Cosgrove Clayton: Address in ReplyText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCosgrove Clayton: Address in Reply[Sitting date: 23 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:231. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour):Firstly can I pay my respects in the usual way as tradition has it to the Governor-General; to you Mr Deputy Speaker as you are elected to the high office of Deputy Speaker; and to the Speaker himself for his re-election and his venerable assistance. Can I also congratulate the sixth St Bede College’s old boy Mr Matt Doocey my learned opponent on ascending to the great place in this House. I congratulate him on his win. It is a great honour to be in this House. I say to those who went to other schools like Christ’s College and other second-rate educational institutions that St Bede’s College still maintains the record for the largest number of members in this House at any given time. So I welcome Mr Doocey to that elite club of the famous six.Can I congratulate the Prime Minister and Government members on his and its election win. It was indeed a substantial victory from their point of view. It is true that New Zealanders have now rendered a verdict and placed their faith and trust in a National-led Government and a National-led Prime Minister. However I say to the Government that along with faith and trust comes the burden of expectation—the burden of expectation—from a community that was promised much by this Government as it sought a mandate for a third term such as the expectations for instance of those parents who cannot afford to house their families themselves and their kids in a warm and dry home. Those are expectations this Government has pledged to meet and it will be judged accordingly. The expectations for instance are also of the younger generation the first-home buyers who struggle to get on to the property ladder to gain the Kiwi dream of a first-home buy.I note with interest that one of the three housing Ministers has eventually after it was drawn out of him like barbed wire admitted that five houses—five houses only—have been built in the so-called preferential zones or whatever the term is that the Government has set up. I note also that Dr Smith as the Minister for Building and Housing believes just for the record that consents or should I say code compliance certificates—which for the uninitiated note that the house is built and that somebody can legally move into it because it complies. There are no records of such things in our community. I invite him to check every local government website that asks you whether you wish to apply for said certificate—and by definition if you apply you are granted one therefore there is a record of that in a local authority.The expectations are high especially in the health area. They are high for those who have been diagnosed for instance as needing an operation by a specialist who are then told: “No the books are full. It will take in excess of 5 months”—the Government’s cut off point—“to have that operation.” Those folks are then told: “The books are full. Go back to your general practitioner.”—not because you are healthy or you are put right but because there just are not the resources there to cater for you and the Government refuses to have a measure. I say to the Minister of Health as to the thousands of people who have been told to go back to their GP I think it is illogical. The Minister of Health also holds I believe a business degree. I am sure he would agree with me in his learnings that there is an old adage: if you cannot measure a problem you cannot measure progress in terms of how you are dealing with that problem negatively or positively and more important you cannot be held to account if you do not measure that problem.The expectations on this Government are indeed great. The fact of course is that it will not measure child poverty but now it says it will do something about it. I am grateful for the ladder. I still would have thought logic would dictate in order for them to be judged by the New Zealand people that a measure is appropriate. The Government will also be judged by the thousands of young people who would like a trade and who would like an apprenticeship but no real assistance is out there the numbers are not there to cater for them or there are businesses that would like to take a young person on as an apprentice but the financial assistance does not exist in any great volume for them to be incentivised to do that. There are the expectations down my way of the Canterbury community. Those people are still waiting after 4 years to have their earthquake claims settled by either a private sector insurer or the Earthquake Commission. The expectations of those folks—the thousands of them—are great and they will be a great burden on this Government which has pledged through an election victory to do something about that. My hope—my genuine bipartisan hope—on that score is that we will not be here in another 3 years’ time or 7 and a bit years down the track still talking about folks who have not had the ability or not been supported to the point where they can get their earthquake claims resolved.There are the expectations of those—and I will not labour this point—academics journalists community leaders business people and others whose reputations we now know were dragged through the political sewer by those outside this place and yet to be tested aided and abetted by some in this place formed and crystallised around the infamous book Dirty Politics. I say to the Government simply that if you take away conjecture and interpretation documents do not lie. Documents and evidence do not lie. So there is a duty on this Government to meet the expectations of the community.To be fair there is also a duty upon the Opposition and the lead party in the Opposition which is my Labour Party to meet the aspirations and be accountable to the community by doing our job. Our primary job in this place is to hold the Government to account. It is true though that we have an obligation to get the message that we got. We got a message on election night. It is our duty to humbly receive that message to analyse that message and to act on that message. That means that as a political movement the expectations of the community are that we modernise as a party. Though those opposite may see some of our processes and internal workings as rather strange—the leadership contest that proceeds before us now—this is about broadening and modernising a Labour Party. I believe in a Labour Party that is broad. I do not subscribe to a view of a narrow-based political movement. I do not subscribe to a view that if you talk about representing broadening and becoming part of the middle ground somehow you are excluding those groups or individuals on the fringes. I do not subscribe to that logic. I do not understand it. I do not believe it has any validity in a modern political movement. We have a duty to represent as wide a cross-section of the public as we can. We have a duty as a political movement to evolve with the needs the concerns and the changing priorities of our community.I once had a grandfather. I did not meet him. He was an Invercargill guy dead before I was born. He started life as a baker a wage worker. He bought a tobacconist’s shop as it was called back then—a barber’s shop. He did not change his values; he still voted Labour. His mates thought as soon as he became a business person or an entrepreneur—not that that was in vogue those days—that he would suddenly go from red to blue. He did not change his values; he changed his priorities looking after his family in different ways. He went from a wage worker to a business person. Being a modern 21st century political party modernising evolving and moving with the community does not mean that you sell out your values and your principles; it simply means that you evolve to better reflect in a modern way and move with your community and recognise accept action and be accountable for those changing priorities that your constituency has.I conclude by saying that there are expectations on this Government and they will weigh heavy upon it. We stand ready as the major Opposition party in this House to hold every one of those Ministers accountable for the promises and the commitments they make. But I give a commitment and our side of politics gives a commitment that we also have heavy expectations weighing upon us and we must redouble our efforts and commit ourselves to meeting and exceeding those expectations even if at times change can be painful. Change and reform can be painful in a number of ways but political movements that do not change and move with the times—and perhaps even are not humble enough to change their views to reflect their constituency without selling out their principles—are doomed to be in another place. We are a 98-year-old Labour Party. We are the oldest political movement in this country. In 2 years we will be 100. To those who say we will disappear and have forecast our doom for the last 100 years I have to say that you will be wrong and wrong again.