O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I'm always worried when I come into this House and after speeches like that hear that Marxism and communism are alive and well in society—the great failed experiment with millions dead yet being celebrated here. I don't normally do this. I wouldn't normally do this but I encourage the public to listen to speeches like that from the Greens because they're great about acknowledging who they don't include. They are really good at acknowledging a whole lot of groups in society. Well they'll always talk about human rights because you know we're all human but they talk about very specific groups and I encourage New Zealanders to log in listen to that speech and then begin to see all the groups in society which they exclude. I think there's a word for that. I think it's called discrimination. They very carefully exclude a number of groups. And it's probably going to be a surprise to the Greens or maybe not when they languish on 6 or less percent that actually the majority of New Zealanders are excluded by their opinions. The other thing I'd mention—and as someone who's a great believer in climate change but not in the Greens' approach which is effectively blank-cheque-ing"—is the idea that we have climate change therefore a blank cheque should be written out to the likes of the Greens and other communistic groups to basically say—SPEAKER: Order! The member is in fact trifling with me for the second time today. The member knows that's out of order.SIMON O'CONNOR: "Communistic"?SPEAKER: Absolutely.SIMON O'CONNOR: Right—far left belief systems that actually just allow wholesale changes—wholesale changes. And it's not what New Zealand wants and it's not what New Zealand needs.Chlöe Swarbrick: Do you speak for all of New Zealand?SIMON O'CONNOR: But ultimately I am here. No actually. The member asked: do I speak for all of New Zealand? No Ms Swarbrick. I actually speak for 60000 constituents; not unlike yourself who—which is your constituency? That's right. There isn't one. So fundamentally I disagree with the Prime Minister's statement and am very happy to support the amendment of Simon Bridges. But the fundamental point that I want to actually bring up today is a question. [Interruption] SPEAKER: Order!SIMON O'CONNOR: When will this Government apologise?Kieran McAnulty: I apologise.SIMON O'CONNOR: And we already have an apology coming from the other side but I think it's unrelated. But I'm asking the House today and the Prime Minister through her statement: when will this Government apologise? This Government promised to build houses—tens of thousands of houses. We're up to 47. I'm asking the Government to apologise for its failure. The Government promised that there'll be less waiting for State housing. We've heard today great pronouncements about the numbers of houses being built and so forth. But actually when I questioned the Minister taking his announcements of supposedly thousands of houses that this Government was building it turned out that first and foremost the Minister could not answer my question that was on notice despite the fact that actually officials in select committee this morning were able to give me at least an indication. But what we found out is that the majority I understand or at least most—I should use the absolute word used in committee today—of the houses being promoted by this Government that they have built were actually started under the previous Government—under the previous Government. No it's not to say that this new Government won't get into building houses but it would do incredibly well—when it puts out its press releases claiming that they have built 1691 new homes that actually were for the most part started by the previous Government. The other element which is really important is always the ambiguity of the English language. There's lots of talk in the State housing space that you know they're all new houses. It's implied in the language but actually 53 per cent—53 per cent—of the houses that the Prime Minister and then Minister Twyford trumpeted today are not new houses. They are existing private New Zealand homes that have been bought by Housing New Zealand—bought by Housing New Zealand. In fact it came through select committee today through my colleague the Hon Judith Collins that actually real estate agents are going out and buying these houses before they even reach the market. And for the public listening let that sink in. People will not even get the opportunity to bid against Housing New Zealand. They are already off the market. The best analogy of failure that I can give is really the Government is not growing the pie; they're just cutting it up in different ways. So to New Zealanders who are first-home buyers those struggling to buy their home: know that through this Government they are competing with a $1.3 billion Housing New Zealand. They're competing with real estate agents who are taking properties off the market to Housing New Zealand. The Government are not growing the pie in State housing; they are simply buying and taking houses off those very New Zealanders who pay the taxes to fund Housing New Zealand I might add. They are taking houses away from Kiwis and I think the Government needs to apologise. I think it also needs to apologise because it promised no new taxes and then whacked those of us in Auckland with at least two. They empowered the left-wing council in Auckland to slap on a fuel tax and then passed legislation in this House to slap a further petrol tax on Aucklanders. I look forward to an apology there.The Government promised no strikes—no strikes. Just about every day I wake up and have to see there's another strike in the papers; is it the doctors is it the nurses is it the bus drivers—who is it? We have strikes almost every day. I again expect the Government to apologise.Along with not being open—well sorry. They promised rather I should say to be open and transparent and we had examples again today where figures are not presented ideas are fudged. We're waiting for Auditor-General reports and so forth. And of course we had a debacle around Ministers who are hiding diary entries or rather denying that meetings happened and I think you know we've had ministerial questions stalled for months. We've had an apology I'm sure needed for the lack of prudent financial management—a $3 billion fund which I think we heard today is funding swimming pools. Free tuition fees to students—what's that achieving? An oil ban in Taranaki—that's the "blank-cheque-ing" that I was talking about that we just wipe out an entire industry overnight because it's the wonderful virtue signalling that just makes people particularly on the left feel all nice warm and fuzzy. Speaking of those on the left an apology to the scientific community would be welcome too as the Green Party through its Minister hamstrings research into genetic science and technologies. The Greens will always talk a big and strong game about science when it suits them but they demonstrate all the blind zealotry of a religious fanatic when science says something that is wrong. I think it's an absolute shame and it's an absolute disgrace that the scientific community in this country has been muzzled. I want to turn to an apology that is needed to the people of Venezuela moving into the foreign affairs space. An apology is needed by this Government as the rights and freedoms of those people are being trampled upon. The Government has been absolutely silent on what is happening there. Again a big game has talked about all rights and looking after people and care and kindness. Yet while a regime a left-wing regime—I can't use another word—enforces its will on the people this Government remains silent and it is a shame. As I say they've mastered the art of doing nothing and apologies are required. But fundamentally an election is a promise. It's an outline of what a party would do if it were to win and be in Government. And if we are to avoid campaigns where every party promises everything under the sun to every person across the country we politicians must be held to account. So where is the accountability and when will this Labour-led Government apologise? I suggest there really are only two possibilities. Did Labour know it couldn't deliver—did it know it couldn't deliver? Maybe it was disingenuous maybe they weren't so concerned with getting the details right and perhaps it was just a cynical ploy to get elected at all costs. That's possible. That is possible but I think that's uncharitable and I'm not an uncharitable person. I think the other possibility is we're just dealing here with woeful incompetence. There's that genuine but naive belief that they could just come on through and just sort everything out. They could just easily improve the lives of people with happy words utopian visions and the like—that they could change and improve the lives of everyone they care about and that once they found they were in power they began to realise things were a little bit more difficult. But I believe that we should never ascribe to malice what could also be easily ascribed to incompetence so I'm prepared to give the Government the benefit of the doubt on this. So I believe and it's where I'll begin to end that the failures of this Government the need for apologies is one based simply on incompetence. But regardless of whether it is just that incompetence they should apologise for that too. I and five million other New Zealanders and the 60000 people in Tāmaki are waiting for that apology."