Luxon ChristopherGENERAL DEBATECHRISTOPHER LUXON (Leader of the Opposition): I move That the House take note of miscellaneous business.Well thank you Mr Speaker. I have to say that as I go around this country I can tell you that the people of New Zealand are hurting and that they feel that we have lost our way and that this is a Government that is taking New Zealand backwards. And they are absolutely right because inflation's at a 35-year high and we have a situation where—now for three years—wages have not kept up with the prices of everything and everything is going up. We are at an incredible place where I have met Kiwis that are skipping meals because they cannot afford the food. We have families that never actually imagined they'd be in a food bank and yet they are there in record numbers today. We have half of us worried about money on a daily basis. We have 430000 Kiwis now not able to pay their debts and families are using budgeting services because they want to keep their homes and they now have to magic up $700 a fortnight just to pay the interest rates that have gone sky-high under this Government on their mortgage payments.The reality is: if you can't own a home because house prices have continued to rise and interest rates are out of control under this Government because of its inflationary policies we end up in a place where people are having to pay another $170 a week in rent. And then you go and talk to small-business owners and farmers up and down this country and they have been buried by this Government in endless endless red tape. As a result they start to wonder why they even bother trying. Then you get out on the street and the reality is: the risk of you being attacked is higher than it's ever been. Why? Because violent crime is up 33 percent retail crime is up 100 percent gang membership is up 66 percent and we now have a ram raid in New Zealand every 15 hours.When you can't get kids to school because we have a culture of excuses around COVID around cyclones around teachers being on strike or maybe the gang came to your town and shut your school down for a week we have some other problems. We can't get 50 percent of our kids to school regularly. We have 75000 that are actually chronically absent from school today. And if you do manage to show up at school 50 percent of our year 9 students aren't at the standard that they need to be at. Half of our 15-year-olds fail the most basic maths reading and writing tests—and no wonder that New Zealand is now out of the top 10 countries in the world on education.Incredibly there's one person who's been in charge of education for much of the last six years. Who is it? Yeah Chris Hipkins education Minister who put another $5 billion into education hired 1400 more education public servants and uniquely with a very special and unique and special skill set ended up delivering worse attendance records and worse academic achievement.Mr Speaker I just say to you: the most simple expectation we have is that our health system is there when we desperately need it. And we cannot say that that is the case today because here are the facts there: 30 percent of Kiwis now wait more than six hours to see a doctor or a nurse at an A & E or emergency department. It used to be 9 percent of us waiting that amount of time. Now 53000 New Zealanders wait more than four months to see their first specialist. When we left office there was a thousand Kiwis waiting more than four months. And now we have 30000 more Kiwis on the surgical wait-list as a result. Unbelievably in a developed country we shut a school because of a measles outbreak. Why? Because immunisations are down 11 points down to 77 percent.So I have to say any one of these things would be a huge embarrassment for a Government. But taken together what they represent is a Government that cannot get anything done and it has presided over a decline in the quality of life of New Zealanders here in this great country of ours. I have to say the message I get from Kiwis day after day after day is I'm working incredibly hard. This is a great country. My family is doing everything right and yet I know that everything's going in the wrong direction." They see it: the economy is broken it's now in recession. We are the only country in the Asia-Pacific region in a recession. We're one of only a couple of countries in the OECD that's in recession—that's a serious issue. It's because of mass economic mismanagement.Then what we see is crime's out of control and we see a healthcare system and an education system that's literally falling apart. So what's the response that we get from the Prime Minister the person I call the "guru of gaslighting"? He just says to us "Look it's all OK. Everything's fine. You've never had it so good." And then when he's really pushed and he's really under pressure "It's not my responsibility." It's sort of like apparently a continuation of unsubstantiated rumours—that's his approach to it. Well he is responsible and these outcomes are not being delivered for the New Zealand people.So I'd say if you break out of the Beehive bubble and beltway and you see Kiwis the answer is that they cannot get ahead. They are not making it up they're not imagining it; they are bang on: New Zealand is going backwards under a Labour Government."