Edmonds BarbaraHon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Talofa lava Mr Speaker. Malo le soifua maua malo ma le lagi e mama. Can I congratulate you first Mr Assistant Speaker O'Connor on your appointment as an Assistant Speaker. You served us well under the previous Government and were very fair in your rulings. But also I really want to congratulate you on your win in Ōhāriu. That was a well-fought campaign and I know the people of Ōhāriu have absolutely acknowledged and appreciated your contribution in the bowling clubs in the different RSAs and in the markets every Sunday. So congratulations Mr Assistant Speaker.I also open with my congratulations to the Rt Hon Gerry Brownlee. My favourite part of being an MP in the last three years was watching the Rt Hon Gerry Brownlee interject with a lot of humour from this side of the Chamber when he was here. So I really hope that the Speaker will take it in mind to allow our interjections to bear with humour as well—and also to the Deputy Speaker and to the Assistant Speaker Barbara Kuriger and Maureen Pugh.I want to thank the people of Mana for re-electing me as your member of Parliament. A little over three years ago I gave my first speech in this House and I gave my commitment to my electorate of Mana to be a tenacious empathetic and strong advocate. That will continue in Opposition. To the new members of Parliament welcome. This is a place of privilege where there have been more All Blacks than parliamentarians. I also wanted to especially acknowledge two of my new colleagues Cushla Tangaere-Manuel the MP for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti whose Push for Cush" campaign saw her take the seat emphatically. I also want to acknowledge my good friend Reuben Davidson the MP for Christchurch East. We saw you take the seat from our very good friend the Hon Poto Williams and we know you will take care of that electorate. For many of you in the House who don't know Reuben is an acclaimed award-winning TV producer—oh I'm looking forward to the goods that you're going to produce here my brother.I also wanted to just acknowledge two other MPs who are not necessarily from my party but whom I have had some history with. To Kahurangi Carter she is one of our ex-Carmel girls which is a school on Auckland's North Shore in Milford. It's a strong school and I'm really proud to have you my Carmelite sister here with me in the House. We are the first two MPs from that formidable school so welcome.I also want to acknowledge surprisingly Andy Foster who was a former Mayor of Wellington City who took the surprise decision not to run for any of the Wellington City electorates but actually came up north to Mana to try and give me a go. So I just want to acknowledge that and thank you for being a respectful candidate on the campaign and sorry you didn't get that many votes instead.I also wanted to acknowledge two people who have now retired from this House: the Hon Andrew Little who has done remarkable work over his time as a Minister but also in his very courageous and brave act in 2017 to allow the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern come through. We thank you Andrew for your decision to allow the depth of the caucus come through—so thank you very much for that Andrew—and I also wanted to really quickly actually acknowledge the Hon Michael Woodhouse. My first years here in the Beehive were actually spent working for the Hon Michael Woodhouse. I know he has not been able to give his valedictory speech but I wanted to acknowledge him here today. In my maiden speech I spoke of different love stories that were weaved throughout my name and they say in this place that new Governments get a somewhat of a honeymoon period when they get elected in. If anything over the last few weeks it's a story to tell: if that was a honeymoon I wonder what this marriage is going to be like. From a leak of a Cabinet paper from someone on the other side to protests on your very first day I suspect and I think many other people in this House suspect that this marriage is going to end in divorce.I also want to turn to the Speech from the Throne. As I was sitting there—and this is probably from my family experience of holding a poker face; we did many poker nights when I was growing up as a child—my poker face wasn't as strong as Chlöe Swarbrick's poker face but I waited in anticipation for a vision for some inspiration. I waited for the principles and the values on which this new Government was going to govern. I waited for a "p"—I waited for a "Pacific"—and I waited and I waited for that "p". The only thing I heard was "pseudoephedrine" and that was the vision that was lacking from that Speech from the Throne. Then I thought "OK maybe give the Prime Minister another chance. You know he is new at this."—I'm really good about giving fair chances. But when we came into the House all I heard was "Ring-ring ring-ring. Hi it's 2008. We're calling—we would like our Speech from the Throne back please." and that's what we heard. We heard time and time again a repetition from a 2008 Speech from the Throne. It was absolutely devoid of vision. There was no inspiration and that's why it's so quiet on that side of the House because it's true and you know it's true. Where was "This is our vision for New Zealand. This is what we're going to do to build it back better." as they say? No they've spent most of the time on that side of the House basically trying to personally attack us—basically they just spent it on us. That is one lesson that you should learn as a Government: you need to focus and look at yourself and figure out the principles and the values on which you are going to fight for this country.When I thought about how there was division and it was devoid of "Pacific" it's because of a very simple reason: there is no Pacific representation in the Government. It is here on this side of the House. I see the representation here and it's important there is representation because if there was a Pacific person on that side of the House perhaps when they were reviewing the Speech from the Throne on behalf of their Prime Minister's office they would have said "By the way you're missing something for Pacific."I've sort of thought really hard and I thought "I'm waiting I'm waiting." because I thought that maybe it'll be in the foreign affairs policy—nope there was nothing there. Even when the Rt Hon Winston Peters was the Minister of Foreign Affairs under our Government in 2017 there was a focus on Pacific—on the Pacific reset—because we knew how important the Pacific would be to our geopolitical outcomes here in Aotearoa New Zealand. So again it was devoid of vision devoid of aspiration and devoid of inspiration and what I've seen over the last few weeks is basically a Government scrambling to pay for its promises—a Government that one clearly didn't read the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update (PREFU) and didn't actually have the competency or the ability to read and see what was in it to interpret it or to actually understand what the difference between time-limited funding and baseline funding is. That's important because these are the people who are supposed to be looking after this country but they can't even read the PREFU. Everyone else could read the PREFU but perhaps the Minister of Finance will now have a strong Treasury bench that might be able to help her out—maybe.But then the other factor that I was concerned about was the smoke-free policy. Is that—yes—trying to scramble to find money to find $800000 from taking away te reo bonuses and trying to find money through smoke-free? I just thought again this is where the lack of representation fails us because who are the people who are most affected by those rules? Who will actually most benefit by keeping those smoke-free rules in? It is Pacific and it is Māori people. But again the lack of representation concerns me and it concerns a lot of people out there and then what do we get? The international view of this new Government in the last couple of weeks has been one getting rid of world-leading smoke-free rules—that's the representation. Every single one of you on that side of the House when you say yes to that bill going through repealing it that is what you're saying to the world—it's that we're no longer world-leading.The second thing that the international view of New Zealand will probably be now because of this Government is Fossil of the Day. Hon Kieran McAnulty: Here's here—oh he's gone now.Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: No he's gone now. Fossil of the Day—this is the representation you are leaving with for the world for the first few—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Just for the sake of new members we don't comment on the fact that members are not in the House.Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: We didn't refer to a specific member but nevertheless. There was no one—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): We don't answer the Speaker back either.Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: There no was reference at all to what the vision is what the aspiration is; instead just wait. Just wait until the rest of the world finds out that we are peeling back some of our world-leading gun reforms. Then what will the world say to us? That we are not world-leading in being smoke-free that we are the Fossils of the Day and that we're peeling back our gun law reforms. Shame on you. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Dan Bidois—welcome back Mr Bidois."