Barry Maggie: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBarry Maggie: General Debate[Sitting date: 23 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:6936. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MAGGIE BARRY (Minister for Senior Citizens): Well it has been 1 year since National won the last election and what a year it has been. Other colleagues have outlined some of our broader achievements and I would like to concentrate on some of the areas that I am most familiar with in my portfolio.But first I would like to commend the fact that we have 14 new faces on this side of the House. I think our backbench line-up in terms of the new recruits has put us in a very very strong position. They are fantastic—14 very talented backbenchers. That is 10 more people than voted for Labour leader Andrew Little from his own caucus. What is it now? He is the fifth leader. He was all about pandas today and was all about tragic set-up patsy questions to the Prime Minister yesterday which fell woefully flat.Tim Macindoe: And he got a couple of black eyes out of it.Hon MAGGIE BARRY: He got a couple of black eyes out of it. With that and “pandamonium” I would have to say the senior whip has been on form today handing out lollies and puns like there is no tomorrow. It is all good. Thank you very much Tim.It is an important thing I think to look at a strong united caucus that is united under its leader and its deputy leader. This party and this Government are in great heart. I rediscovered that for myself last week. I had the Prime Minister in my North Shore electorate and we launched a suite of new changes for seniors. When I look at the impact that this Government has made over the last 7 years and in particular in the last few—I look at seniors and I can see big results. I think about the way that they were ignored successively by the Labour Government propped up by its mates the Greens for a while there. Seniors have been very much the poor relations.That is not happening under this Government. I commend my predecessor Jo Goodhew. Under her being the Minister for Senior Citizens the gains that were made for the SuperGold card—from its extremely humble beginnings it has really burgeoned into something that is worth having for seniors. We see now that we have more than 8000 businesses representing 12500 outlets and our seniors can go to Australia and also get benefits over there. The discounts and things of that kind are all very well but I have focused in the last year that I have been in this job on ensuring that the expensive things—the ears the eyes the teeth and the lawyers—have been well looked after. So we have another 750 businesses signed up.The thing about seniors is there are myths. The idea that older people do not go on and use the internet is incorrect. Something like 61 percent of our people over 65 were on the internet last year. With an ageing population that is going to increase so with the Prime Minister last week we launched a suite of new initiatives: a new website called Super Seniors specifically designed to be relevant with seniors in mind. We have a new newsletter a Facebook and a Twitter page as well. So we are making some real gains there in getting seniors connected with what is important and relevant to them.When it comes to conservation I would have to say that this year has been an excellent one for kiwis of all brands and persuasions. We had $11.2 million out of the Budget this year. Bill English the Minister of Finance did say to me that if those birds do not breed he wants his money back. I am very worried about that. I have been able to say to all of our kiwi providers “Let’s make sure that these kiwi birds breed.” and I am pleased to be able to report to our finance Minister that they have been successfully doing what nature intended. We have targeted an increase. At the moment the kiwi population is declining at about minus 2 percent. Our aim is to get that up to plus 2 percent which means about an extra 7000 birds and the progress to date has been outstanding.We make sure that we target the predators and the pests. And yes we do use toxins like 1080 and apart from a group of very noisy individuals I think that there is a growing realisation among intelligent people in New Zealand that this is something that we have to use if we want to win the war against pests. We are doing it with weeds as well. As someone with a great interest in plants both endangered and otherwise I am committed to ensuring that we get rid of the weeds and we get rid of them in whatever way that we can. We have also appointed a Threatened Species Ambassador whose job it is in life to ensure the promotion of our threatened species—the notion that New Zealanders all need to get together to help get behind this cause.Those are the kinds of unifying things that this Government does very well. And as we used to say saving the planet starts in your own backyard and that is something that New Zealanders embrace as they have this National Government. I think in our first year we have made huge gains and we will continue to make enormous progress given the strong united disciplined caucus and Cabinet that we have under very strong leadership.