Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Labour): The first political event of the year that is in the public eye is generally Rātana. I have got a transcript here of what Bill English said to the public of New Zealand through Rātana. He said—and I am quoting his exact words—we've reached the limits of what Government can do". I am going to repeat that: "we've reached the limits of what Government can do".That is the ambition of this Prime Minister in respect of housing. We have the lowest rate of homeownership in New Zealand since 1951 and yet Prime Minister English says "we've reached the limits of what Government can do" for you. We have got rents going up at higher rates than wages but Bill English says: "we've reached the limits of what Government can do". We have got homelessness rates in New Zealand that are worse than we have ever seen in total terms and they are probably the worst that they have been in terms of people living in deprived housing situations since the Great Depression in the 1920s and early 1930s but we have got the Prime Minister saying: "we've reached the limits of what Government can do". Indeed we have got a Prime Minister who would not take the necessary decisions in respect of his good friend Nick Smith—rather than cure the problem he did not actually appoint a Minister for housing.We have got the Minister of Finance absolutely embarrassing himself in the House today on a housing question. It was highlighted by the ACT Party how Minister Joyce was abusing statistics by pretending that we have got the highest level of housebuilding activity ever. That is what he said in answer to a primary patsy question put up by a National Party member only to have to accept the proposition from David Seymour that the number of houses being built per capita is lower than it was 10 years ago and far lower than it was 40 years ago. It is no wonder that the homelessness problem and the problem with the price of housing that we have got in so many parts of New Zealand continue to get worse because we are not catching up on the housing shortage that we have got in New Zealand. In fact after 8 years of Government from National it is getting worse.I want to turn to another area. The now Prime Minister once said 8 years ago when he came into Government that prisons are "a moral and fiscal failure". That is another quote from him. Now he is saying—he did not raise this issue at all at Rātana when he said "we've reached the limits of what Government can do"—that he is putting in another billion dollars to build prisons.Phil Twyford: That's their affordable housing policy.Hon DAVID PARKER: Their affordable housing policy—well I almost laughed at that but that is terribly sad.The other sadness in this is of course that more than half of our prison population is Māori—more than half. What a disgraceful statistic. That makes it even more abhorrent that the Māori Party members the patsies of the National Party sit there and vote for the legislation that props up National. They vote for every Budget they support most of its political agenda and they try to spin it that Labour supports more legislation in this House from National than from Labour. They have actually said that; it is not true. It is one of those "alternatives facts" that have become popular in the United States recently. But it is true that this moral and fiscal failure in respect of prisons has not been fixed after 8 years of Government.We heard the last speaker Jami-Lee Ross heralding some alleged facts about New Zealand's economic performance. And it is true that our headline growth rate is actually quite high but if you strip out the population increase—a large proportion of which is this astonishingly high rate of immigration mainly into Auckland—per capita growth rates are barely 1 percent in New Zealand. One percent per annum—hardly a stunning performance. As for our export performance 8 years ago National came to power promising to increase exports from 30 to 40 percent of the economy. Exports have gone backwards. They are now 29 percent of the economy.In respect of other issues I have recently been given the foreign affairs portfolio for the Labour Party. I was very privileged to get it because it is a very uncertain time in the world at the moment as a consequence of international events not the least of which are some of the actions of President Trump since the US presidential elections. He has been in power for only about 19 or 20 days since the inauguration and there have been some pretty unsettling things happening. Well what leadership was shown by the National Government in respect of the issue of the ban which is now injuncted at the moment in the United States because its courts are worried about it? What was the New Zealand response to a piece of executive action in the United States that targeted at least on a temporary basis people on the basis of religion and race? If they are from Syria or a few other countries—even if they are already in the United States if they leave they could not come back and all these other people were caught up in this ban on the basis of their race or religion.Chester Borrows spoke out about it. Actually he said something I agreed with. He was willing to stand up. What did the Prime Minister say? For the first 3 days he said virtually nothing—virtually nothing. It was so much so that the criticisms in the newspapers were pretty telling. The lack of leadership shown by the Prime Minister in respect of this issue led to cartoons in both of the major newspapers groups—both the Fairfax Group and the New Zealand Herald group. The New Zealand Herald cartoon by Emmerson—and I have got it here—shows the Prime Minister curled up sucking his thumb in the spotlight doing nothing. The caption is: "Prime Minister Bill English on the world stage boldly stating in no uncertain terms NZ's position on the Trump Muslim ban …". It is effectively depicting in that very clever cartoon that the Prime Minister failed in his duty to New Zealand to stand up for the values of New Zealand.This morning at the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee we had Brook Barrington the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade expound on the position that New Zealand has long taken in order to chart a principled place in world affairs based on our values. That long history has meant that through the bumps of our relationship with America we have still stood up for what is right. The New Zealand Government of the 1980s went so far as to have a ban on nuclear weapons in New Zealand. We said: "We are a nuclear-free country and we will not permit nuclear vessels that are going to be carrying nuclear weapons or indeed nuclear-powered vessels." That was something that we did on principle. We stood up for that principle. We managed to maintain an enduring relationship with the United States notwithstanding our effective criticism of the failure of the nuclear countries to stop proliferation and to reduce their own weapons of mass destruction.We maintained our relationship because we stood for our principles and we expressed them clearly. We did the same thing in New Zealand on Iraq. We disagreed with the United States on Iraq. The National Party just wanted to go where America went but we stood on our principles and history shows how wise we were to stay out of that illegal war in Iraq which has inflamed a terrible situation and made it even worse and which was one of the contributors to the tragedy that we have seen in Syria. But on this occasion notwithstanding the fact that as a liberal open democracy we have actually got both the right and the responsibility to say to our long-time ally and friend the United States that it is not OK—to say that it is wrong to target people on the basis of race or religion; that it actually inflames racial tensions and the sorts of terrorist conduct it claims to want to prevent rather than making it better and that it is wrong in principle—no we did not say that for many many days.Even now it is a bit unclear as to how direct the Prime Minister was in his eventual conversation because it was not recorded. It takes a great degree of trust after the inaction of Prime Minister Bill English for so many days to actually accept that he put New Zealand's position clearly because we know that President Trump is incredibly thin-skinned. We know that he has hung up the phone on Prime Minister Turnbull of Australia. We know that he has criticised the judges in America calling them political for opposing him. And yet we are expected to believe that even at this late stage the Prime Minister led despite the fact that there was no record kept of those conversations. It was not a good start to the year by the Prime Minister."