Hipkins ChrisRt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the Opposition): It is very appropriate that Paul Goldsmith began his contribution talking about comically poor delivery because he then gave us a five-minute demonstration of what that looks like. The Government got off to a shambolic start before Christmas proving that they had no plan to take New Zealand forward only a plan to cancel things stop things repeal things and take us backwards. You would think after the shambolic start that they got off to they might have had that opportunity over the summer to reset and come back and think Let's try that again. Let's maybe start the new year on a better footing. Maybe let's start to look like we're getting on top of things." But what a shambolic start we've had to this year as well.Let's go to the first week of Parliament. They made a big song and dance about the fact that they were going to get back to work faster and then brought us back to work on roughly the same timetable that Parliament would normally come back to work based on. Then they had a debacle of a week in the House where we had Ministers unable to answer questions and then changing their answers. I lost track of how many corrections Ministers made in the first week of the year but it extended all the way from the top down to Ministers correcting their answers.We had Mark Mitchell saying "Oh actually I couldn't guarantee 500 police within two years.". and then saying "Oh but actually I did." because he had been corrected by the Prime Minister. We never quite got to the bottom of what happened there. Then we had the very very strange situation with the Hon Casey Costello's office and the mysterious document that appeared out of nowhere as if by magic. Nobody seems to have written it but somehow she gave it to her officials as if it was an instruction on Government policy—despite the fact that no one seems to know who wrote it and no one seems to know who actually produced it or where it came from and no one seems to be able to explain it or what's in it. A shambolic year to start the new term of Government.The summer reset clearly didn't happen but it hasn't gotten any better for them in the last few weeks because what have we seen of their plan to take New Zealand backwards? Well first of all they've abandoned any commitment to reducing the rates impost on New Zealand families from the water infrastructure crisis that we face. I would say the only thing that has more leaks right now than the Wellington water pipes is this Government because it's abundantly clear that they've got no plan to fix water.They said they were going to repeal and replace the water reforms that we put in place. Well they've got a plan to repeal them but there's no plan to replace them. They're simply pushing back onto councils the water crisis that we have in New Zealand and the result is going to be very simple: ratepayers Kiwi families will pay more—and those rates increases will start very soon. Kiwi families are going to see that in a cost of living crisis this Government's first actions was to push up their rates bills by saying that the water crisis we face is simply someone else's problem.Then we've got minimum-wage workers who saw the whites of the Government's eyes when it came to their real commitment to supporting low-income New Zealanders: an increase in the minimum wage that is well less than the cost of living. So the lowest-income New Zealanders go backwards under this Government and they are only a few months into office. We saw them scrapping universal free prescriptions so people pay more every time they go to the pharmacy. We saw them scrapping free early childhood education for two-year-olds adding extra costs onto Kiwi families.While we're talking about people on low incomes there aren't many New Zealanders who are on a lower income than those who rely on a benefit for their main source of income and one of the first decisions of this Government is to change the way benefits are calculated so that beneficiaries go backwards in the future. That's one of the first decisions they took: 7000 more children living in poverty. That is one of the first decisions that they have taken as a Government: to put more Kiwi kids in poverty.But actually that's not the most shameful. The most shameful decision that they have taken is to encourage more New Zealanders to smoke so that they can fund tax cuts. It is one of the most morally repugnant decisions any New Zealand Government has taken and it's one of the first decisions that this Government has taken. They have no plan to move New Zealand forwards. It's all about going backwards. New Zealanders deserve better."