Belich CamillaCAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. Our Public Service is world class. New Zealand is lucky to have thousands of talented people working on our behalf every day to make our lives better safer healthier and more prosperous. From the members of the Supreme Court to the clerical assistants in a tiny remote office these people serve us: the public. They are our trade negotiators who are respected globally; they're our diplomats who do such brilliant job helping Kiwis abroad and representing interests of our small country on the world stage; they are customs officers and Ministry for Primary Industries personnel who protect our borders and also protect our agricultural industry from threat; they are the labour inspectors who protect our vulnerable from exploitation; our corrections staff working so hard in prisons and in courts; our scientists; our food safety specialists; and the people who help us protect our natural environment.Behind each one of these public servants is a great New Zealander. But these are normal people with normal lives—people who love cricket surfing reading watching Netflix; people based in practically every community around the country not just in Wellington—and through their work they make Aotearoa one of the easiest places in the world to do business. They help implement our key policies to address the cost of living challenge like our short-term cost of living payment the winter energy payment the extension of our fuel tax cuts our reduced road-user charges our half-price public transport and our recently announced policy to increase the family tax credit to make early childhood education more affordable and more accessible to families.Our public servants deserve respect. They deserve better than the derogatory language used by the National Party to describe them. National's deliberate use of the term bureaucrat" is designed to divide. Just yesterday I heard Chris Baillie from the ACT Party Chris Penk from National and Tim van de Molen use the word "bureaucrat" to describe our public servants and then today in question time the Leader of the Opposition used the word "bureaucrat" to describe our hard-working public servants. The Prime Minister said in reply to his question that she will not use the term "bureaucrat" to describe the Public Service and neither will I.The word "bureaucrat" has a long history. It started off as a translation that was neutral but now and quoting from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary it has a distinctly negative connotation—a distinctly negative connotation. When the National Party are talking about bureaucrats instead of public servants they are choosing to speak about them with a distinctly negative connotation and the National Party know full well what they're doing. Their words take away the agency and voice and expertise of the Public Service and help to dim down the public perception of what they do. National has repeatedly used this term for months and let me tell you words matter. Words can bring people together but they can also divide us and National has chosen to divide us.We have seen this playbook before: dehumanise the Public Service then run it down and then with their unfair unfunded tax cuts for the wealthiest New Zealanders they intend if they are lucky enough to be elected into Government and I certainly don't think they will—and I hope that they won't—they would take an axe to the Public Service. Underfunding meant when that Labour took power we inherited a mess but we have made progress on our big problems not just on COVID but on child poverty indicators social housing and climate change measures. We need a strong Public Service to achieve all of this.So on this side of the House we believe that our public servants should be treated with respect. They are good people who work hard every day to make New Zealand a better place and it's my view that they deserve better than what they're getting from the Opposition."