Curran Clare: Address in ReplyText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Address in Reply[Sitting date: 29 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:396. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South):There has been a bit of a love fest in terms of all of the congratulations for the Speakers over the last few days and last week. I know I have already extended my warm congratulations to you Mr Deputy Speaker. I have not had the chance yet to extend my warm congratulations to the Assistant Speakers especially the Hon Trevor Mallard and when I do it will be with some trepidation.It has been great listening to the maiden speeches that I have managed to hear in the last couple of weeks. It is a time when you do get to go beneath the rhetoric and really learn about the new people who have come into this House. You see them looking starry-eyed in the Chamber and you know that that is going to wear off quite soon. I really do want to congratulate my three new colleagues on the Labour side and may that novelty not wear off too quickly.I want to say thank you tonight to the people of Dunedin South the people who are listening tonight for electing me for the third time. I especially want to thank my campaign team and in particular Helen Lobb who is a treasure and my right-hand woman. Dunedin pushed against the tide in this election. I want to acknowledge my Dunedin North colleague David Clark. Dunedin North and Dunedin South worked together. We ran a strong local campaign on local issues such as keeping Invermay out near Mosgiel our strong agricultural research facility rebuilding Dunedin Hospital and reopening part of the Hillside Workshops and giving Dunedin some hope.What we did see though even though we did not win the election were two popular MPs who constantly stick up for their communities and constituents get resoundingly re-elected. I also want to congratulate Michael Woodhouse on being re-elected as a list MP and being back in this House. But what we did not see was the local National list MP strengthen his position in Dunedin. While he is busy clambering his way up the greasy pole inside the National Party his own city lies neglected and dismissed by his Government—his own city. And much of regional New Zealand lies neglected by this Government.In Dunedin we have an old leaky hospital. We have a prime agricultural research facility that is being disbanded and shifted and not for reasons that make sense because much research and intellectual capital is actually going to be lost as a result of this decision. We have a railway workshop that could have been refitted. Part of it could have been refitted to build capacity for short-run production of rail wagons. We still need 3000 rail wagons to be built in this country and they should not be being built with second-rate steel. They should be being built for New Zealand conditions with New Zealand labour which contributes to the New Zealand economy. These are the wagons that were manufactured in New Zealand 30 40 and 50 years ago and have only just reached their end date.That is quality and that is what we need in this country. We needed something that was going to give hope back to our city. Unfortunately we have not got that. We have got a city that continues to bleed manufacturing jobs. The latest are the 30 workers at Donaghys Industries rope makers which is a company that has adapted to the changing world. It provided a lot of the rope for the America’s Cup and it has invested in research and development. That company has lost 30 jobs but they were told not to say anything until after the election. In fact they had to sign secrecy agreements because it would have been bad news for the Government. Staff were told to keep their redundancies quiet until after the election and that is just a damn shame and it is outrageous that it has happened.We have a city where many reported crimes are not being responded to. Perhaps they are not even being recorded. There are people who have been made redundant who are faced with the humiliating experiences with Work and Income—spending hours on the phone just to get an appointment. This is the ongoing experience in our city.Dunedin has such great strengths: its university its medical school its dental school education tourism and an extraordinary natural environment and cultural environment. But no one except perhaps Michael Woodhouse and Steven Joyce believes that Dunedin’s economy is actually thriving. It is a battler of a city but it has taken some hard knocks and there is no sign that this Government is going to turn this round.One of our biggest challenges is urban renewal. The Harbourside area which has a population of around 10000 is facing a severe issue. It is being assessed as one of the most vulnerable areas in this country to sea-level rise in the medium to long term. The estimation is that there will be a 0.3 metre rise by 2040. That is not that far away. This is a huge challenge. We have got three housing Ministers in the House tonight. There is a lot of social housing; this is one of the poorest parts of the country. This issue is bigger than a local government issue it is bigger than just a city issue it is an issue where central government needs to get involved.The Labour Party committed to urban renewal and to urban renewal in this area and said that it would make this a priority. Instead we have a new Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety whose first job has been to push through the draconian employment laws that are going to remove tea breaks erode collective bargaining and push thousands and thousands of working people towards more insecure work and precarious circumstances.This is at a time when John Key tells us that he wants to make us more secure by likely committing New Zealand to an unwinnable never-ending war in Syria and Iraq. What the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria stands for and what it does is appalling. We all agree with that. But let us not kid ourselves about John Key’s plan which is as Annette King said in her Address in Reply speech to use fear as a weapon. Labour will play a responsible role in contributing to the debate on security measures provided that there is a genuine consultation process and that the response to any threat is evidence-based and proportionate.The themes of this Government have been to protect their corporate mates and to shift the blame for anything difficult on to someone else whether it is low wages no growth child poverty and now housing. The previous speaker touched on this issue: there is a crisis in our democracy in New Zealand whether it is through dirty politics played out in this House and in the Prime Minister’s office or in the deeply ugly co-dependency relationship between the Prime Minister and the gutter blogosphere. We see it in the draconian security laws passed last year and in more of them to come in order for John Key to look good when he hangs out with the bigger guys at APEC next month.There is more security legislation coming that will erode New Zealanders’ privacy rights. Meanwhile the state of our own cyber-security across Government is a shambles leaving us highly vulnerable. I will certainly have more to say about that in the coming weeks—the lack of protection for whistle-blowers the abuse of the Official Information Act and the deliberate across-Government strategy to delay and withhold public-interest information.This time last year I requested information under the Official Information Act from every Minister and ministry department and agency on the adequacy of responses to the Official Information Act and it was like extracting blood from a stone. Now we know why as the Prime Minister himself does not think it is always in the Government’s best interests to release information until the last possible minute. If all of this does not indicate a sickness at the heart of our democratic system I do not know what does.I just want to finish on one thought. Like most Western democracies New Zealand faces increasing voter cynicism and apathy and I am just going to finish by referring to a survey of 2000 people that was done in the UK who were asked whether politics was dominated by self-seeking politicians protecting the interests of the already rich and powerful in our society. There were 72 percent who agreed and 9 percent disagreed. The largest proportion strongly agreed at 42 percent. Half of Britain thinks that politics in their country does not serve their interests. This is our challenge. The Labour Party understands that. The Labour Party is taking this seriously. This is an issue for the whole of our country and the whole of our Parliament.