Cunliffe David: Address in ReplyText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Address in Reply[Sitting date: 22 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:131. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn):It gives me great pleasure in this Address in Reply debate to recognise your election as Deputy Speaker and alongside yourself to congratulate the Speaker on his re-election Assistant Speaker Tisch and Assistant Speaker Mallard proving once and for all that the odd poacher makes a great gamekeeper.Can I also acknowledge the newly elected and returning members and I would especially like to acknowledge amongst our Labour benches Peeni Henare Adrian Rurawhe and Jenny Salesa—all entering Parliament for the first time as part of the almost clean sweep of the Māori electorates by the Labour Party under the leadership of our Māori affairs spokesperson Nanaia Mahuta and the strongest Pacific team that Labour has ever had in its parliamentary history. So we are absolutely delighted with that result.Can I also take some personal pleasure in acknowledging the return to Parliament of Stuart Nash Carmel Sepuloni and of course Kelvin Davis who came in just before the election—very valued colleagues whom it is wonderful to have back on the team and raising the bar for all of us. It is great to have you back.I want to warmly recognise all of the new members and the returning members from around the House. May you have a positive a productive and a highly entertaining time in this House. There is nothing else like it. This is the place where we deal with the market place of ideas the clash of ideas but within the framework of the democracy that we can all stand behind and alongside.The Address in Reply debate is the opportunity for the Government to set out the general themes of the approach it will take to governing in this term and for the Opposition to note the approach that it will take in response. We do so against the background of an election loss that was for Labour and the rest of the progressive parties in this country a very serious defeat. We recognise that voters have spoken. We are listening hard to New Zealanders. As a former leader I have taken responsibility by resigning my role and acknowledging that there is a great deal for us to learn. We in the Labour Party are going through a proper and constitutional process to re-elect a new leader. It is a process that after much reflection I have decided is in the best interests of the party that I stand aside from. Like all members of the party I give my 100 percent commitment to support whomever comes out of that process and ask all members of the Labour Party to do exactly the same.The values for which the party stands are as important today as they have ever been—the values that every New Zealander is created equal and is therefore worthy of equal opportunities and the dignity of a decent job a warm dry home opportunities for all our children a health and education system that we can trust and the dream that each generation will do better than the one before. Those are Labour’s values. They are as relevant to New Zealand families today as they have ever been. But the way that we communicate the way that we organise and the way that we deliver on those values clearly we must rethink. We are going to be doing just that with a widespread review of our 2014 campaign in the context of the broader political environment and our recent history. I and the rest of the party will be taking extremely seriously the results of that review so that we can bring to New Zealanders more effectively a message of hope and renewal in years to come.The priorities that on behalf of New Zealanders we campaigned on in 2014 are not I believe the wrong ones. Jobs homes and families—even members of the Government would agree I think—are the basics that every New Zealander deserves. Our values of the dignity of work and of being able to get a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work are as relevant now as ever. It is true—and I know Mr English will be following on from this speech—that the Government has been returned on the basis of a cyclical high in our economy cruising towards a growth rate of better than 3 percent perhaps close to 4 percent this year despite the fact that dairy prices have already peaked and are now down by nearly 50 percent; that log prices are falling; and that we have not weaned ourselves away from the rollercoaster of an out—of—control property market. The underlying weaknesses the structural problems the lack of transformation the lack of jobs in all our regions and the growing gap between rich and poor which impacts disproportionately on many of the communities that are represented here in Parliament today—all of those issues remain to be squarely confronted.The lack of a regional development plan the lack of a transformation agenda—in regional development I believed that that was so important that as leader I kept that portfolio. I am delighted that we have got a win in Napier under Stuart Nash and that we have held Palmerston North under Iain Lees-Galloway and I am sure that this will be a priority for the Labour Opposition going forward this term. That is why we started a new regional development fund that is why we started the NZ Inc. fund—to challenge smart sustainable growth around the country.Meanwhile the Government’s real agenda is becoming more obvious. On jobs on this the very first day available for new legislation National is introducing a bill as predicted to take away smokos and lunch breaks. It is absolutely petty Dickensian trickle-down economics which will actively widen the gap between the rich and the poor. Shame—if it were not such a tragedy it would be a joke that on its first legislating day the Government is stripping away from hard-working New Zealanders the rights and protections that have been built up over many years.It is the same way in homes and in housing. We went through a campaign where National trumpeted two things. It trumpeted the ability to have housing accords that have delivered only five—Phil Twyford: No six—six.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: —six by their own admission new homes—Phil Twyford: 12 months.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: —in 12 months. That is one new home every 2 months. In the meantime property values in Auckland in the last 3 years have increased by over a third. That might be fine for people who already have one but it is going to lock out of the Kiwi dream the next generation of young New Zealanders and that is a tragedy. My children your children and your grandchildren are losing the dream of owning their own home.Families are as important as ever. The Government window dresses about child poverty but omits from its priority targets even the measurement of child poverty and abuses the Official Information Act by suppressing for 17 months crucial reports about the state of child poverty in New Zealand.The Government’s modus operandi is now clear. Nowhere—nowhere—in the campaign did it say that it would be privatising the entire State housing stock. There is no mandate for that action. Nowhere in the campaign—nowhere in the campaign—did it say that it would commit us to a war in Iraq. It specifically excluded boots on the ground. Now little by little the Prime Minister is trying to soft-sell to New Zealanders the idea of an SAS deployment against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Nowhere in the campaign did the Government say that it would rush through more security legislation to backfill the last measure that it needed to make lawful—a 12-month programme to tap the Southern Cross cable which it later had to suspend. Nowhere did Government members campaign on reducing New Zealanders’ rights and freedoms further including by the selective use—some would say “the abuse”—of classified intelligence information to create fear within New Zealand and to divide communities of New Zealanders against each other.We have seen—and I will conclude on this because I believe it will be an important theme over the next 3 years—the abuse of the Official Information Act. We have seen the selective use of intelligence information. We have seen the systematic deployment by the National Party and its friends of attack websites paid thinktanks and underhand tactics the suppression of information and the denigration of journalists and that drives down our democracy which is precious. We will uphold it.