Martin Tracey: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMartin Tracey: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 10 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1400. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TRACEY MARTIN (Deputy Leader—NZ First): Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker and welcome back. It is lovely to be back again in the House. It is unfortunate however to start the year with a senior member of the Government being so confused as to think that when the Rt Hon Winston Peters wins the seat of Northland—should the board decide that that is what it will do—somehow the overhang in this Parliament does not just disappear. Mr Nick Smith seems to have been misinformed by his researchers and I suggest he goes back and has a look at the Act and he would see that it has nothing to do with Invercargill. It is actually what the people of Northland would get. Should they see the light and make sure that they elect the Rt Hon Winston Peters—should he stand—they would get the whole team of New Zealand First actually up there in Northland fixing Northland College for example. Northland College is a school where this Government tore down half of its buildings and did not bother to go and rebuild them so its students have to sit their exams in the hallways. Or there are the other schools.One of the other things that the people of Northland will get—and let us talk about the area of education—is that failing schools like Te Kura Hourua ki Whangaruru would be shut. Those students would be pulled out of Whangaruru and appropriately resourced in the current alternative school programmes the teen parent units would be increased and monitored more effectively and all these other things are what would happen for Northland should Northland finally say to National: “We will not give you a free ride.”Tell me how many members of Parliament have come out of the north who have been members of the National Party and name the things they have done for that area.Denis O’Rourke: None.TRACEY MARTIN: There you go. And actually I think what is more important is that the only person who answered that question is my colleague behind me because no member of the National Party could say a single thing that any of its representatives have done for the north. So all I can say to the north is that if the board of directors of New Zealand First decides that we will stand a candidate in that electorate and if the Rt Hon Winston Peters is that candidate the north will finally—finally—have a person have a candidate and have a representative who absolutely would stand for them and finally they would get some voice in this House. That would be all I would say about Mr Smith’s inability to actually understand the Electoral Commission and the rules around MMP—not that National likes MMP.Can I just take a moment and acknowledge that this is Safer Internet Day and acknowledge the work of NetSafe. The Hon Amy Adams there has also tweeted out about Safer Internet Day. It is an issue a growing issue with regard to our young people or even just our communities in general. The Prime Minister made a small statement—a small acknowledgment of the legislation around cyber safety and cyber-bullying that will be coming back into this House. Could I say to the Minister that if she would like to take a moment to have a good look at new evidence and new information that has come to light since that bill left the select committee she might like to consider making a wise move such as Nikki Kaye did around the Food Bill and send it back to the select committee. There is some very very interesting international information that has come to light since that bill left the select committee and it really should be sent back there for some more comment. But I will leave that with the Minister. I know she has been spoken to about it by other parties.Let us take another single sentence that the Prime Minister made in his speech. He said: “Good progress is being made on Better Public Services results.” Really? Do we think that the reason the Prime Minister made a single cursory mention at all in that statement about violence against women is that this Government does not actually have a single target to address what is one of the most major issues affecting 52 percent of the voting public of New Zealand? This is a major issue because 52 percent of our population is female. Violence against women which then leads on to all sorts of consequences for children was not even mentioned or it had a cursory mention. There were two words I think.I want to acknowledge that the Minister of Justice Amy Adams actually stood up and was very passionate about things that she was doing in her ministerial role. But they are all things that are going to be done after a woman has been beaten after a woman has been attacked after a woman has been raped and after an incident has happened. Where oh where is the plan from this Government to actually move this along—to change these social circumstances?We had a Minister sent by this Government. In 2012 the Minister of Women’s Affairs—the previous Minister not Louise Upston—went to the United Nations and in a speech there when she was reporting back under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women she made a statement that the National Government was working on a successor to the 2004-09 action plan on gender equality. So I wanted to know how this was going. What was in that action plan Minister that you told the United Nations about—stood up at the United Nations and said that your Government was addressing this issue for women? So I wrote a question for written answer. I asked the current Minister for Women Louise Upston what was the successor to the 2004-09 action plan that she said to the United Nations this Government was working on. The answer was the Better Public Services targets specifically the following: to reduce the number of people at working age who are on a benefit to increase participation in early childhood education to increase infant immunisation to reduce assaults on children to increase the proportion of 18-year-olds with National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 and increase the number of 25 to 35-year-olds with advanced training qualifications. That is the plan.That is the plan to address the issue of violence against women in this nation—one that the Government fully admits is an issue one that Amy Adams just positively passionately spoke about. That is the plan: to immunise more 2-year-olds. That is unforgivable. What that says is that the Government does not have a plan. The Prime Minister slides over the top of it when he makes that statement because not a single thing there is going to help those women who are out there being paid less than their male colleagues who are doing the same job. I do not know whether this Minister was deliberately being obtuse or whether this is actually the policy of this Government but perhaps some of the other speakers might like to take it up.We have seen that domestic violence has risen as an overall share of violent offending over the last few years under this Government. The Prime Minister stood up and suggested that everything is good and well and lovely and that we are on the right track. I have to say that the Prime Minister’s speech and parts of the speeches that followed reminded me of speeches back in the 1990s. Mr Smith mentioned growing pains a minute ago and said that of course we are going to have growing pains. What it reminded me of was when the New Zealand public was told: “No pain no gain. Hold on New Zealand. Keep letting us do this to you. Keep letting us cut your services. Keep letting us drive you down. Keep letting us sell your assets and make you dependent upon charity because at the end of the day it will be good for you.” That is what we continue to hear.While we are talking about relying on charity let us not fool ourselves. This Government is going to sell the housing stock of New Zealand which belongs to us—to New Zealanders. It is going to sell those houses it says so it can provide more flexibility and so on and so forth in the housing market. Let us get real about this. Right now those houses are assets on the Government’s books. It has to maintain those assets. It has to make sure it monitors them and looks after them. The moment the Government sells them all we get is a budgetary item that says the Government will pay somebody else for the ability to actually rent a house.What will the Government do next? It will cap that amount of money when the Salvation Army or whoever else has got that asset and needs to maintain it. Then the Government will say: “Well the maintenance is your problem. That’s your problem. We don’t own it. It’s your asset now and we’re capping this amount of money.” and the Salvation Army will go out of its way to continue to try to provide housing for people because that is what the Salvation Army does and that is what the other NGOs do.That is what this Government works on—emotional blackmail. It is making more and more people look after their fellow New Zealanders on a charitable basis because it refuses to pay for it at the same time as it opens profit-making schools and hands over hundreds of thousands of New Zealand dollars to people making a profit out of children who have to go to school. That is the true state of this nation. That is what should have been in the Prime Minister’s original speech.New Zealand First will take this fight to any place in New Zealand that it is required to take it but we will fight for it. We will continue to stand up for New Zealanders and we will continue to stand against the policies of this Government. Kia ora.