Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much Madam Assistant Speaker. Can I first of all congratulate you ma'am on your elevation to this role. It was a pleasure serving with you on the Justice and Electoral Committee in the last Parliament and I'm sure you'll do a great job in this role. And congratulations to all the other presiding officers as well.This is my first time speaking in a debate in the House. I've had the privilege of asking my first oral question. I've got to say that asking oral questions when you're in Opposition is a little bit different to asking oral questions when you're a Government backbencher. The adrenalin is a bit higher and the nerves are a bit greater. But this is my first time speaking in the House.I want to acknowledge secondly the good people of Hutt South for electing me as their local member. It's an honour and a privilege to have that role and it's something that I've worked pretty hard for over the last three years as a list MP. I want to say it was a bit of a bitter-sweet victory. Oftentimes when you win an electorate seat off another party oftentimes you are in Government so it's a bit of a bitter-sweet victory to win the seat but lose the war. But as I have been saying to people around the Hutt ultimately the Government did change and we just have to make the best of it. What I've said is that where we can work with the Government in relation to things in the Hutt Valley I'm keen to do that and where I can't work with the Government and where I think things are going to take the Hutt backwards I'll say so.Can I acknowledge the new Government and our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Congratulations on your election to office. All of New Zealand is hoping that you do well and wishing you all the best.A few things characterise this Government and I want to run through a few of the characteristics that have come to define this Government after only five or six weeks. The first thing is incompetence. We saw that on the first day with the debacle over electing the Speaker. You wouldn't think that would be particularly difficult for a Government to do. You turn up it's the first day everyone gets sworn in you elect the Speaker and then we go off for lunch. But no no. You wouldn't think that would be difficult but it was for this Government because they didn't have the numbers or at least they didn't know that they didn't have the numbers which as we know in politics on this side of the House is actually far worse. Always know when you've got the numbers and they didn't.But we also see this incompetence on display in the House at the moment. Despite the 100-day action plan and much fevered talk about a Government of action and we're going to do this that and the other thing there's actually no legislation that the Government has brought before the House for us to consider. OK we've had the paid parental leave bill but in their own words that was a bill that was passed in the previous Parliament. So that's not actually a new piece of legislation. We had to ram that through under urgency—hypocritically going against everything that the Government said in Opposition for nine years about how urgency was an abuse of the democratic process and was unconstitutional. We had to do that through urgency.And then we have the Government picking up a member's bill in Andrew Little's name the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2) and basically 95 percent of the content of that bill is a replica of what the previous Government passed in the last Parliament. They've had to pick up a member's bill and adopt it as Government business. And other than that what do we have? Nothing. We literally have nothing. That's why the Government had to change the sitting programme so they could send the Parliamentary Counsel Office off in the last week to desperately draft legislation. We've turned up here for a four-week sitting period and is there any legislation that's pressing that's coming down the line? No we've no idea. So this is a Government that is incompetent.But it's also a Government that's hypocritical particularly around its transparency and its openness. What does the coalition agreement between New Zealand First and Labour say? It says This is an agreement that will strengthen New Zealand's democracy by increasing public participation openness and transparency around official information." But we learn this week that actually there's a secret document of 38 pages or 33 pages or 32 pages depending on which font you use—Arial or Comic Sans or something. There's a secret document that actually governs how the coalition will operate.What we hear is that this is a document of precision on various areas of policy commitment and development. We hear from Mr Peters the Deputy Prime Minister that these are directives to Ministers with accountability in media strategy to ensure the coalition works. In fact this document is so important in the words of the Deputy Prime Minister that "the things contained in the document apparently were the first subject we raised about how we're going to handle a cohesive coalition agreement." I just want to repeat that for the House: the things in this document that the Government is refusing to release the things in this document were the first subject raised by the Deputy Prime Minister in the coalition negotiations.Does anyone seriously think that something that was the first subject raised by the Deputy Prime Minister is not of public interest? Absolutely it is in the public interest. The Prime Minister's excuses as to why this can't be released are pathetic. First of all she said "Well they're just notes." Well as she will know from her nine years OIA-ing the previous Government that is not a reason not to release something. Just because something is not a formal document does not make it not official information. She should go and talk to the Ombudsman about that.Then she says "Well it may be that some areas are unworkable or fiscally irresponsible." Well again that is irrelevant. I am sure that some of the things this Government wants to do will be fiscally irresponsible. I am quite convinced many of the things this Government will do will be fiscally irresponsible but that is no reason to deny their profligate spending plans from the New Zealand people. And then she says "Well we haven't distributed it to Ministers." Well that's irrelevant. Just because Ministers don't have it doesn't mean it is not official information.The worst excuse or the most comical depending on how you look at it came from Mr Peters himself. He stood next to Jacinda Ardern at the post-Cabinet press conference: "I mean Moses came down from the mountain and only had Ten Commandments right? But there's a lot in the Old Testament as well get it? I'm only here because the Prime Minister asked me to be here. This is not Zimbabwe all over again."I literally have no idea what that even means but it's certainly not an excuse as to why something that is at the very core of the new coalition Government should not be released. So they're hypocritical and they're arrogant. It has only taken six weeks. We had Shane Jones sitting there throughout the previous speeches bellicosity and belligerence personified literally waving at Jacqui Dean saying "Bye-bye bye-bye." I'm imitating Shane Jones from about 40 minutes ago—bye-bye bye-bye to Opposition members. The arrogance on display after just six weeks is just unbelievable.The responses to written questions—Chris Hipkins says it's parliamentary spam. I have asked Stuart Nash who he met with on a particular day and he said: "You need to be more specific." OK. I asked him who he met with during a particular hour-long period. He refused to answer. The arrogance is breathtaking. We're trying to get access to information that we answered when we were in Government. When the now Government was in Opposition they got access to a lot of that information.And then we have the briefings to incoming Ministers. We're six weeks in. Where are they? I understand from my sources in the Civil Service that briefings to incoming Ministers are usually sent around departments. They're usually sent around departments after they've been to the Minister. But in this new Government this new regime of transparency the "BIMS" as they're popularly known have not even been sent around to senior staff. They've been kept in Ministers' offices and the journalists have been declined the requests. Well they need to be released.The fourth characteristic of this Government and this is the thing that will ultimately bring them down in the end is a tendency for virtue-signalling as a substitution for public policy. And it was Milton Friedman who said that one of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programmes by their intentions rather than their results. This Government has a long ambitious list: eradicate child poverty—Hon Shane Jones: Go back to the Second World War. The Korean War!CHRIS BISHOP: —enter Pike River; stop homelessness; build 100000 homes; plant a billion trees Shane Jones; increase the health of the economy. [Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Members!CHRIS BISHOP: And what they like to do—particularly Green members but New Zealand First are not immune to this either—is pretend that because they care more because they have more empathy than National in their minds and because they have the most passion for something that will lead to better public policy outcomes. But actually as they are about to discover over the next three years just because you tell everyone out there in the community that you care more and the nasty Nats don't care about homelessness or poverty or trees or whatever that does not necessarily mean that public policy gets improved. They are about to discover that and I am looking forward on this side of the House to the new Government discovering that reality."