Lee Melissa: Address in ReplyText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLee Melissa: Address in Reply[Sitting date: 21 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:73. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MELISSA LEE (National):It is such a privilege and an honour to stand in the House today as a member of this John Key - led Government. I would like to begin my contribution tonight by joining the many speakers before me by congratulating you Mr Assistant Speaker. May you be blessed with the wisdom and patience to watch over the proceedings in this House and this Chamber which at times can be very challenging. Over the last term of Parliament when I have been sitting here when you have been presiding over the House you have been nothing but fair. So congratulations once again on your return to the Assistant Speaker’s position and hopefully you will be a good adviser to the new colleagues who join you in the Chair. I am particularly just a tad concerned about the Hon Trevor Mallard. I do not know how he is actually going to go as the new Assistant Speaker with his performance in the House but no doubt he knows the procedures probably better than anybody else and I hope that he will be very fair as well. His colleagues actually attest to that.I know that many members have ended their speeches by thanking the people in their electorate. I would like to begin my speech by thanking the people of Mt Albert. Although I am actually not the elected member of the Mt Albert electorate more than 14359 voters gave their party vote to National which meant that in the very very strong Labour seat of the former Labour Prime Minister Rt Hon Helen Clark and the former Labour leader David Shearer National actually won the party vote. As one of our National Party stalwarts a former deputy mayor of Mt Albert Alice Wylie actually said: “Darling we have never won anything in Mt Albert but we have this time round.” So I would like to thank the people of Mt Albert for giving us their party vote. The candidate vote also improved from 7400 in the previous election to more than 10000 so we did I think quite well. I would like to thank all of our volunteers who actually helped us get there tirelessly delivering tens of thousands of pamphlets making thousands upon thousands of phone calls and door-knocking rain hail or shine. Thank you all for making it happen.The last 2 days have been full of pomp and ceremony and I feel very privileged to be sitting in this House of Representatives for the 51st Parliament. I welcome my new colleagues right across the House and I echo the Prime Minister’s advice to enjoy your time here. You have fought hard to get here and 3 years actually flies by very very quickly. Make it count. Make your stay here count and may you be returned in the next term of Parliament as well. On that score I would like to acknowledge the return of Kelvin Davis and his colleagues who are actually returning to Parliament—particularly you Kelvin Davis. Mate I do not know of any other—Hon Member: Just Kelvin?MELISSA LEE: No no no—particularly Kelvin Davis because I do not know any other Labour MP who got such resounding applause on a National election campaign night apart from you mate for winning your seat and preventing the other people from coming into this Parliament so well done. Carmel Sepuloni I welcome you back. It is nice to see you back. Stuart Nash and Ron Mark—congratulations once again.The general election in 2014 has given the National Party a very strong mandate to govern for the next 3 years. Together with our partners the ACT Party United Future and the Māori Party we will continue to give New Zealanders a stable effective and inclusive Government. We are focused on returning to surplus and a long-term fiscal objective remains to reduce core Crown debt to 20 percent of GDP by 2020. We will keep Government spending under control. Around $1 billion of the operating allowance in each Budget will be used to increase spending with the remainder set aside for tax reductions and further debt repayment depending on economic and fiscal conditions. We plan to build a more productive and competitive economy supporting more jobs and higher incomes. This is set out in the Business Growth Agenda which contains about 350 individual initiatives that will be progressed and more added during this term of Parliament. This business agenda is doing a great job of giving companies the confidence to invest and grow jobs in New Zealand while carefully managing the environmental impacts.This National-led Government will continue to pursue high-quality trade agreements including negotiations with my birth country Korea and the Trans-Pacific Partnership while ensuring that New Zealand’s best interests are always served. We want our exporters to be able to compete on an equal footing with other economies and further lift our exports. We want to increase our international footprint so we will make more investments in New Zealand Trade and Enterprise to expand the number of businesses that it works with. The kind of benefit that New Zealand will reap from a free-trade agreement such as the one that we are hoping to get from Korea is currently New Zealand exporters are paying in excess of 89 percent tariff for such things like butter. They are paying more than 45 percent in tariff for kiwifruit. They are paying more than 40 percent in tariff for beef exports to Korea. They are not competing with Korean products. They are competing with products from places like Chile where Chile already has a free-trade agreement with Korea and their tariffs are coming down. Unless we secure a free-trade agreement with Korea our products will no longer be competitive in a market in Korea. So our exporters may not be able to export to Korea because our produce will be too expensive for Korean people to purchase.It is imperative therefore that we secure these free-trade agreement deals so that our export markets are secured and also diversified that we are not putting all of our eggs in one basket and that our markets are all over the world including Asia where there is a growing middle class. Even in the previous term I have talked about the growth in population in countries like Indonesia. More than 150 million people live in Indonesia and its growth of population is the whole of New Zealand. Every year 4.5 million people are born in Indonesia.A big focus over the next 3 years for this National-led Government is about rewarding New Zealanders for their hard work. We will be further reducing ACC levies which will be the equivalent of a tax cut for households and businesses. I am very happy about that because reducing income taxes for lower and middle income earners in 2017 if fiscal conditions actually allow is I am sure welcome news for everybody. New Zealand’s economy grew by 3.9 percent in the year to 30 June. While some countries are struggling we have had an economy that has been growing. Some people have called it a role model for the world economy. For me it is the fact that our average wage has grown by $2500 in the past 2 years and has been forecast to grow even more. An estimated 83000 jobs were created in the past year and Treasury forecasts around 150000 more jobs to be created by mid-2018. Unemployment is coming down. Treasury forecasts that it will fall to 4.5 percent by mid-2018 from 5.6 percent now and well over 6 percent a year ago. That is achievement. That is the result that this National-led Government has delivered to New Zealanders.Mortgage interest rates are also interesting because they are to remain lower for longer than they did in 2008. Back in 2008 they were somewhere around the 11 percent mark which is slightly lower I guess than when I first bought my own house. On my first home I think I paid an interest rate in excess of 18 percent. I know which one I would rather have—the rate that is currently offered now which is around 5.2 percent rather than the 18 percent that we paid back when I bought my first house or back in 2008 when Labour was in Government and the rate was around 11 percent.The new KiwiSaver Homestart grant will be introduced next year to double the support a first-home buyer can get if they are buying or building their new home. It has to be welcomed by first-home buyers. I never knew this until I owned my own home but having a quarter-acre section which people talk about is the dream that all Kiwis have. It may not be the quarter-acre section now—it may be an apartment that they prefer because it is smaller and easier to maintain—but owning their own home is a possibility under this National Government. I commend this.