Benson-Pope David: Address in Reply 
Benson-Pope David: Address in Reply 
[Volume:628;Page:351] 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 Mr Assistant Speaker I join with my colleagues in congratulating you and your administrative colleagues on their election to Parliament and to such an important presiding role. In particular I congratulate the Speaker Margaret Wilson. I must agree with the comments I have heard earlier about her colleague Clem Simich. Clem Simich enjoys unparalleled respect in this building and I am confident as we all are that he will perform those duties with distinction. I am delighted to see him in that role. Also I congratulate you Mr Robertson and your colleague Ms Hartley. I also extend best wishes and congratulations to all my parliamentary colleagues. There are many challenges for us in this place not the least of them being to debate issues rationally and I welcome our new parliamentary colleagues and wish them every encouragement in that regard. 
It is an honour and indeed a privilege to stand here as a member of a Government that has delivered so convincingly on its election pledges both historically and already in this term. I would like to traverse some of those pledges and talk about the challenges for the future that were so appropriately canvassed in the Speech from the Throne. In doing so I pay my respects also to the Governor-General and to our parliamentary constitutional arrangements. 
In Government we have committed to 20 hours of quality free early childhood education for all 3 to 4-year-olds at teacher-led community-based early childhood centres by 2007. I will list a number of these initiatives because they are particularly relevant to the portfolio I am very pleased to hold after my predecessor Mr Maharey who I am delighted is with us in the Chamber this evening. He knows better than most and our community is starting to learn that we are also providing 3040 additional teachers in our classrooms over and above the number required for roll growth in our schools. 
We have expanded the Family Start programme which last year helped 4000 vulnerable families and further new services are planned over the next 2 years. Department of Child Youth and Family Services baseline funding has increased by more than 50 percent allowing more social workers to help in early intervention as well as to deal more quickly with current cases—one of the great challenges that we face as a community. We have expanded the Social Workers in Schools programme which again enables early intervention in cases of potential child abuse. 
Labour to its credit and to the advantage of the whole community has increased access to affordable primary health care and 3.7 million New Zealanders are now entitled to be enrolled in primary health organisations and in fact are enrolled. That means that by 2007 they will have cheaper doctors’ fees and prescription charges. We have delivered on our promise to double the number of hip and knee operations this year. We have also provided funding for up to 7500 more cataract operations in the next 3 years. Significantly—and this was discussed in question time today of course— we have also invested $200 million to fight back against meningococcal B disease. 
As most New Zealanders are only too aware Labour reversed National’s cuts to superannuation restoring to older couples the right to receive a guaranteed 65 percent of the average wage at 65 years. We know there were some commitments around the election about that level. We also removed asset testing by progressively phasing out asset testing for older people in rest homes and geriatric hospitals. 
New Zealand has its lowest crime rate in over 20 years. No one who is listening to the House today or who has been watching question time recently can miss the irony of a Government that has had that achievement and that has built $800 million worth of new prisons—or is in the process of doing so—being criticised for overcrowding in some of our penal institutions. We make no apologies for the increased focus on policing and for responding appropriately to what the community has asked of us. It is a sad comment on the weakness of the Opposition that it has to try to play that game. It was Labour that implemented tougher sentencing and tougher parole and bail laws. That means more serious offenders are spending longer in prison which is why there is such a financial impost in relation to the construction of new prisons. And we have more police. 
Lindsay Tisch 
: Tell that to the victims. They don’t believe you. 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: No matter how long you bleat— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Please do not bring the Speaker into the debate. 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: I say to Mr Tisch that the further 265 staff announced in Budget 2005 will take total police numbers above 10000 for the first time ever and the total added by Labour to over 1400. 
One of the greatest challenges for the Opposition is to focus on facts. We saw that with regard to the extraordinary misinformation that one or two National members were trying to portray about other benefit issues earlier in the day. It is no less the case with regard to police issues. Sooner not later the community will become aware that it is not only Dr Brash who wears no clothes. The National Opposition is completely without policy in those matters. 
Lindsay Tisch 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The comment that the member made about Dr Brash is completely unparliamentary. I ask the member to withdraw and apologise for that remark. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I did not hear it but if the member did make an unparliamentary remark I would caution him on the way in which he addresses the House in future. 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: I hardly thought it was unparliamentary to refer to the old Russian folk tale of the emperor with no clothes. But just like the leader the National Party also has no clothes because it has no policy. 
Hon David Carter 
: What about tax? 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: National may make the most extraordinary claims about tax but can we talk about forestry? And when we are talking about forestry should we talk to Mr Connell or to Dr Brash? If we talk about health we would not know whether to talk to Dr Hutchison or to Dr Brash because the party had no cohesive policy into the election. That is why those people including those most verbose and overexcited new people are sitting again on the Opposition benches. In contrast it is clear what Labour stands for. Would it not be nice if the public could say what the Opposition stands for? But it cannot. 
We know that for 6 long years the Opposition members have sat there on the Opposition benches looking a bit stunned. They have been here for their long lunches and their late nights and they have contributed next to nothing. I guess the next issue of Trivial Pursuit will ask: “What do Opposition MPs do with their day?”. The correct answer to date has been: “Not much by the look of things.” But that comes about because in Opposition those members have been useless and they have been useless because they are lazy. They do not know their subjects they do not like their leader and in all that time in Opposition they never came up with any real policies. They might have bleated a lot but they never came up with any real policies and when the scab came off they could not come up with any detail. It is no wonder therefore that those members will be on the Opposition benches for another 3 years. They will have been 9 years in Opposition and that is almost certain to drift on to 12 or 15 years because they have already shown their unwillingness to do any hard work. Are we not watching with great interest the little internecine fights that are already developing within their caucus? 
National went into the election with unaffordable tax cuts that would have delivered $10 a week to most Kiwis but $92 a week to its millionaire supporters or MPs like Dr Brash Mr Key and a number of the others. It tried to buy the election with its tax cuts and its underhand campaigns financed by strange sects and shady deals with industry in return for favours that voters were never supposed to know about. That failed National failed and its members have turned up in this House ready to fail in Opposition for another 3 years. It is no surprise to anyone that the National members are sad as that realisation finally sinks in. 
 What a contrast one sees when one looks at the Labour-led Government which is committed to growing our economy and investing in quality public services. New Zealand has averaged a growth rate of around 4 percent over the last 6 years while the OECD average was 2.5 percent. We have received extraordinary international recognition. The International Monetary Fund recently described our economy as “strongly positive”. Our fiscal position is “very strong”. A recent OECD report about New Zealand stated: “The economy has continued on its strong upward course …” and stated that living standards have continued to improve. [ 
Interruption 
] 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I just say to members that while the honourable member is making a speech some interjections can be expected but not so many as to drown out the member. 
Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE 
: We have implemented policies in Government that mean that we now pay less in debt servicing so that resources are freed up for spending on health education and defence—the sorts of things our communities are asking us to deliver on. Crown debt has been falling relative to GDP from 35.4 percent in 1999 to 25 percent last year and to an estimated 22 percent this year. That is a remarkable achievement.