 27 percent of our children in this country living in poverty. We are not OK with that and we are not going to stand by and just watch that continue to happen.In terms of the estimates for Vote Social Development you would think that having 27 percent of our children in poverty would be an issue that would concern the Government and that it would have some measure—any measure at all—in its Budget to address this issue. But there was not one measure not a single measure in the estimates in the Budget to help address child poverty. There was no move to create jobs. There was no move in the estimates to increase families’ incomes. There was no move in the Government’s estimates to actually help families out in this regard. So we saw no measures to address this particular issue.On this side of the House what we have seen is a Labour Party that is prepared to lead on addressing this issue. We are not going to pretend that this issue does not exist. We are not going to put our heads in the sand. We are not going to demonstrate how out of touch we are like that Government does day in day out when it pretends that this is not going on. People out there in New Zealand see it in their communities and they know it is indeed going on.In the Labour Party we have said that we are going to do something about it. We have a Best Start payment that we have announced. This will be a policy from the incoming Labour-led Government. What that will do is ensure that all families—actually almost all families; families with up to $15000 coming into the household per year—with a newborn child will get $60 a week. That will apply to all of those families over and above when they are getting paid parental leave as well. So families will get an entitlement to paid parental leave—and in fact under the Labour Party plan they will get an extended entitlement to paid parental leave. They will get 26 weeks’ paid parental leave and then they will get the $60-a-week payment.But for low and modest-income families it is even better because that $60-a-week payment will continue until that child’s third birthday. That is a measure that will reduce child poverty. It will also give some help to those families who are really struggling on a week to week basis to make ends meet because their power costs and housing costs are going up but their wages are not going up under this Government. So that is a very practical solution to a problem that I think is a source of shame for our country. I feel ashamed that in a country with wealth of the nature that New Zealand has we allow 27 percent of our children to live in poverty. That is not OK. John Key is relaxed about it. We are not.I want to go on to talk about another area in social development. The Government seems to be very boastful about getting people off benefits. Well it would have something to boast about if people were going off benefits and into jobs but the most recent quarterly data shows that of all the people who came off benefits in the quarter ended March 2014 only 36 percent of them went off benefits into work—only 36 percent of them. In other words 64 percent of them stopped receiving a benefit but they did not get a job. I am challenging the Government to tell us what is happening with the rest of those people because this Government has actually put in laws whereby for the first time in my living history people who miss an appointment with Work and Income or for some reason cannot turn up to a seminar—the seminar might be 40 kilometres away from where they live and there is no public transport—get cut off the benefit. If they have dependent children they get their benefit cut in half. I want to know from the Minister for Social Development what is happening to those thousands of New Zealanders who are suffering that fate because that is going to be a big driver of increasing child poverty in this country.What I do know is that since the welfare reforms have come into being 4328 people as at the end of March 2014 had failed these obligations and therefore ended up with no income—no income whatsoever—for 13 weeks. I think the Minister for Social Development owes the country an explanation about what is happening to those people. Where are they going? How are they paying the rent? How are they paying their power bills? Where are they living? How are they eating? What is happening to those people who suddenly have no income no income at all for 13 weeks and perhaps longer?The Minister for Social Development when I asked her about this at the Social Services Committee said she did not want to know. She said that people were not required to tell her and that she had no interest in knowing. I think that is an appalling indictment on a Minister who calls herself the Minister for Social Development. The National Government has changed those laws and so it has a responsibility to know what is happening to those people. This is another area that is driving inequality in our country.The figures that I just quoted do not even tell us the number of people who have children and who have had their benefits halved under these measures. We do not know yet what that number is but I am very concerned about that. The other figure that I am concerned about is the 64 percent increase between September 2013 and March 2014 in the number of people who came off a benefit because they went to Australia. Actually I do not know that they went to Australia but I do know that they went overseas. They left New Zealand. They gave up looking for jobs here in droves and they cancelled their benefits because they were going to live somewhere else. Probably they have gone to Australia to look for work and there has been a 64 percent increase in the number doing that.Hon CHESTER BORROWS (Associate Minister for Social Development):It is my pleasure to take a call in the Appropriation (2014/15 Estimates) Bill debate in respect of social welfare. I would like to start by congratulating my friend and colleague the Hon Paula Bennett on the wonderful work that she has done in her 6-year tenure as the Minister for Social Development. It is interesting to look back over previous Ministers and see the imprint that they have left on our social welfare system and I am sure that with hindsight people will say that Paula Bennett has made a significant impact in the social sector. It is interesting also to note—to acknowledge I guess rather than note—that there is always a bit of a scrap between left and right in the way you do social welfare. The left will always say that those of us on the right are mean and stingy and look after only our rich mates. We will say that those on the left only ever patronise the poor and do their very best to either ignore them or leave them poor so that they have got a reason to keep on voting for a socialist Government.I want to talk about a couple of key changes that we made. [Interruption] I will give the member calling out just now a quick indication. I was in charge of a piece of legislation. It was the welfare fraud bill. I offered the opportunity for people to come and to sit in my office and talk about exactly this piece of legislation obviously with a view to be able to gain their support as it came before the House. Jan Logie took advantage of that. Tracey Martin took advantage of that. Su’a William Sio took advantage of that but Sue Moroney’s opportunity to come coincided with the Melbourne Cup. She never showed and has never been back to hear about it. We have just heard a speech on how Labour is the only lot who care and apparently we on the right side of the Chamber do not give a stuff. But there are a couple of initiatives that I would really like to be able to just elucidate for those people who are listening.One of them is around the youth payment. When Labour was in Government the independent youth benefit was money that was handed to those people under 18 who could not get the dole and who for some reason could not live at home either because they would not live under the rules of house as they existed at the time or because home was a dangerous place and it was not good for them to live there. In any event they were given a sum of money and that was it. Under this Government on the initiative of the Hon Paula Bennett those people on the youth payment now get their board paid for them. They get a card with their allowance on that and they get some discretionary spending. At $6000 a head they get a budget mentor to walk alongside them show them how to spend their money how to save and where to put their energies in order to have a better life. What we know is that under the system that Labour continued with about 100 percent of young people on the independent youth benefit who turned 18 went straight on to the dole. What we know now is that only 45 percent of young people turning 18 and going from the youth payment go on to the dole because they are going into education or they are going into work or they are going into training and that is a real plus.Paula Bennett also instituted a similar system for solo mothers under the age of 20; a similar system where they get their board or rent paid and their electricity paid. They get their benefit on a card. They have some discretionary income with the opportunity to be able to get some more discretionary income by attending up to three courses—they are able to get an extra allowance for each course as they spend it. That allows them to spend that money as they wish and so they should because good behaviour should be rewarded. Also at $6000 a pop they get a budget mentor who assists them in learning how to live in learning how to budget in learning how to care for their children. That is the encouragement.Under the Labour Government they got the benefit thrown at them and they walked away; the Government took no more skin in the game. What we know is that when we started this policy there were 4300 solo mums under 20 receiving that benefit. Now 2 years later we know that there are 2600 of those mothers. They are still having their babies so it is not the circumstance of pregnancy or a lack of relationship that finds them on a benefit. What we do know is that this Government is doing a heck of a lot for those people who otherwise could easily make up the statistics of children living in poverty that the previous speaker was speaking about. I applaud the Minister for that.I would also like to touch on a number of other things that we are doing within the social sector and the results that we are having. I talked earlier about the initiative around welfare fraud. What we have found over many many years is that women living on the domestic purposes benefit are frequently the prey of men who snuggle up next to them who provide some comfort for them who invariably take their benefit from them and use it for other means rather than for the support of the children; or they live like a leech in a relationship with these women and carry on working and because of that relationship the domestic purposes beneficiary the mum is in breach. The law has only ever attached criminal responsibility and the debt to the beneficiary the mum. How fair can that be? When a relationship goes on for say a number of years what we find is that of those people who are found to be committing benefit fraud the highest dollar value is attached to people on the domestic purposes benefit. These blokes if they do nothing to perpetuate the fraud by making a false statement say to the police or to social welfare walk away scot-free.Under this Government what we set about doing then was to change the law to read that if somebody has benefited from living on the proceeds of a benefit then they will carry not only the criminal responsibility for that act but also the debt. Now we have an opportunity to charge the male—usually—who was living on the proceeds of benefit fraud and who knew should have known or was reckless as to whether their partner was a beneficiary. Now they will be prosecuted and will carry the same criminal responsibility as—it is usually the woman—the beneficiary partner. Also we will be able to recover the debt—not half the debt; we can recover up to the whole debt from that male partner. How on earth can a male living in a household like that where he is not paying any rent not paying any power not contributing to the groceries or anything else but using that money for his own purposes or for both their purposes be able to walk away scot-free? One of the things that was raised at that time of course was about a woman in a violent relationship. If she is being extorted to live in this relationship or to continue applying for a benefit would this change in the law then put her under a legal encumbrance? The answer is no because the courts have found that a woman living in a battered-woman relationship is not living in a relationship in the nature of marriage so would not be held liable for that offence. That is a really important point to note.Members on the other side of the House drew analogies between welfare fraud and tax evasion. They said that the Government was putting far too much emphasis on welfare dependency and none on those who were avoiding paying their taxes. The point that they overlook is that in a succession of three zero Budgets this Government put aside $200 million for efforts to uncover tax evasion and to get that money in. It has easily paid for itself. We are proud of the attributes of the Inland Revenue Department for doing exactly that. Another thing that we have done in this particular space is to share information with the Inland Revenue Department so that we can find out for instance those people who are registered on the dole the domestic purposes benefit the sickness benefit or the invalid’s benefit and are also working and paying tax. The Inland Revenue Department advises the Ministry of Social Development of those people who it believes are defrauding the taxpayer through this mechanism. It is interesting to note that since we started 6300 people have gone off a benefit because they were already in work and they had been receiving illegal overpayments.JAN LOGIE (Green):The Green Party loves New Zealand which is why we want a cleaner smarter and fairer New Zealand and a Ministry of Social Development. The Green Party and its MPs are absolutely passionate about making New Zealand a great place to grow up in for all of our children. When one in four children live in poverty in this country something is going seriously wrong. The Greens have been calling for action on child poverty since 1999. We will keep on calling for action and proposing solutions until we eliminate the problem. But this is not about us; this is about New Zealand.Over the last 3 years along with most other New Zealanders in the country we have been listening to the Children’s Commissioner academics doctors community advocates parents and children themselves asking us to put children first. We have been watching the documentaries and the news programmes along with the rest of the country and reading the reports from the Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty the thousands of submissions on the green paper the white paper and the Vulnerable Children Bill as well as the all too numerous media stories and opinion pieces calling for us in this House to address inequality and end child poverty. New Zealand we will continue to listen and carry your voices for our children into this place until we create a country where every child thrives.With the rest of the country we have been seeing the pictures of empty school lunchboxes of mouldy houses of children without shoes or raincoats. We have read recently about the young mother and her newborn baby who had to live in a car for two days after they were discharged from hospital because there was no housing available for them. Like the rest of the country I assume we have fumed at and at times cried over the fact that more than one child a week is dying of poverty-related illness in this country that we love. At times the stories feel endless and heart-breaking. How much more it must feel like that for those who are living through it. The cruelty is real. But it is not the cruelty of an individual; it is the cruelty of a Government that has chosen to prioritise token efforts over addressing the real problems of poverty-level benefits low wages and substandard housing.Of course we are being told that the Government is investing in our people helping them into work. Well last week I met with some students and tutors on a Work and Income mandated course to find out how that was going for them. The tutor talked to me about her concern that a mother on her course had had her benefit cut in half for missing 3 days of the course when it turned out that she had to go with her baby to hospital after her baby had had a seizure and she did not have enough money on her phone to be able to inform anyone of that fact. So their income had been cut in half while they were stuck in hospital. We heard from a student about how they had previously had their benefit sanctioned entirely for missing an appointment because their public transport was running late.This is happening now in our country and the sheer reality of being poor means that there are times when some people cannot afford even to meet the expectations of Work and Income to be able to get their income support. Everyone in that room of about 20 students and their tutor talked about not being able to afford to heat their house or put proper food on their table. The young ones even talked about not being able to afford the $40 to buy a blanket to compensate for the lack of heating in their house. So much for a wraparound service so much for supporting people and so much for investment!It does not have to be this way. It is not even about throwing money at the problem and leaving people stuck in inequality as this Government suggests we want to do. Even at the most basic level it is actually about ensuring people get access to their legal entitlements. Surely at the absolute minimum that is the job of this Government. Yet when we have asked the Minister for Social Development in this House how she explains the increasing number of stories that we are hearing from the community of people being denied their legal entitlements her response was: “For every one story you give me I can give you 10 of people who are getting the entitlements they are eligible for.”Well the basic point is that everyone is entitled to those services and it is this Government’s job to ensure that people are able to get enough money to put food on the table. That is what we consider a social security system. It is not in any way OK to say: “Well these 10 people are getting it sorry about those ones.” That is not doing your job. That is not providing even the bare minimum of what this country has agreed on let alone what is I believe a building consensus from academics from community organisations and from people working across our health sector our education sector and our community sector who are all saying that there needs to be more. There needs to be a living income for these families and particularly for our children because we know that if we do not invest in those early years of a child’s life then we are robbing them of their potential. That is something that every single person in this country will have to bear the consequences of.I really do want to speak just a little bit around the perception that this is too expensive to do. This is not an issue just about this Government and these estimates; it is about a framework that was put in place previously that has been consciously continued by this Government. There has been a decision to prioritise getting these families into work as the way out of poverty for these families. I think that we have missed the fact of the interaction between work and income support—that there is an interaction between those two things. I would like to point out that the Government is currently spending more on family in-work tax credits for families working 20 hours a week than what it is spending on the income support system. The analysis by the Child Poverty Action Group showed up that somebody coming off the DPB into paid work for 20 hours a week would be getting on top of their income a minimum family tax credit of $22000 a year plus the in-work tax credit of $3000 a year. So that is over $25000 a year for that family that is working less than 20 hours a week. What they would get on the DPB would be $15000. So the Government is paying a lot more for that group.The problem with that is—because it is great for people to be able to work if that is appropriate for their family and they are still able to look after their children—that this is a system that creates a disincentive for those employers to pay anything more than the minimum wage. On the minimum wage somebody who is working the 20 hours a week would have to work an additional 17 hours before being any better off financially. What employer is going to pay somebody above the minimum wage if it is not going to give them anything more in the hand? Basically those employers are not going to do that. That does not affect just that one person stuck on the minimum wage; it affects all other workers in New Zealand who are trying to get better conditions. So when the Government tells us that it is all about work being the pathway out of poverty actually what this is doing is entrenching people into poverty. When the Government took away the training incentive allowance for parents to be able to do higher-level study to be able to get a chance of getting into that higher-wage bracket of work we saw the lie of it.CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour):I looked at the website of the Ministry of Social Development and it said that the ministry is there to help people be successful in their lives. It said that the ministry’s role is to help New Zealanders to be safe strong and independent. My colleague Sue Moroney—and Jan Logie has also traversed some of this territory—talked about how inequality and poverty are denying many New Zealanders the opportunity to be successful in their lives the core aim of the Ministry of Social Development.I want to talk about another issue that limits the ability of people in this country to be successful in their lives—for them to be safe strong and independent—and those are issues to do with domestic and sexual violence. Issues of sexual and domestic violence deny many people the opportunity to be successful in their lives. There are huge costs associated with that violence and there are barriers that are then put in the way of people actually going about living their lives. Obviously in extreme circumstances people lose their lives so they cannot continue to go on and be successful in their lives. We have a serious problem in this country. We have a serious problem with the level of violence that we see against our people particularly women and children. I just thought it would be worth noting some of those things.Last week we had the independent Family Violence Death Review Committee report come out. It looked at deaths between 2009 and 2012—so over a 3-year period—and 47 percent of those deaths were family violence deaths. In nearly all of those circumstances someone was killed by their partner and there was a known history of abuse. Thirty-seven children died—37 of our children died—and 77 children were present when a parent or a sibling died in their home. These people are not going to be able to live successful lives. Their lives have been cut short by other people’s violence.Also the chair of that committee said that—and I think this is just so chilling—the reviews she read that were the most difficult for her to read were the ones where a woman is clearly fighting for her life: “She sees that she is going to die and she is … actively taking every action she possibly can to save her life. She’s contacting the police she’s telling landlords she’s telling neighbours she’s telling friends … and we are not providing her with effective help.” That is just absolutely chilling. And it is not just domestic violence; one in three women in this country experience intimate partner violence sexual or domestic violence during the course of their lifetime—one in three. These figures are just horrendous.So I think we need to be seriously looking at what is happening here and what should be done. As well as the Family Violence Death Review Committee report last week the week before that I think it was we had the first of the Glenn Inquiry reports—500 interviews with people who have lived in violent situations. There is the loss of life—I have talked about that—but there are also other costs. There is the loss of people’s potential. There is the loss of potential for a child one of those 77 children who has witnessed a sibling or a parent being killed by somebody else they potentially love another member of their family and the impact that that has on that child.There is the loss of their potential and the loss of opportunity for them to go on and live in this country to their full potential rather than in fact going all too commonly into a situation where a cycle of abuse is created. That is a real cost to us as well. For some it is even a loss of freedom—the freedom to go about their life to engage with whom they want to and to go and do their job or whatever. These are costs. These are real costs for individuals. Some of them are as I said intergenerational. I have been on the Social Services Committee and have listened to people who have come and talked to us. Melissa Lee has done a very good job of chairing that committee. This violence is preventable. This violence is preventable and the Government has not done enough.MELISSA LEE (Chairperson of the Social Services Committee):Following Carol Beaumont’s speech I would like to commend her for her passion in her speech regarding the domestic violence situation in this country and the violence that our children are facing. I thank the member for participating in the inquiry that the Social Services Committee has been undertaking.I am proud to stand on this side of the Chamber as a member of the National-led Government under the fantastic leadership of our Prime Minister John Key. We are a strong united caucus behind a strong leader and we have a Government that has led the country from recession to sustained growth. We have an economy that has grown by 3.8 percent in the year to the end of March the third-highest among the world’s developed economies. It is forecast to reach 4 percent next year which is a far cry from the recession we inherited back in 2008.I was sitting here listening to members opposite talking about some of the social services and social welfare policies and I was sort of wondering whether we were living in the same country or not because only a net 250 people moved to Australia in May this year which is the lowest since the data started in 1996. Under Labour 3000 New Zealanders a month crossed the Tasman. That was a lot of Kiwis leaving our shores. In the past year alone there were more jobs that were created and if we stick to the Government’s programme the average full-time wage is expected to rise to something like $62000 or $63000 which is up by about $8000 in the next 4 years. This follows a $3000 increase in the average wage over the past 3 years.As the economy grows families will benefit from more jobs and higher wages and we are making sure that families will also be among the first to benefit from the extra Government spending because family is very important. As members opposite have also said families are the core of our nation. Children are the core of our nation. I am very proud to say that in this Budget we are investing $500 million in a package of practical support for young families and the vulnerable children who are most in need. There is $33.4 million extra to support vulnerable children with eight new children’s teams to work with at-risk children and families and to support children in care.I know that some members talked about having to fix poverty but child abuse happens right across society. It does not happen just in poor families; it happens everywhere. So poverty is not the reason that children are abused. Abuse happened simply because they were being abused by abusers. Some children happen to have a lower socio-economic status and some a higher one. It is right across the board and I am appalled that members opposite keep on talking about poverty being the reason for it.Earlier in a different speech—when we were talking about the Vulnerable Children Bill—I said that poverty cannot be a reason for abusing children. Nothing can be a reason or an excuse to abuse children. It is just abusers abusing children full stop. There is no tolerance for that. I know Carol Beaumont talked about the abuse level. I cannot believe that she would actually give poverty as an excuse for children being abused in this country.Carol Beaumont: It’s not an excuse but it is a fact.MELISSA LEE: Your members have actually said that it was an explanation; it was an excuse. The Government is taking its responsibility to support families very seriously. We are putting millions of dollars into child protection and services for vulnerable children and their families.The other thing that I am very very pleased about in the work that Paula Bennett has done—and I would like to applaud the Ministers in the social welfare sector: both the Hon Paula Bennett and Chester Borrows. One of the things I am most proud of as a member personally is the reduction in teen pregnancies that we have seen. From the policies that we have put through in this Government we have seen lower rates of teenagers getting pregnant. I am very positive for the young girls. For them they will have a future in education. I am not saying that they would make terrible parents but they will now have options. I think that is a fantastic record. There is $155.7 million more for early childhood education which has to be celebrated.BRENDAN HORAN (Independent):I take a call on Vote Social Development. Recognising that our country’s greatest strength is our people I draw your attention to the more than 600000 New Zealanders over the age of 65—almost 15 percent of our population and rapidly growing. Someone once said to judge a society on how it treats its most vulnerable. By that standard New Zealand is failing its seniors.Although everyone wants to believe that all New Zealanders are guaranteed security in retirement and that the needs of seniors are well catered for the reality could not be more different. The inconvenient truth of the matter is that many seniors live in squalor and despair feel they are a burden on their families and tend to withdraw from society rather than seek help. The consequences are social isolation malnourishment and at the extreme end suicide. When we talk about suicide we often refer to the high rate of young people taking their lives but the statistics paint an equally disturbing picture for our seniors. Last year the Chief Coroner warned that New Zealand men aged 85 or older committed suicide at a rate of 31 per 100000. Words cannot convey the deep sense of tragedy that is inherent in those figures.So what can we do about it? First let us change the culture. Let us challenge the stereotypes and the prejudices. Older New Zealanders deserve the love and respect of society as a whole. We should all embrace the seniors in our lives be they family members neighbours or friends. These people built our country. They have worked hard paid taxes raised children and grandchildren and enriched our society in so many ways.Second we need public policy that reflects this—policy that recognises and values the contributions that our seniors have made and policy that encourages seniors to remain active participants in our society. Life does not end at retirement. Crucially we must put an end to political parties using seniors as a political football.We in the New Zealand Independent Coalition expect cross-party consensus on superannuation and senior care policy. We are fed up with our seniors being taken for granted by cynical political leaders who have used them only as votes. The New Zealand Independent Coalition takes seniors’ concerns seriously and is prepared to walk the talk. Action is what matters. Over the years there has been no significant increase in the amount of money in the pockets of older people and that must change. How can we expect seniors to live on $276 per week? Many are eating every other day cannot afford to go to the doctor have not had any new clothes in years and holidays are a thing of the past.We are told by Government officials that reasonable living requires $46000 for a single person. A senior living on New Zealand superannuation is expected to live on under $22000 a year gross. The small things in life are often the ones that bring the most joy but many are struggling to afford even those—for example pets. Pets serve as an important source of social and emotional support and yet they are a joy that is denied for many elderly who simply cannot afford to pay the vet bills or for the food. The New Zealand Independent Coalition will adopt a policy of vet subsidies for seniors. If we are serious about improving the quality of life for senior New Zealanders then this is a small but powerful gesture towards doing just that.We hear the continual cry that New Zealand cannot afford to go any higher in payments to older people. Those parties degrade our seniors further by stating that they are a burden that has to be carried and force them to plead for help from Work and Income. This intolerable situation cannot be allowed to continue. The New Zealand Independent Coalition will pursue the implementation of a financial transaction tax similar to that which has been adopted by 11 countries in the European Union led by France and Germany. Revenue from a financial transaction tax of just 0.1 percent would collect over $6 billion a year from the transactions through the New Zealand banking system and $3.5 billion in extra revenue from New Zealand’s foreign exchange system.According to a Reserve Bank survey released today New Zealand’s foreign exchange market handled an average US$12.4 billion per day in April 2013 which is currently not taxed a single cent. A financial transaction tax on these traders would produce a significant source of funding that would not only support a living pension and living wage but—[Bell rung] Mr Chair?The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The member has been allocated one speech in this debate and that speech has now taken place. The member does not get any more calls unless he can negotiate with another party. At this stage I am calling Alfred Ngaro.ALFRED NGARO (National):It is an honour to take a call in this estimates debate around social development. The best description I have been given about the election period is that it is an opportunity to bring out the score card. In other words you go out to the communities in our cities and in our urban and rural parts up and down the country and really it is a chance to actually show the nation what it is that we have been doing. We know that New Zealanders are looking for a Government that they can trust that keeps its promises and that works together with New Zealanders to make a difference in their communities.So for all the talk and all the rhetoric that there is and for all of the people who are inflating the stories around the hardship and the difficulties that we know are there in our communities when it comes down to it for all of the talk we need to actually get down to the action. What is it that we have done as a Government to care for those who are vulnerable who need our support?I just want to go back to one point. We have often been told that we are beneficiary bashing and that we do not care for those in need. We provide social obligations for those who are receiving a benefit so they can return to work. I just want to go back to the Social Security Act 1964—initiated in 1938 and reformed in 1964. Under section 1B of the principles of the Act it states: “(a) work in paid employment offers the best opportunity for people to achieve social and economic well-being: [and] (b) the priority for people of working age should be to find and retain work:”—Dr David Clark: Where are the jobs?ALFRED NGARO: And Mr Clark it says: “(c) people … should be assisted to prepare for work in the future and develop employment-focused skills:”.This is really clear about the fact that we know that people who can work should work. This is about social obligations. These welfare reforms that we have had have not gone away from the key principles—yes and they were established in 1964. In fact in 1938 Michael Joseph Savage and others set up these reforms. They were about caring for people. Here is what it says: work provides the best opportunities. That is what we have done. So when we talk about social obligations those who can work should work. It is really simple. Most New Zealanders get it right? Those opportunities are there.Dr David Clark: Where are the jobs? When will you get back to Labour levels of employment?ALFRED NGARO: Mr Clark keeps on going on about the jobs. In fact he keeps banging on around that. The problem is he actually does not want to hear the statistics and the facts. I am going to give Mr Clark a few statistics so he can go away. I have a few little takeaway points for you Mr Clark and here they are: an extra 84000 jobs were created in the year to March and Treasury forecasts 172000 being created over 4½ years. There you go—84000 jobs. The cost of living increases are low and inflation was just 1.5 percent—Mr Clark will get this—in the year to March well below average weekly wage increases of 3.2 percent. So what we are saying to Mr Clark to others and most important to the Kiwis who are out there listening is that this is a Government that has delivered. When it needed to do the things that are important to care for the nation that is what it has done. Average wage increases—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to report progress.Progress reported.Report adopted.