Financial Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFinancial Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 04 March 2014. Volume:696;Page:16253. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Financial Review DebateIn CommitteeThe CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson):Tēnā koutou e te Whare engā iwi engā reo engā hau ewhā.Tēnā koutoutēnā koutoutēnā koutou katoa. Greetings honourable members. The House is in Committee on the Appropriation (2012/13 Financial Review) Bill. This debate is the Committee stage of the Appropriation (2012/13 Financial Review) Bill and the time allowed for this debate is 4 hours and comprises two distinct elements. The first is the debate on the annual Financial Statements of the Government as reported on by the Finance and Expenditure Committee. Once this has concluded the Committee debates individual financial reviews of departments Offices of Parliament and non-departmental appropriations as reported on by the select committees. The debate on the Government’s financial position may be a fairly wide-ranging one but the debates on the individual financialreviews of departments Offices of Parliament and non-departmental appropriations should be relevant to their performance in the 2012-13 financial year and their current operations.The compendium of financial reviews and non-departmental appropriations available for debate is on the Table. A member other than the responsible Minister may have no more than two calls on each financial review. At the conclusion of the debate a single question is put on the provisions of the bill. There is no amendment to or debate on this question. When the Chairperson reports the bill to the House it is set down for third reading forthwith. There is no debate on the third reading.Will members please turn to the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the annual Financial Statements of the Government. The question before the Committee is that the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the annual Financial Statements of the Government for the year ended 30 June 2013 be noted. I note that this report also relates to the Finance and Expenditure Committee’s financial review of Treasury so the performance in the 2012-13 financial year and current operations of Treasury may also be debated.TreasuryFinancial Statements of the Government of New Zealand for the year ended 30 June 2013The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I am looking to recognise some honourable member.Hon David Parker: Mr Chairman.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Ah! I call the Hon David Parker.Hon DAVID PARKER (Deputy Leader—Labour): I almost expected a bell for yourself. The financial review conducted in the Finance and Expenditure Committee of Treasury and the Minister of Finance highlighted one thing amongst many which was that 5 years into this Government it has not yet run a surplus. Five years into this Government it has not run a surplus. Indeed it is close to racking up an additional $60 billion worth of borrowing—Dr Russel Norman: $60 billion?Hon DAVID PARKER: —$60 billion since it came—Tim Macindoe: And who caused that?Hon DAVID PARKER: Who has caused that? Actually that was contributed to by the Government’s unaffordable tax cuts which were weighted in favour of the wealthiest in society who needed them less than others.Let us contrast that with what the Secretary to the Treasury acknowledged in Christchurch just 2 weeks ago. The Secretary to the Treasury is not known for his exuberance. He told a Christchurch audience that “Having a buffer in the Crown’s balance sheet helped New Zealand to manage the double blow of the Canterbury earthquakes and the global financial crisis.”—i.e. he was giving credit to the prior Government for creating a buffer on the Crown’s balance sheet.We hear Mr English saying that there was a decade of deficits that the Government inherited—that terrible circumstance inherited from the prior Government—which of course is not true. The prior Government ran nine Budget surpluses in a row—6 percent of GDP at one stage amongst the highest surpluses in the developed world at a time when politicians like National Party politicians who were in power in countries in Europe or in the United States or indeed the Labour Government in the United Kingdom were running smaller surpluses or deficits in a time of plenty. So when the global financial crisis hit they already had high Government debt. The legacy of the last Labour Government was low debt—very low debt nil net Government debt. GrossGovernment debt was down from 38 percent to 18 percent of GDP. That is why this Government has had room to move. That is exactly what the Secretary to the Treasury was saying last week in Christchurch.We have just had turned down an urgent debate—somewhat surprisingly given that the report I am about to refer to the latest bungle by the Minister of Finance was for a recent period rather than the period under financial review. But we have learnt just in the last week that there was a billion-dollar mistake by Treasury. It miscalculated income inequality figures in New Zealand by $1.2 billion by in the main double-counting the accommodation supplement that is received by low-income families. Treasury also made some mistakes around Working for Families tax credits. The effect of that is relevant to the Bryan Perry report into income inequality which is the statistic that the National Government always reverts to because it does not want to talk about asset inequality it does not want to talk about decreasing homeownership rates both of which are measures of inequality growing and it does not want to acknowledge that the only time there has been a substantial decrease in annual income inequality a narrow measure though it is was under the last Labour Government through Working for Families. The only statistic the Government was willing to talk about was the Bryan Perry report on income inequality.We now know that the Government knew that that figure was wrong. We know that the Government has known since December. The Minister of Finance confirmed today in the House that he has known since 10 December and that the Prime Minister knew on or about that date and so did the Minister for Social Development. Yet they were all during the earlier part of this year when we were having debates in this House about income inequality using the Bryan Perry report that they knew was flawed. They knew it was flawed not by a small amount but by $1.2 billion of additional income that was attributed to low and middle income households which they did not in fact receive. That report understated income inequality.The Government does not talk about the other measures of inequality that show it is rising quickly. The census showed a between-census increase in the gap between household incomes in South Auckland—Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green): The issue of the Government’s fiscal performance stands as the centrepiece of this debate. I think it is very important that we remember our history in this. During the 9 years of the Labour-led Government every Budget paid down debt. It ran 9 years of surpluses. The current Minister of Finance voted against every Budget. The reason he voted against every Budget is that he said the surplus should be given away in tax cuts to upper income earners. That was the argument that Bill English and John Key made day after day year after year during the years of that Labour-led Government.You have to give credit to Michael Cullen and Helen Clark. Although we had differences with that Labour Government the fact remains that the reason why the incoming National Party Government did have a buffer was that Dr Cullen paid down debt rather than giving the surpluses away as tax cuts to upper incomer earners. That is just an historic fact. Mr English voted against every one of those Budgets because they did not give the surplus away in tax cuts to the wealthy. Instead they paid down debt. Then Mr English takes over as Minister of Finance. After the global financial crisis and the earthquakes he is able to use the fact that the previous Government reduced debt in order to buffer the effects of those two events yet he continually criticises the previous Government. The only reason that Mr English has the buffer is that the previous Government ignored Mr English’s advice and paid down debt instead of giving away tax cuts to upper income earners.Then we move into the current Government and now we have had these five Budgets. The Budgets that Mr English votes in favour of are Budgets that increase debt and give away tax cuts to upper income earners. The cost of the tax cuts to the top 10 percent of income earners is $1.1 billion every year which has had to be borrowed every year to pay for those tax cuts for the top 10 percent of income earners. Think about the priorities of this Government. When we have 300000 children living in poverty the priority for spending borrowed money by the incoming Government and the finance Minister was to spend it on tax cuts for the top 10 percent of income earners—while we have 300000 kids living in poverty. We have all of those kids who say they cannot get to school in the rain because they cannot afford raincoats who are going to school without lunches who are going hungry and who are not learning in our education system because the Government’s priority the National Party’s priority is to give tax cuts to the top 10 percent instead of putting food into the bellies of poor children so that they can learn properly.When the Green Party puts up a policy that would put food in the bellies of poor children so that they can learn properly and get an opportunity to escape poverty by getting an education the Government says it is too expensive. Our policy would cost $100 million a year. The tax cuts to the top 10 percent cost $1.1 billion per year. That is about values. The Green Party has values that say we should support poor kids to get an education. The National Party has values that say we should give money to the richest people in the country through tax cuts. That is about the differing values that are reflected in financial priorities between the National Government the Government of borrow and borrow and give it to the wealthy and the Green Party policy which is to put food in the bellies of poor kids so that they can get an education so they can get an opportunity like we all had.Lots of us in this House got an opportunity through education so that we could escape poverty. Lots of people in New Zealand had that opportunity. This Government does not want to give it to poor kids. It has introduced national standards for goodness’ sake which mean that teachers are now having to neglect poor children in their classes in lower-decile schools. They cannot afford to spend the time on those poor children because they have to try to get the kids who are near the national standard over the line. What it means is that poor kids not only are hungry at school but also they get less teacher time because the national standards policy tells teachers to focus their work on just the kids who might be pushed over the standard so that their numbers can look good.Once again poor children are left to rot by this Government. That is the Government’s priority. Instead of spending where it is needed to help out those kids so that they can get a foot on the ladder of opportunity and get an education because they are not hungry all the time the Government gives tax cuts to the top 10 percent—tax cuts that are costing $1.1 billion every year. That is $1100 million every year. It is the cost of the tax cuts to upper income earners. All that money has to be borrowed. Is that really the right priority for New Zealand?Hon JOHN BANKS (Leader—ACT): Bill English is doing a great job. He is a class act amongst Ministers of Finance in the OECD. If you do not accept that then I ask you to invite the Parliamentary Library to give you some significant headline statistics about this country’s economic well-being over these last 5 years where it has come from and where it is at. The quickest way we can secure New Zealand’s future is to live within our means and stop living beyond our means and borrowing the savings of others overseas for today’s consumption. The mind boggles at the post-Cullen leadership of the financial propositions on that side of the House these last 6 years. The mind boggles at the thought of that crowd being on this side of the House pulling thelevers at Treasury over these last 5 years. I put my hand on my heart and say that the only policy that I have heard from the Labour Opposition in recent days around the economic and social well-being of this country is for a baby bonus for people earning just $150000 a year. That is the only public policy proposition that Labour has announced apart from criticising every single cut every single saving and every single turn this Minister of Finance has made these last 5 years.The deficit is down from $7.9 billion in the year ended 30 June 2012 to $4.4 billion this year. But we are still borrowing $110 million every week from the savings of people who do not live in this country. In other words we are putting in hock future generations for our consumption today on silly propositions like giving universal superannuation to 65-year-olds or 66-year-olds. It should be 67-year-olds and I will give you 1.8 billion reasons why it should be elevated over 20 years to 67-year-olds. The 1.8 billion reasons in today’s money is $1.8 billion a year in savings. If we had a reasonable—a reasonable—amount of interest on so-called interest-free student loans then Treasury would gain by $2.2 billion a year and that would stop us from borrowing $110 million per week as we do now.The baby bonus is the kind of poor structural policy thinking that defines this bankrupt Labour Opposition. If there is something that the Labour Party is proposing that will stop us from borrowing more money and stop this country from getting into its members’ hands I want to hear it from them this afternoon. Last year Treasury published its 2013 statement on long-term fiscal policy. It showed that current spending programmes particularly in superannuation and health care are unsustainable without increasing revenue or cutting other expenditure or both. But what do we hear from the Labour Party? It is proposing to increase taxes and have more borrowing. That is what Labour members are proposing if they get themselves to this side of the House. They have got no sensible propositions around investment growth jobs and well-being.Treasury describes our proposed spending programme as fiscally challenging and it is. It is fiscally challenging but let us give credit to this Minister of Finance who I think is one of the best finance Ministers this country has ever had and probably the best in the OECD right now. He has said taihoa on this expenditure. He has said we have to cut our cloth and that is what we have done. We have got through this global crisis with $60 billion worth of debt—$60 billion. It is further evidence that we are spending beyond our means. The Fabians within the New Zealand First Party are just as bad as the Greens and the Labour Party when it comes to fiscal responsibility and bankruptcy around investment growth and jobs. We do not hear anything about that and I want to ask the leader of New Zealand First to tell us exactly what he would propose if he was sitting here come the end of the year.ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I wish to speak on behalf of New Zealand First about the National Government’s economic failure. Despite having the best 40 years of trade because of the dairy boom that we are having this Government has managed to put this economy in a perilous state. We have 150000 unemployed people—significantly more than when the Government came into office—and now we have $60 billion in Government debt. Meanwhile New Zealand’s net international debt has risen to $150 billion—a staggering sum. That Government debt of $60 billion is 10 times what the National Government inherited from the former Labour Government which was supported by New Zealand First. It is 10 times the debt of $6 billion when National took office.Meanwhile what are we seeing? We are seeing Kiwi workers with virtually static wages. Those who are on low to middle incomes are seeing virtually static wages. Sure the bosses and the very highly paid are getting significant increases but those who are out there at the coalface are not seeing the same rewards. We have seen 154000 workvisas issued in the last year for people to come into this country while there are 150000 people on the dole. Those 154000 work visas included 40 visas going to people who came in to work as supermarket checkout operators. It is hardly great policy on the part of the National Government to bring in people to work in our supermarkets.We are also seeing the end of the homeownership dream for young Kiwis. The housing bubble in Auckland is now seeing foreign speculators buying up many many houses. People who are not even living in Auckland are now pushing up the cost of housing for young Kiwi families and young Kiwis trying to get on the ladder. This Government refuses to step in and stop speculative purchasing by foreigners and people who do not even live in this country. New Zealand First will change that when we are in Government. We will ensure that people have to live here—be residents or citizens here—before they can buy property. They do that in Australia. They have the same restrictions in Australia so why not here? This Government turns a blind eye to it and allows foreign speculation to drive up the prices particularly in the likes of Auckland and Christchurch.At the same time this Government is not putting a stop to the sale of land and other strategic assets such as the 19 Crafar farms and other significant farms that are being sold. It is not stopping that. It is allowing ownership of some of the best of our productive land to disappear overseas. All the while the Government is selling off public assets that have been built up by my parents my grandparents their parents in turn and all of your parents and grandparents. Generations of people have built up the assets of this country. The Government has sold off our silverware for a miserable $5 billion or less just so it can pay the next 6 months of debt.The Hon John Banks says that debt is going up by $100 million a week. This Government is taking a miserable $5 billion from selling the best assets that we have so that it can help try to keep a lid on the debt. In so doing it is losing some $900 million a year in revenue from these assets and that is an absolute tragedy. It is like giving away your ATM machines. It is like giving away your best-earning companies if you were in private enterprise and then in a few years’ time wondering where all of those good revenue-earning companies went. Those previously owned by the Government will have disappeared down the track.At the same time regional economies are being neglected. This Government has not been prepared to put in $4 million to keep the Napier-Gisborne railway line open—a miserable small amount of money to keep a whole region vibrant in terms of that East Coast area. It is an area that has high unemployment and that could do with the continuation of the rail link. At the same time it is not retaining important infrastructure like the Hillside railway workshops in Dunedin so we see this week that Chinese engines are being bought full of asbestos—40-odd engines—while it is closing down the Hillside railway workshops. Those workshops in conjunction with international providers could have built those engines assembled the engines or indeed put a huge amount of componentry into those engines. I am sure that as a result we would not now be seeing asbestos in our trains.At the same time we are seeing the likes of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade buying ferries in Bangladesh to go to the Tokelau islands. Where is this Government stepping in and saying we should be supporting very good local industry to build boats here to go to the Pacific Islands?PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): The proposition put forward by the potential Greens-Labour administration to get more food into the bellies of the poor seems to be yet more redistribution on top of what we do already. I heard Mr Norman say we leave the poor to rot. What nonsense. We have a tax system and a Working for Families system that through cash payments to lower income families for a family of twoearning around $50000 means they get more back in Working for Families than they pay in tax as well as largely free education health care and superannuation. That is an incredible amount of redistribution. We do it because we value the vulnerable in society and that is what this National Government has been committed to. The National Government’s approach to getting food into the bellies of young children is to create the conditions where their parents are more likely to have a job and to grow the economy so that we can afford good health care and education so that we can afford the welfare to support those who are most vulnerable in difficult times.It is ironic when you get members of the Greens standing up to oppose everything that we do in order to create more wealth in this country. They oppose every free-trade agreement that we try to do notwithstanding the immense wealth that is being created through the New Zealand — China free trade agreement to take one example. They oppose the dairy industry at every turn. They oppose oil and gas exploration. They always call for more regulation and over on the Labour side those members are always wanting more taxes such as capital gains taxes.That is the nub of it. If you want to get food into the bellies of young children we need to create conditions where the economy is strong and people have jobs and so one important thing that this Government is doing is getting more people off benefits and into paid work. In the past 12 months this Government has helped 80000 people off welfare and into work. Paid work is the best route out of hardship for families that are finding it difficult to make ends meet. That is what this Government has been committed to over these past 5 years and if given the chance over the next 5 or 6 years in Government.Let us just go back over the claims and counter-claims about who left what in terms of deficits. Just remember that when we inherited this economy back in 2008 the current account deficit was almost 9 percent of GDP. It is now about 4.3 percent of GDP. The net external debt had blown out to 84 percent of GDP. That is now down to 71 percent of GDP. Inflation—that thing that robs the savings of the thrifty—was running at 5.1 percent. It is now only 1.6 percent. People can know the value of their money. Mortgage interest rates were averaging nearly 11 percent and now they are at 5.9 percent. Yes they will probably be going up some time this year but they are a lot lower than they would be otherwise if we had had a profligate Government still in power. Government spending had gone up by 50 percent in the 5 years to 2008. Yes we should commend the Labour Government early on for being reasonably disciplined but it was that third term in particular where spending really got out of control and where commitments that were made for new spending were not funded properly which this Government had to deal with as well as all the pressures of the global financial crisis and the Canterbury earthquakes. We inherited an economy that had been going backwards for four quarters before the global financial crisis in 2008 and now the economy has grown by 3.5 percent in the past year—one of the highest rates in the OECD.We are all aware of just how fragile the global situation is. Who knows what is going to come out of Europe over the next few months. It is not a time to be running off recklessly on a big new spending drive. It is about continuing and maintaining this disciplined stable Government that we have had over the past 5 years and that is the sort of thing that this country needs. I also remind the Committee that Treasury was forecasting never-ending deficits and debt that was likely to get to 60 percent of GDP and never come down. We are forecast to be back in surplus in 2014-15 and debt is expected to peak at 26.5 percent of GDP. Those are figures that we on this side of the Chamber are incredibly proud of and on that basis I commend this bill.Hon DAVID PARKER (Deputy Leader—Labour): I want to respond to a couple of issues that Paul Goldsmith raised. He tackled the Greens for criticising the poor distribution of income and wealth in New Zealand. What he did not mention was that the OECD in its most recent report into New Zealand said that New Zealand’s tax system is less redistributive than is normal in the West. So although he might say that there are some protections in the likes of Working for Families he seems to forget that those sorts of improvements on the division of income—and therefore over time wealth—were Labour Government policies that were opposed by National. He forgets that New Zealand is one of the few countries in the world not to tax capital gains and then in respect of his alluding to growth rates he claims that we are some sort of rock star economy because growth is a bit over 3 percent per annum. When the effects of the Christchurch rebuild are excluded New Zealand’s growth rate is a paltry 2 percent per annum. It is nothing that the Government can claim credit for. The earthquakes in Christchurch were of course a terrible event that adds to GDP because the rebuild costs a lot of money.In respect of the external deficit that he referred to now in New Zealand we have the highest terms of trade in more than a generation and despite that despite record dairy prices and despite raging success in trade with China under the free-trade agreement—which the Labour Government under Phil Goff negotiated—we still have a current account deficit that is over 4 percent and is projected to get worse. So with the best terms of trade and with record commodity prices we still are not achieving that need to improve our export balance or our total exports. The Government seems to have given up on its objective of increasing exports significantly as a percentage of GDP. It has made virtually no progress in that regard in the last 5 years. The export base of New Zealand has narrowed towards a decreasing bundle of goods and not only is more reliant on dairy it is more reliant on milk powder going into China.Against all that background we have got the Government being tricky on these statistics. Before I sat down last time I was saying that we not only now know that the statistics it was using in respect of income inequality exclude capital gains it also overstated the incomes of those who are less well off by counting the accommodation supplement twice and by making mistakes around Working for Families. In the broader measures such as those used in the census we know that the income gap between South Auckland and wealthy suburbs in Auckland grew by 19 percent between the two censuses—a 19 percent increase in the gap between family incomes of South Auckland families compared with those in wealthier suburbs.So there is no doubt that inequality is getting worse in New Zealand and that is one of the reasons why New Zealand is underperforming educationally. There are some problems that we have in our education system. Not all of them can be put down to inequality but a substantial proportion of them according to the OECD can be tied back to the fact that people are so poor that they cannot take advantage of the educational opportunities that our State system provides to them.This country needs a Government that is willing to improve the depth of capital markets. KiwiSaver which was opposed by National when it was one of ours is now held up as one of its successful policies. We think that we need to follow the Australians in having a universal work-based savings system. We need tax changes—both research and development tax credits as well as a capital gains tax excluding the family home so as to direct that capital more efficiently to the parts of the economy that need it most. Through that we will get higher wages and more jobs with career structures rather than committing too many of our young people into low-paid service jobs with irregular hours of work no career prospects and lower rates of homeownership which is the pattern that we see under the current Government.So I do not think that the Government has achieved what its objective was which was to rebalance the economy. If the Minister of Finance does get to his feet and take a call in this debate I want him to start by apologising for misleading the country in respect of the income inequality figures that he knew were wrong from December last year. In the middle of the inequality debate including in this Chamber he did not fess up to the fact that his Government had made a billion-dollar bungle that overstated the incomes of low and middle income New Zealanders.Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): Mr Chairman—Hon Damien O’Connor: What can we trust?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well it is interesting to hear the interjection from the Labour side asking the question: “What can we trust?” because I can tell you whom those members cannot trust and that is their leader with his trust. That is the answer to the question. Damien O’Connor asked today of all days: “What can you trust?” The answer if you are a Labour member who voted against David Cunliffe as most of them did is that they cannot trust their leader with his trust because he—Hon Trevor Mallard: This is Bill English!Hon BILL ENGLISH: This is the leader who says: “I’m going to pay back the money to the people whom I cannot identify who gave it to me.” So that is what is going to happen. DavidCunliffe’s contribution to the economic debate today is: “People gave me money confidentially to a trust so I could avoid declaring it on the pecuniary interests register. And now that I’ve said I’m going to pay it back I’m going to pay it back to people whose names I don’t know.” His own members of his own caucus do not believe that. Of course the real shame of all this is that many New Zealanders who used to rely on the Labour Party to protect and advance their interests including those who show they are on below 60 percent of the median wage now find that the Labour Party is enmeshed in a tangle of its own making over whether its own leader is trying to get around the pecuniary interests of MPs.And who is left? Who is left to advance the interests of the lowest-paid New Zealanders? The John Key - led National-led Government—that is who. We spend more time talking about the most vulnerable and those on the lowest incomes because we are the Government that last week working with aspirational low-income New Zealanders got 1200 of them off a welfare benefit and into a job. And if there is one thing Labour does not like it is people getting off welfare and into work because they might become ungrateful. They might become more interested in lower taxes than in higher benefits. Is that not a risk?Those people might start saying: “We want decent education for our kids because we understand the power of work.” whereas Labour would rather they stayed on welfare and accepted mediocre education because if you are disadvantaged you cannot expect to learn. That is another big difference. The National Party believes that the point of a public education system is precisely to overcome disadvantage. The Labour Party believes that the point of a public education system is to make sure that those who are disadvantaged do not learn because you cannot teach them. They are beyond hope. They do not deserve aspiration. They cannot learn. And then you can rely on them voting Labour if that is their situation.Well the evidence is that more and more of the people who used to vote Labour when Labour was a working-class party now do not believe that Labour can advance their interests. In the old days Labour was a working-class party; now it represents the measuring class.Hon John Banks: Who?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The measuring class—people with tertiary education who spend all their time telling us how much misery there is in our community. Labourknows even less than ever about what to do about it. Who is doing something about it? The National Government. We are not sitting around spending and forever arguing over measuring the misery; we are trying to break the patterns that locked it in. That is what is behind the whole-of-Government approach to this financial review. It is a National Government focused on getting results and working with people who have got hope and aspiration and this year we are going to get to argue with a party that believes that none of those things can be achieved because people are too disadvantaged to be able to get ahead. We do not write them off; we work with their aspirations and their hope.Reports noted.Parliamentary Commissioner for the EnvironmentTE URUROA FLAVELL (Co-Leader—Māori Party):Tēnā koe Mr Chairperson.Ka nui te mihiki a koeitēneirā. I note that the Local Government and Environment Committee confirmed that there were no matters to bring to this Committee. Unfortunately I disagree. I think we should also use the financial review process to highlight the strengths not just the weaknesses of our current entities and in that regard the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is one we should highlight.As an independent Officer of Parliament the commissioner reports to Parliament as a whole not to a Government Minister. This is very different as I understand it from other environmental agencies such as the Ministry for the Environment and theEnvironmental Protection Authority which both report to and have their budgets set by a Government Minister. The commissioner therefore has a unique opportunity to provide Parliament with independent advice on any matters that may have any impact on the quality of our environment. The mission of the commissioner is to maintain and improve the quality of the New Zealand environment by providing robust independent advice that influences decisions.As a party committed to the kaupapa of kaitiakitanga we see investment in protecting our primary ecosystems as vitally connected to future economic prosperity for the benefit of future generations. In our approach we promote renewable energy - efficient marae communities towns and cities as the basis for economic development and the primary foundation must be to protectPapatūānuku as the key to our future.The commissioner pays particular attention to environmental problems that are irreversible cumulative and accelerating. Climate change ticks all of these three boxes and is the greatest environmental challenge the world faces. We appreciate the insights that the commissioner has shared with us. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has offered particular value in profiling the specific trade-offs that must be decided upon such as the expansion of dairy farming versus the goal of maintaining and improving water quality. We submit that the inclusion of the mana o te wai supports the construction of a decision-making framework in which there is as there should be a strong presumption in favour of water quality. We are encouraged by the leadership the parliamentary commissioner offers in this regard.It is through our positive observations of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment that we are promoting the concept of a parliamentary commissioner for the Treaty. A commissioner from our perspective would have a lot of tie-overs. A Treaty commissioner would be required to report annually to Parliament on the status ofwhānau and to monitor State sector progress in improving outcomes forwhānau. A Treaty commissioner would also be required to proactively review and monitor progress of Treaty settlements as well as the performance of the Office of Treaty Settlements and the Crown’s commitment to the Treaty.Similar to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment we would hope that they would look to result areas. So our position is that a Treaty commissioner wouldhave specific roles that would see them looking at things such as developing a result area forwhānau that is measurable and for which we can hold chief executives for example to account. We would want services that are visible responsive and organised aroundwhānau and that policy provided to Cabinet and all bills tabled in the House be required to demonstrate the impact of the policy onwhānau and that Treaty relationship. Only from this can a model of justice that gives fair weight to the rights and needs of all people be derived. That is really important.So we would look to require an annual report to Parliament like the Commissioner for the Environment provides on the progress of things like theDeclaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in facilitating the right ofMāori to preserve evolve and transform their ways of life. We would introduce a requirement for Government departments and Crown entities to report annually on outcomes forMāori. Maybe another key deliverable might be achieved in conducting a Treaty audit across Government departments. The audit would include the effectiveness ofMāori-specific advice put forward by departments including assessment of the various mechanisms for presenting such advice whether it be toMāori focus unitswāhangaMāori or a deputy secretary forMāori etc. So the annual accounts of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment show the measures—EUGENIE SAGE (Green): I am pleased to take a call on the review of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is an independent environmental watchdog for this Parliament and the public. With a total of only 20 staff and a budget of around $2.62 million it is the smallest of the Offices of Parliament. It is very cost-effective. The Green Party would like to see it better resourced so that it can undertake more investigations of the quality that it has done recently into a wide range of environmental processes issues and agencies.As Te Ururoa Flavell noted its mission is to maintain or improve the quality of New Zealand’s environment by providing robust independent advice that influences decisions. Certainly the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is providing robust advice and quality reports; the problem is that the Government is not listening. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has provided quite extensive advice on the Government’s changes to the Resource Management Act and has said that that Act should not become an economic development Act which of course is what the Government is proposing with its changes to the heart of the Act—the purpose and principles in Part 2—by stripping out some of those key environmental principles. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s advice was not to do that yet the Government has not taken that off the table.Then we see that in 2011 the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment did a very comprehensive investigation into the use of 1080. She confirmed how little the Department of Conservation was doing in terms of controlling animal pests on the conservation estate. The Department of Conservation last year spent only $18 million on controlling rats stoats possums and other animal pests. It controls those pests on only one-eighth of public conservation land. That shows that this Government is not serious about protecting our native plants wildlife and wild landscapes even though we have an extinction crisis in New Zealand. The Green Party values our native plants and wildlife. It would invest in doing predator control over a much larger area of conservation land.The other area where the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is not succeeding in its mission because the Government has blocked its ears is in water quality. Last November the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment did a very comprehensive report on land use and nutrient pollution. It wasa big report. It was underpinned by substantial research by the Motu Economic and Public Policy Research Trust and others and it showed the very strong link between land-use change and water pollution—the fact that where you are getting this extensive change from forestry and fromdryland farming to more intensive agriculture like dairying you get more water pollution. That report showed that the amount of nitrogen that was entering rivers every year in most regions would continue to increase.The Green Party wants rivers that we can swim in. Yet what has the Government done with this major report from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment which shows that in my own region of Canterbury the burden of nutrients on Canterbury’s rivers lakes and streams would increase by 45 percent between 1996 and 2020? What has the Government done? It has not come out with strong limits on nutrients in its proposed changes to the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management. No it has come out with very weak limits.So you have got New Zealand’s eminent freshwater scientists backing up what the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment was saying in her report—that we needed to set much tighter limits on nitrate because otherwise we would end up with rivers that had more nitrate in them than the eight worst rivers in the OECD that we would end up with more nitrate than is found in the Yangtze River in China—yet what did the Minister for the Environment say? She said that the Freshwater Sciences Society New Zealand’s leading freshwater scientists was simply wrong when it highlighted that we were going down the track of China and the Yangtze River.We in the Green Party value fresh water. We want strong rules for land-use management so that we are not seeing nutrients sliding off the land into our aquifers and into our rivers. We want a charge on the commercial use of water for irrigation. We would implement the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. We would take seriously her report showing the burden that allowing increased expansion of dairying is putting on our rivers.The Government needs to look much more closely at the advice in the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s reports. It needs to avoid burdening our environment with the debt that it is creating through its stand-off land-use controls.BRENDAN HORAN (Independent): I take a call on the financial review of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The Local Government and Environment Committee report is only four lines “and has no matters to bring to the attention of the House.” But Dr Wright is doing important work and I would like to touch on some of that from the time under review and the current operations.She has produced an important report—an update on water quality in New Zealand. As previous speakers have said New Zealand’s water quality is in an appalling state. We have a clean green reputation so how can we let our waterways deteriorate so rapidly? Our country’s own spirituality that of wairua—that the blood and bones of our ancestors flow through our rivers lakes and streams—implies that we would have great respect for our water. But the reality is that our rivers lakes and streams are becoming heavily polluted. One needs only to look at theManawatū River and in my area theKaituna River. I have gone down that river. I have taken photos. It has been quite amazing because the real pollution starts as soon as the dairy farming starts. In about the last 15 kilometres of the river you have estuaries and streams running into it where it says “No human contact”. In Dr Wright’s report she touches on some of that pollution. How can our waterways be so polluted? The intensification of dairy farming is one of the main contributors to our polluted waterways and we urgently need to do something about it. Where is the funding? Where is the teeth behind legislation? We need to take note of Dr Wright’s report.I also touch on the point regarding the current operations within the scope of this debate. Dr Wright wrote to members in parties a month ago regarding the Environmental Reporting Bill which has subsequently been introduced. She made the point that if the bill is passed in close to its current form the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment will need significant resources to discharge the new functions arising from the bill. So when we come to consider the Environmental Reporting Bill this Parliament will need to pay close attention to the allocation of resources to the commissioner.In closing I would like to make two points. One is that the Officers of Parliament including Dr Wright have their budgets set by one select committee the Officers of Parliament Committee and have their financial review conducted by a different one in this case the Local Government and Environment Committee. The Officers of Parliament are the only entities treated in this way. All the ministries and departments have their financial reviews done by the same committee that reviews their estimates. We can cast our eyes to the problems faced by the Office of the Ombudsmen when its chronic underfunding did not get proper attention for some time. So I hope that we might be able to find a solution. This might involve moving the financial reviews to the Officers of Parliament Committee. That may be a better way.Report noted.Department of the Prime Minister and CabinetHon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I would like to spend 5 minutes on this issue to inquire whether the Prime Minister is going to take his place in the chair or whether he is going to spend his time out consulting with people who do not believe—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! I think the member knows the rules about referring to the absence of a member.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: No I have not.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): No you have not but this is just a wee caution.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: The question I was going to ask is whether the Prime Minister gives greater priority to consulting with people who believe that vapour trails are poisoning New Zealanders or that man did not land on the moon or whether Parliament is his priority. That is the question that I want to ask because this is the debate where we talk about Cabinet process where we talk about the revolving door and where we talk about the member who is currently out of Cabinet the Hon John Banks who is out because there has been a prima facie case established against him for fraud. That is the reason the Prime Minister accepted the fraudulent member’s resignation. This is the time we ask whether as part of the ongoing matters to do with the formation of Cabinet the Prime Minister is going to go canvassing with John Banks in the back woods of Georgia—the scene inDeliverance—whether that is where John Banks is going to do his canvassing or whether he is going to leave that area alone and just go to Utah and talk about polygamy.I want to know about the leadership of ACT and what is acceptable to the Prime Minister who is acceptable to the Prime Minister—Hon John Banks: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I think it is appropriate right now that you remind the speaker on his feet that this is a debate about the Prime Minister’s expenditure the Prime Minister’s department the Cabinet Office and the responsibilities of those not Georgia not something in Texas and not all the other crap that he is coming up with.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): I think the member’s use of certain words was inappropriate at that point and I would caution him not to do that. I think there was avery clear instruction laid out to the Committee about where this debate should go and I think the member speaking needs to draw into the report of the Prime Minister. Examples are fine but we need to keep bringing it into that.Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I have been in this Parliament for quite a long time and when we come to these sorts of debates particularly those involving the Prime Minister I do not recall ever seeing the person who was in charge of the vote that we are talking about—and I cannot offend against Standing Orders so I will put it this way—being unable to respond to the debate. Right? I have not said anything else. He is unable to respond to the debate. It really is a serious diminishing of this Parliament—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! [Interruption] Order! I am not sure what the point of order is. Please sit. It has also been the custom of the Committee of the whole House to have other members filling the Chair here on a regular basis. I am not sure what the point the member is making is but I do not see a point of order that is relevant to the debate.Rt Hon Winston Peters:I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. With respect I know that members fill in when Ministers and others are not available but when you are down the road having coffee which has just been reported to me that is something else.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! You are using a point of order for the purpose of debate.Hon TREVOR MALLARD:The point I was trying to make is that this Prime Minister will take anyone and he will get the advice that he wants in order to have any crook anyone who believes in weird ideas and anyone who wants polygamy bigamy or a whole pile of other things to be part of his arrangement. It makes a “shared ministry” and a “close ministry” take on a whole new set of meanings when John Banks and others are involved.I want to focus in particular on the biggest scandal of the past 12 months in this area and that is the reinstatement of the Hon Peter Dunne—and that word “honourable” is usable only in this Parliament—to this Prime Minister’s department. Let us just get the facts straight. Mr Dunne for a very short period of time—until he woke up—claimed to the media only that he did not make the draftKitteridge report on the Government Communications Security Bureau available to a Fairfax journalist. After about a day Mr Dunne stopped making that claim. Mr Dunne would not tell the Prime Minister that he had not made that report available. The Prime Minister had discussions with him on at least three occasions and he would not give the Prime Minister that assurance. On I think five occasions Mr Dunne has been invited within Standing Orders to make it clear in this House that he did not make the draftKitteridge report available to a Fairfax journalist and on every single occasion he has declined to do that. And that is the right thing to do because if he did the opposite he would be lying and he would be before the Privileges Committee so that is the right thing for him to do.But I just want to ask Chris Tremain how he feels being fired as Minister of Internal Affairs—fired as Minister of Internal Affairs—and replaced by someone who leaked a confidential document on the Government’s spy agency. This was a Minister who at the time refused to tell the Prime Minister he did not do it because he could not. He could not lie to the Prime Minister. He did not want to lie to the Prime Minister. He did not want to lie to the House. That is why the Hon Peter Dunne did not make those denials.I want to say to the Prime Minister that he is going to have to make a correction soon because the Prime Minister on the last Wednesday the House sat stated in this House that Dunne had denied it. He had not.Report noted.Government Communications Security BureauNew Zealand Security Intelligence ServiceGRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Well what a year it was for the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB)—a year in which the confidence of New Zealanders in their security and intelligence agencies hit an all-time low. It hit an all-time low because Prime Minister John Key the Minister responsible for those security and intelligence agencies failed in his duty to New Zealanders to provide adequate oversight to those agencies. He is by law the one person who can provide that oversight on behalf of New Zealanders but he failed. New Zealanders no longer trust in their intelligence and security agencies and the fault for that lies at the feet of the Prime Minister.If we look at the record of the GCSB during the year under review it is stuff-up after stuff-up cover-up after cover-up. In the middle of it the Prime Minister introduced legislation to fundamentally change the role of the GCSB. He went around New Zealand downplaying that but the end result is that we now have an agency that was formerly about foreign intelligence but that can now spy on New Zealanders. That is the change that has been made by the Prime Minister but he would not admit that and he would not admit that it expanded the powers over New Zealanders. He had to come to this House during the last reading of the legislation and say that in the end the only defence he could give New Zealanders as to whether or not they will be spied on by their own foreign intelligence agency is his word—his word that he will not use those powers that he has given himself.Well this side of the Chamber and indeed many New Zealanders do not trust the Prime Minister on that matter. They do not believe him. They do not believe him about the GCSB because time after time when there have been debates on the GCSB the Prime Minister has evaded the Prime Minister has avoided answering questions and the Prime Minister has occasionally—outside of this Chamber and inside this Chamber—avoided the truth.Did we not also know about that in the year under review when the appointment of Ian Fletcher was revealed? The Prime Minister tried to tell us he had nothing to do with the appointment of his old school friend to that job but little by little the details were dragged out from him. It turns out that the Prime Minister intervened in that appointment process cut across a State Services Commission process and rang Ian Fletcher up in Australia and said he better apply for that job. He told him to talk toMaartenWevers the head of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. He was not even meant to be part of the process at that stage. He appointed his mate to run a security and intelligence agency where sometimes the only two people in the room discussing what that agency does are Ian Fletcher and John Key.It is too cosy by half and New Zealanders who want to have confidence in their security and intelligence agencies have had that completely undermined by John Key appointing his mate to run the GCSB and ramming through legislation that rides roughshod over the rights of New Zealanders. The Labour Party wants us to have strong intelligence agencies that are doing their job. We do not know at this stage whether that is what we have got. We have agencies where we are totally unsure what they are up to and we need a far-reaching review.Also in the period under review was the time in which the illegal surveillance of 88 New Zealanders came to light. So not only do we have a Prime Minister covering up what is going on but we find out that under his watch there has been illegal surveillance. He was told months in advance of when New Zealanders were told about this illegal surveillance. He was told 3 or 4 months ahead of when it was made public and he chose to cover that up further undermining the confidence of New Zealanders. Then mostrecently we have had the revelation that the GCSB could not even get its numbers right in this House about the number of interception warrants and access authorisations that it has enforced. This House was misled by the GCSB to the tune of around 12 extra access authorisations and around four extra interception warrants. It did not tell New Zealanders that until it realised later that it had stuffed up.The GCSB under the Prime Minister’s watch has had its powers expanded at the same time as it has become a laughing stock. That is not what we want in our intelligence agencies. New Zealanders should be able to have confidence in them. Under this Prime Minister under John Key they cannot.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): There is a long history of cross-party consensus on intelligence issues in New Zealand. That is as it should be. We all believe in the defence of New Zealand and the protection of our people and their interests from foreign threats. Unfortunately as the Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service and the Minister responsible for the GCSB the Prime Minister has dramatically failed this nation. Today of course he has not put himself in a position to respond to questions in this Committee. The security services are of critical importance but the Prime Minister has shown only his casualness and incompetence and prefers to go and have a cup of coffee downtown.Hon Annette King: Is that where he is?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: That is where he was when this was all relevant.David Bennett: Oh we’re going to have a speech all about it.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well you are getting a brilliant speech of course. The question is whether you have got the intellectual capacity to absorb it. In the area of the security services the public must take so much on trust alone. That is because nearly all the work has to be done behind closed doors. The security services work in the shadows. Therefore for the sake of Mr Bennett from the Hamilton seat that he will soon lose it is imperative that this trust is not abused as it has been.You see Mr Bennett some people in this country are concerned about civil liberties. I know that Mr Bennett is not. Illegality has been tolerated and then plastered over with legislation. The legislation that the Government drafted and passed as amending legislation has left people anxious and alarmed at what is seen as an erosion of their civil liberties. There has been a fundamental loss of trust in the area of the security services and it is entirely due to the Prime Minister’s behaviour. Appointing an old mate to head the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) was a mistake and should never have happened but it is totally consistent with the PM playing games with due process.And let me say about his denial with regard to the Coatesville raid that there is no Western leader president or prime minister in any self-respecting democracy who would ever believe the Prime Minister’s denials that the head of the GCSB and the intelligence services in this country is the only one of numerous people who does not know. Has he sacked somebody for not informing him? Has he got rid of them for not informing him? No because he wantonly wants to avoid the fact that some of us know that he knew and we will prove it. We will tell you the Ministers over there one by one who were in the know. It is either their backsides or his but they are going to be named as things unfold in the next few weeks in this Parliament.The public has no confidence that the Prime Minister will act with the highest integrity in relation to security issues. His credibility has gone. I mean see the way that he is dealing with the other parties in this Parliament: the ACT Party United Future and the “Looney Tunes” Party that thinks that the vapour trails are poisoning the New Zealand population. You know I can see why he has had a Damascus experience and now he wants to talk to that safest and wisest of political parties New Zealand First. Heall of a sudden realises the game is up and unless he can try to make it up and get some sort of sanity back into the political environment then he is going to go down in a screaming heap. Why? It is because the internal National Party polls tell Mr Brownlee or “Mr Fix-it” Steven Joyce that things are not looking too good that there is a soft underbelly of flakiness and that if that goes it is goodnight Gerry goodnight Mr Bennett—and goodnight both Hamilton seats.Oh I know that nervous look. I have seen that nervous look before. I know what it is like—smiles above the deck knocking knees under it. It is all because the Prime Minister in whom they propose so much trust and who said he is bright intelligent and alert is in charge of two security services and the only person who does not know what is going on—he claims wantonly mistakenly erroneously and falsely—is him. My comment to Mr Brownlee filling in today is this: Mr Brownlee you as Minister know that what he is saying is not true so why do you not confess on his behalf?Report noted.Canterbury Earthquake Recovery AuthorityHon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Just a few days ago my Labour colleagues and I went to visit the home of Mrs Dot Boyd who has been waiting for over 3 years for her house to be repaired. On several occasions she has been told that she is just about to move out so she has packed up all her possessions and waited and nothing has happened. For over 3 years this fine and feisty woman in her 80s has waited with her entire possessions packed into cardboard boxes living as if she is in a refugee camp because of the incompetence and arrogance of the Earthquake Commission and her insurance company. This is not acceptable in a developed country and the agency that is charged with leading our recovery the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority is like the Earthquake Commission and the insurance companies providing more obstacles to our recovery than it is providing support and recovery.I regret to say that I hold the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery entirely responsible for that bureaucracy the burden that has been put on Canterbury people because I think that Minister is out of touch. It may well be because the scale of the job is just too big. It may be that he has got such a massive bureaucracy in the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority now. There are over 300 bureaucrats in a Government department that was meant to be an enabler of recovery that was meant to drive and support other agencies and that is now being described by everyone across the political spectrum from the residents through to the property developers in the central business district as more of an obstacle than anything else imaginable.I think the Minister is in denial about it. It is exactly the same as the situation with Mrs Boyd. When Mr Brownlee was told by the media about Mrs Boyd’s case he said it was “disappointing” and that clearly somebody had “dropped the ball”. That is disappointing! What makes the Minister angry? What makes the Minister so fired up that he actually wants to not address individual cases but wants to fix the system so that Canterbury can get back on to a path of recovery? Disappointed is what you might be if a call was a week or two late but 3 years too late is a lot more than disappointing and I think it should make the Minister angry. I think the Minister should be getting in the head of his Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority and saying “Get some action in our region.” As a constituency MP I cannot imagine how he is not exactly on top of the issues that our constituents face but from his response to that case and to others he seems completely out of touch.That is actually consistent with the behaviour of the rest of his Cabinet colleagues who breeze into Canterbury go to the opening of an envelope—it would be the opening of an oyster if we had them in Canterbury—turn a sod say “Aren’t we doing well forthe people of Canterbury?” and catch the next plane out. Very rarely do they get off the Memorial Avenue highway—a quick zoom into the city back out again to the airport and out of town. Come over to our side of the city other Ministers and see how we are living. See how day in day out people are coping with the lack of support from the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority. The scale of damage both physical and emotional in our region is huge. For some it has been overwhelming.It is my view that at times like this all our leaders should be pulling together should be sharing their collective skills and saying “What’s the agreed vision and how do we all do our bit to get there?”. We have not seen any of that. I think it is a wasted opportunity. We have seen in Waimakariri and Selwyn the mayors and the councillors getting on with it. What we saw for 2½ years was the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery throwing pot-shots at the then mayor and recently he has started it up with the current mayor. This is an opportunity to work together that should not be wasted. Reconnect with the people of Canterbury show some leadership and some vision and use the powers of the authority to help others.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery): I think that was a deplorable speech. What I have to say is that in the 3½ years since those earthquakes Labour members who have repeatedly said that they were out there with the people—working with the people empathising with the people and dealing with the people—have made no more than five requests for assistance through the Earthquake Commission. Five requests—I have the record here. I am happy to table it. Repeatedly it is a—Hon Ruth Dyson: That’s a lie and you know it.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order!Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I am sorry Ms Dyson it is not a lie. It is an undeniable fact—Hon Ruth Dyson: No it’s a lie.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! Members know that they must not use that term in connection with another member. Members know that.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: It is an undeniable fact that only five cases have been put before the Earthquake Commission in the last 3½ years. Plenty of tub-thumping about people’s bad circumstances but five cases only.Hon Ruth Dyson: Liar liar liar.Hon Michael Woodhouse: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I do apologise to the Minister in the chair but I cannot sit here and listen to Ms Dyson continue to use those terms time and again after being implored by you not to.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): I am sorry. I did not hear the member but I will now say that the member will desist. If she continues to use the words that I admonished her for she will leave the Chamber. Members know the rules.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: So not only have there been only five cases brought by Labour members of Parliament to the Earthquake Commission in the last 3 years but two of them have been brought to the commission byPoto Williams who has been in the place for only 6 months. So what we saw the other day was the most despicable political manipulation of a vulnerable person in Canterbury. Did they tell us when they found out that that poor woman was in that bad circumstance? No. They went and organised a photo opportunity for David Cunliffe and Clayton Cosgrove and Ms Dyson to turn up there and grandstand on the misery of that woman. That is utterly despicable and it is typical of the way Labour members have behaved in Christchurch for the last 3½ years—utterly utterly despicable behaviour.The comments about the size of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority I find quite amusing. Firstly it was never meant to be just a small policy shop. There wasa massive gap in the capability of the Christchurch City Council to deliver on any recovery plans. So I would simply ask Labour members this: tell us what work the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority should stop—tell us what work the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority should stop. And what do we get? Blank faces and more ranting—blank faces and more ranting. Just tell us one thing that the authority should not be doing.There has been a huge job done in Canterbury by the workers who are part of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority. There are some 24 recovery plans in place. The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority leads 14 of those. It sits alongside community organisations that lead others. There has been a massive effort to re-zone land and to make it safe for people to occupy. Yes I have to say it is disappointing—again that word—because things could have gone more quickly. But the courts have had far too much to say in my opinion and have in fact not understood what natural justice is for people who are waiting even now to find out what they are doing. [Interruption] Now you see the sort of reaction that is being exhibited over there—ranting screaming raging mock anger. That does not do anything for anyone who has got a difficult circumstance to deal with.I say again that I have got the evidence here and I am going to table it—only five complaints to the Earthquake Commission by Labour Party members. There were two from Ms Dyson one from Ms Dalziel and two fromPoto Williams who to her credit in only 6 months has managed to get those complaints up. It was a shocker the other day. To use that 85-year-old woman in the way the Labour Party did was simply outrageous. There was not a darned thing that the photo opportunity with David Cunliffe could achieve—nothing. And did they tell us how long they had known it? I understand they knew for 3 months. They knew before Christmas that that woman was living in those disastrous circumstances. Did they tell us? No they sat on it because this was an opportunity for David to come down and do some big grandstanding over this.I am going to seek another speaking slot [Bell rung]. Mr Chairman?The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): The Hon Gerry Brownlee.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: There are over 55000 damaged homes that have now been completed through the Earthquake Commission’s earthquake recovery programme. I take the Committee back to just immediately after these disasters when there were three important things that were said to us. Those things were firstly that our population would fall and start to leave the city; secondly that real estate values would fall dramatically and perhaps take up to a decade and a half to recover; and thirdly that we would have widespread unemployment and other social deprivation that is typical of disasters around the world. Partly because of the Government’s response but mostly because of Cantabrians’ response to what the Government has done in this process we do not have any of those statistics facing us at the present time. We have got a growing population in Canterbury. We have in Canterbury the lowest unemployment of anywhere in New Zealand and we have real estate prices rising to a point where some would say it is now a problem.The one thing that is absolutely certain is that if people are to live good lives they need to have income. The Government moved very quickly after the earthquakes to put in place the wage subsidy—an amount that meant that any employer could claim up to $500 per worker per week while that business was reorganising itself to get back on its feet. That held employment in Canterbury. It gave time for businesses to move into new premises and to relocate in order to offer their services or their products or whatever it might have been. The consequence of that is that we have had record levels of exports out of Canterbury over the last four or five quarters and we have an economy that is now growing at close to 7 percent. All augurs well for the future of Canterbury. Theremaining Earthquake Commission properties that are still problematic are in fact mostly multiple units—there may be up to in one case 43 units on one title—with a range of insurers all trying to work out who pays for what. In the future we will have to look at land tenure we will have to look at conveyancing rules and we will have to look at the way in which bodies corporate are required to operate in order to ensure this disaster does not happen anywhere else in New Zealand.To suggest that there is total doom and gloom in Canterbury is quite wrong. There is despair at the inability—it would seem after 5 months—of the new council to get on top of its bureaucracy. I say again to Labour members that if there is anything they can definitely demonstrate that the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority should not be doing then I want to know about it because I cannot think of one thing it is doing that is a duplication of council efforts or a duplication of any other efforts. I can think of a lot of well-meaning NGOs that want to be doing more in this space but the reality is that there has to be the resource available. This Government has not been stinting in making money and resource available to move things forward.I would like to take time if it was available to talk about some of the Earthquake Commission cases that have made their way into the media in recent times. I would like to talk about some of the Southern Response cases that have made their way into the media in recent times. All I would say is that if people want to go to the media and complain that they are not being fairly treated they have an obligation to put all of the information on the table so that everyone can see exactly how they are being treated. I suggest there would be many throughout New Zealand who might struggle to understand that there was mistreatment involved in many of those cases. It is a big job and no one is resiling from that. It is a big job for the insurers. It is a big job for the Earthquake Commission.One thing that I must comment on is a Marsh report just recently saying that private insurers in Canterbury have performed worse than in many other disasters in the world. The subtle difference but the extremely important difference is that we had 21 months of shakes before we got a 3-month period when the insurers could start their work. Further to that we have got a penetration rate of insurance in New Zealand of over 98 percent. No other jurisdiction in the world has that level. So yes it might be easy to say: “Oh well the insurers have done their work somewhere else.” The fact is they had a lot fewer insured.Report noted.Ministry of TransportDARIEN FENTON (Labour): If we had had more opportunity I think we should have had a closer look at the Ministry of Transport and its Turnaround Plan for KiwiRail because clearly the Government’s commitment to turning round KiwiRail is coming off the tracks as we have seen in the past few days. In fact there has been a litany of problems over the last year or so. We have seen the imported Chinese wagons. The locomotives are having to have their brakes completely replaced and now we have asbestos in the locomotives. I will get back to that in a minute. We have seen the debacle with Peruvian sleepers which are having to be replaced by contractors right throughout the country. I am told that some of those sleepers are still so dangerous that railway workers cannot walk on them.We have seen the issue in the Kaimai Tunnel last year where contractors were exposed to unnecessary and unhealthy gas risks. That was all to do with contractors and the fact that they were not carrying out their health and safety requirements. We have had the debacle with theAratere ferry. There has just been a catalogue of problems and I say that this goes back to the Turnaround Plan and the approach of this Government ofcost cutting of lowest-cost tendering of contracting out and of putting pressure on our national railway to deliver profits on freight while cutting costs everywhere else—while cutting costs everywhere else.Here we are today and that approach is now putting workers’ lives at risk. That is where we have ended up. We have asbestos in these locomotives. We have a rolled-over locomotive in Auckland on which work has now been stopped. The only reason that the workers did not carry on driving those locomotives was that the unions said that no workers were not going to put their lives on the line for this killer—killer—asbestos. The unions said they were not going to allow their workers to be exposed to that.I understand—and I would challenge the Minister of Transport to tell me I am wrong—that there was real reluctance from KiwiRail to stop those trains those locomotives being used. It was proposing actually that they could keep driving them that it was safe and that they could be contained. We are talking as I said about a killer substance. It is amazing to me and many other people who have been across this story in the last few days that we still import asbestos into New Zealand. It is still legal to do so.Even though the Chinese company gave commitments that there was no asbestos in the trains the warning signs have been there for some time. Over last November the Australians found asbestos in Chinese-made locomotives. The warning sign was there. KiwiRail checked it and came back and said there was none. Well of course there was. So I put the blame squarely on this Minister of Transport and on the KiwiRail Turnaround Plan which he is responsible for. He has a lot of questions to answer. I want to know when he knew that there was asbestos in these locomotives. When did he find out?I happen to know that KiwiRail found out about this last Wednesday—that is 25 February. KiwiRail did not tell the workers until the 28th 3 days later and did not tell the public until Saturday. I want to know from the Minister of Transport whether he was involved in conversations with KiwiRail at that time about whether it should go public and whether it should try to persuade those workers to continue to work on those locomotives. The thing about railway workers is that their history with asbestos goes back a long long way. They have fought this for years and years and years. So it is completely understandable that they are horrified. They are afraid of the exposure they have had.I think the bottom line of all of this that gets to me is that this Government and the Minister made the decision with the Turnaround Plan to have these locomotives and wagons and other things made in China. We lost an entire workshop and skilled workers because of it. Here we are now at the end of it with workers’ lives on the line. I just find that appalling. I wish the Minister were able to get up and take a call in response to these concerns that we have. I think the thing that we want to see from the Minister and what we will be seeking—Report noted.Ministry of Business Innovation and EmploymentHon SHANE JONES (Labour): Kia oraanōtātou. We are talking about the commerce portfolio and I want to direct our attention to the need for the Minister of Commerce to show a greater degree of commitment to interest in and ownership of introducing a way of improving the conduct of our supermarket sector. I will say nothing about the issues that I am still working on with the Commerce Commission but I want this Committee and consumers to know that that was not a consequence of Minister Loss—Foss—Hon Annette King: Gloss.Hon SHANE JONES: —Gloss. OK whatever—Hoss. It was not as a consequence of anything to do with him; it was because suppliers had raised their concerns with him and his officials and in desperation they raised their concerns with me.A solution after the Commerce Commission has completed its process—and I do not want to do anything that impedes that process—is to establish an adjudicator to establish a code of conduct that is enforceable. There are some models that can be emulated. I do not think it is a good idea to bring holus-bolus over to New Zealand what passes in the UK where there are actually more operational supermarkets but there is a model also in Australia. I will have more to say in the not too distant future about the conduct of a certain Australian-owned supermarket in New Zealand and its treatment of Lotto but that is another matter.I think that the Minister needs to be prepared to work collaboratively with this side of the House and in particular Clayton Cosgrove and take a bipartisan approach. Indeed one of the rare sensible things I have heard from the Green Party that I actually agree with is that it too not only has a very important part to play but also has already done a considerable amount of work on a model that can be relied upon to police the corporate culture the managerial conduct and the treatment not only of the employees of these veritable empires but also those people who are seeking to earn a living through the sale of goods and services to the supermarket empire. That adjudicator cannot come into being until there has been a decent review which I hope will follow after the Commerce Commission exhaustively goes through the process and protects the identity and the investment. I know there are issues of natural justice if serious and egregious cases are referred to them—the supermarket needs to take responsibility—but a review could actually empower people to hold the supermarkets to a higher level of conduct.The Woolworths-owned supermarket in New Zealand is accountable to no one. It is obvious that the chief executive officer does not know what is going on and the board of directors is so distant in Australia across the Tasman that it has no genuine idea as to what is happening here other than the fact that the supermarket may have been suffering declining revenues recently. Now the supermarket is panicking and paying inordinate amounts of money for full-page advertisements but that is a commercial decision. The level of interest it is showing in emblazoning its concerns through an advertising campaign in the daily newspapers also needs to be visited upon the corporate culture and the corporate values that it has engendered in its organisation.I have indeed been criticised by the Minister for being a bit polemical but I am not the architect of the corporate culture that has fed the concerns that now resonate throughout the public and occupy the attention of the Commerce Commission. It is a central commerce policy issue. There is an opportunity for that Minister to be bipartisan and work with our side of the House in particular Clayton Cosgrove. He has got experience in these matters. After all he brought forward a solution to the egregious conduct that blighted the real estate industry. So this is a rare opportunity for this Minister whose work ethic could do with a tremendous degree of growth and improvement to work with our side of the House.GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Chair.Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to take a call on the financial review of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. One department within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment is energy. What we know when we look at what the Government is doing in the energy space is actually that there is going to be more business more innovation and more employment when you look at this side of the House and what its plans and visions are for energy. Kiwis have a real energy choice this election. On the one hand on the blue side you see a party that is offering New Zealanders more excuses for rising power prices a party that is going to be going to the election with atrack record of power increases of $360 on average a party that has seen power prices go up 3 percent despite demand going down 2.5 percent.David Bennett: Tell us about your carbon tax. How much would carbon tax go up by?GARETH HUGHES: Mr Bennett New Zealanders know all about that sinking feeling they get when they go to the letterbox to get a power bill from a big electricity company under National. What we have seen under the failed National electricity reforms is that power prices have increased 67 percent above inflation since those Bradford reforms. National is telling New Zealanders their power prices are not too high. In fact they are going to keep going up even when demand is going down. National is a party that talks about renewables but in fact has seen fewer renewables in New Zealand than we had in 1980 or in 1990. National is a party that goes around the country opening gas-fired power stations and sees Huntly extended for another 25 years. So when that party criticises NZ Power as seeing more thermal generation it is very hollow indeed.National is a party that is about higher electricity prices for Kiwis and less clean energy for Kiwis but also New Zealanders’ assets being flogged off. New Zealanders know all about the Government’s fiscally reckless short-sighted asset sale agenda. We are losing control of assets built up over generations of New Zealanders for a tiny amount of money that in fact has cost Kiwis the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.The fourth part of the jigsaw of so-called energy business innovation and employment is deep-sea drilling. Here we have got a sector that risks hundreds of thousands of jobs in the rest of the wider economy a sector that risks a $40 billion cost as we saw in the Gulf of Mexico from the very same company that the Government has invited down to New Zealand—a $40 billion cost. It is an industry that has got the lowest job-producing potential of all. So this election while National is talking about excuses for rising prices assets being flogged off risky deep-sea drilling and less clean energy the Greens are going to be talking about cleaner cheaper smarter power.The Greens have got a plan NZ Power to deliver $300 a year on average in savings for Kiwi households. With 42000 Kiwis disconnected in the last year—four times more than 5 years ago—it is high time a Government acted to put the interests of New Zealanders and their power bills before the profits of the big electricity companies. We have got a plan for 100 percent renewable power. New Zealand can lead the world in taking action on climate change.This election we are going to the public saying that although that side of the House sees excuses the Green Party will put insulation under their roofs and will put solar panels on top. What we know is there is more innovation in terms of the smart grid and smart devices on the demand side powered through NZ Power. We know there are 5000 jobs according to Business and Economic Research Ltd available in NZ Power and 1000 extra jobs when it comes to installing 30000 solar panels on Kiwis’ roofs. So when the choice is between a rise in power prices assets flogged off and more risky deep-sea drilling; and on the other hand insulation under your roof and solar panels on the top—cleaner cheaper and smarter power—I know what New Zealanders prefer. This is where the economic benefits for New Zealand are going to come from.Investment New Zealand says we will have a $150 billion export opportunity in clean energy andgreentech by 2030. We have got a $6 trillion global market we could be accessing according to Pure Advantage. PricewaterhouseCoopers hardly the Greenpeace of the business world says there is a $22 billion clean-energy economic opportunity. Just this week we have seen Bloomberg report record solar installations around the world. This is growing faster than the oil industry.ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): It is a privilege to make a comment on the report on the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and to talk about productivity which is an issue that the ministry ought to be concerned about and have at the front and centre of its role. It is interesting that in the days past we have been debating publicly and in this House the issue of KiwiRail and the fact that it has locomotives—recently purchased locomotives—that were made using asbestos. That in many respects typifies the very problem that the New Zealand economy has and that this Government promotes and perpetuates time and again and that is moving down the path of cheap and nasty. Every opportunity that this Government has to do something to invest in New Zealand businesses to encourage investment by New Zealand businesses in their future and in workers what does it do? It plumps for cheap and nasty. It did it with the locomotives purchased by KiwiRail.If anybody is under any illusion let us just understand the risk with asbestos. It takes only one microscopic fibre to lodge itself in the lungs of a worker for that worker to be condemned for life. When they get ill and they succumb to that single asbestos fibre that is it. They have a life of misery until they die. That is why civilised countries around the world ban the use of asbestos—Australia has done it for many years—and it is why it should be the subject of considerable public outrage that we even allow it. The question of course to KiwiRail is where was its procurement manager? Sitting in China with the manufacturer providing day-to-day supervision to make sure that the goods we do not want here were not used in the fabrication of those locomotives? What was their approach? Or did we just sort of sign the order and wait until they came across the wharves and have them here causing their problems?The other issue about productivity is this. It is a labour market issue. It is an employment relations issue. If there is one area where this Government is taking us down the track of cheaper and nastier and worse and less effective it is in the area of employment relations and employment relations law and our labour market regulation. This Government has on its agenda and is not afraid to introduce it this side of Christmas and before the election a set of laws that will once again deteriorate the rights of workers and hand even more power to employers to do what they like. It will once again dismantle the checks and balances in the employment relationship that we have become used to.Here is the problem we have. We have a dumb enough labour market policy at the moment and this Government wants to make it dumber. We have gone from dumb to dumber. Our problem is we suffer low productivity in this country. I can tell the Committee this. It is not an issue about the quality of our workforce. We have an outstanding workforce in this country. It is not the workforce; it is the management as attested to by the Productivity Commission in its report that it released around about 23 December last year. It tried to explain and account for the difference in productivity between New Zealand and Australia. The commission found that two-thirds of that productivity difference is not workers it is not the capital investment and it is not the technology we use. It is the quality of our management. Every time this Government passes a law like the hated 90-day rule like abolishing workers’ rights when it comes to collective bargaining it hands a licence to our poor-quality management to act in even worse ways and to reduce our productivity even further.We need a Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment that is on top of those issues and is giving policy to Government giving policy to Ministers that is about lifting our performance in the workplace and when it comes to productivity. We know the equation when it comes to productivity: if we want to pay better wages move ourselves up the value chain we have to lift productivity. But everything thisGovernment is doing—everything that it is doing—is suppressing the ability and the potential for this country to improve its productivity performance. It is a disgrace.Report noted.Ministry of JusticeHon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice): Thank you for the opportunity to take a call on this matter. I would like to take the opportunity to thank the staff of the Ministry of Justice for the excellent work they have done over the last year in particular with the major work of reform that has been undergone within the ministry but also in the provision of justice generally the issues that we have around making justice more accessible more user-friendly to people and to demystify many of the things that have been somewhat mystified over the years.I would also like to take the opportunity to thank the Justice and Electoral Committee which has done sterling work over the last year and I am sure it will continue to do so. This is in fact a committee that has worked very hard to come to consensus opinions wherever it can but also where it has not been able to have consensus it has been able to deal with the fact that not all parties are going to agree with everything and have done so on a reasonable basis.One of the areas where the committee has been involved and where justice is obviously involved is that of electoral reform and elections generally. We have seen in the last year something that we have never seen before in New Zealand and that is we have seen a person convicted of electoral fraud in the courts. There were 70-odd names of people supposedly living at one address all to do with local government. But if you think about it now under the EasyVote card system which we have been urged by the Electoral Commission to extend further 70 of those EasyVote cards would have gone to one household.The committee I know has been very much involved in looking at how the EasyVote card could be used but not to the detriment of the integrity of elections. I would have thought that anybody who cannot remember what their name is as they are coming up to vote may in fact not be the person whose name is on the EasyVote card. I would like to thank the committee for its pretty much I think unanimous report back which I understand will be debated later tonight. But that is some of the work that the Justice and Electoral Committee does and it is also some of the area of the Ministry of Justice. The Ministry of Justice ranges right across family law criminal law civil law generally our human rights record—all those sorts of areas—as well as electoral reform. It is a huge ministry in terms of its workload and a huge ministry in terms of the number of pieces of legislation that it has responsibility for.Recently I was able to represent New Zealand along with ministry and other officials at the United Nations in Geneva on our human rights record which I have to say was greeted with a tremendous amount of acclaim frankly. I was really proud to be representing New Zealand and I think all members of Parliament should be pleased with the fact that New Zealand does have an excellent human rights record and we will continue to do so certainly under this Government.It was one of the areas where nobody brought up the electoral issues. They did not bring up the Electoral Finance Act under a former Government. They did not have to because we have already dealt with it. They did not have to bring up the foreshore and seabed legislation under a former Government because we have dealt with that too. So there is a tremendous amount of support.In fact one of the things that our staff over at the ministry were very impressed with was the number of ambassadors from other countries who stood in a queue to shake my hand on behalf of New Zealand. I have to say I was quite pleased with that. I also feltthat it was a testament to the work of many. It was a testament to the work of this House and also a testament to the work of our agencies which help to keep New Zealand such a safe and good citizen within the world. As we have seen in Europe recently—in just the last few days—this is not something that can be taken for granted.In fact elections and electoral responsibility and integrity are matters that we cannot take for granted. We cannot presume that anyone armed with a little card with someone’s name on it is necessarily the person whom they claim to be. As I have said before if you cannot remember what name it is that you are using today perhaps it is not you. It is one of the areas where I think we need to be vigilant. I would like to thank Denis O’Rourke whose idea this was in the select committee. I am not sure he is necessarily supporting it now but that is called politics. Unfortunately integrity still has a way to come within politics. Thank you.Report noted.Ministry of HealthHon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): The health portfolio is in trouble. It is in serious trouble. After 6 years of TonyRyall’s stewardship 6 years of his decision making and 6 years of his policies he is still blaming the previous Government—and me in particular 9 years after I finished being the Minister of Health.Hon Anne Tolley: You made such a mess of it.Hon ANNETTE KING: What I want to say to that member opposite who never contributes anything in health is that the blame game is part of his arsenal for managing health. I want to add to that arsenal the bullying of chairs and chief executive officers of staff and NGOs; controlling the Official Information Act requests that go out and the information that the Ministry of Health is allowed to put out; and covering up because I believe that the Minister of Health knew a lot more about the Southern District Health Board and South Link Health money than he is letting on.I would give him under national standards an Achieved for politics and a Not Achieved for making a better health system for New Zealanders because in fact he has managed to create a climate of fear in the health system of New Zealand. If you want to look at some of those who work at the coal front who had something to say about this I suggest that you read the statement from the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists—in other words our doctors—which put out a statement last week when it heard that Mr Ryall is leaving. It said that he is a Minister of Health with a “mixed record” and that it has been “a tale of two health ministers”. The statement said: “TonyRyall’s performance … got off to a good start but after a couple of years his performance became increasingly disappointing”. The statement said that he abandoned “his commitment to address the vulnerability of the hospital specialist workforce”—our specialist doctors in our hospitals—by using “dodgy misleading data.” He turned “a blind eye to public hospitals struggling to function under entrenched specialist shortages. … Increasingly financially squeezing public hospitals while increasing the demands on what they are required to do.” I am quoting all this from the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists. He also had “Excessive political micro-management including threatened financial penalties”. He created a “punitive culture in public hospitals” and there was a “failure to invest in the health workforce in public hospitals including senior doctors”.That came from our senior doctors working in the health system. Those are not my words; they are their words. In fact his insidious and bullying approach to the portfolio has now led to staff being afraid to speak out being scared that their jobs will be at risk and being unable to give free and frank advice.Hon Anne Tolley: It’s not doing you any good Annette.Hon ANNETTE KING: It has led to NGOs and providers being scared that their funding will not continue if they do not agree with the Minister. So I say to the member who is over there interjecting let me read to her a very unusual letter I have received: “I am a long-time loyal employee of the Ministry of Health. I have worked in the sector for many years. I cannot recall a time when the targeting has become so personalised and insidious and it has been dangerous to work in the health sector. There appears to be overt targeting of both chairs and chief executive officers in a number of district health boards. It is embarrassing to see senior leaders bullying dominating and shouting at individual district health boards. Increasingly district health boards are required to have all of their Official Information Act requests checked and agreed to to ensure that the messages are controlled and the information modified. Increasingly the messages are verbal so nothing can be traced. There is no sense of direction and the leadership is totally inept. District health boards are overtly being disempowered and made ineffective. There is no understanding in the sector. This is an increasing risk to health.”Those words come from those working in the health sector and that is why I think that they need to be exposed because this Minister has been very successful in keeping the lid on health but not successful in improving the health of many New Zealanders. We have learnt in these last few days the cost of going to a doctor for adult New Zealanders has gone up.Report noted.Ministry of EducationCHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very pleased to take a call on the financial review of the Ministry of Education. First of all I want to begin by addressing my comments to all of those teachers up and down the country who are continuing to experience the poor effects of theNovopay payroll system. A year and a half afterNovopay was implemented we still have a system that is not paying people what they are owed. It is still a system in which school principals and administrators are having to spend hours and hours and hours every pay cycle sorting out problems or finding ways around problems. I think that is completely unacceptable. The Government put Steven Joyce in charge ofNovopay a year ago to fix it and he has failed to do so. Instead what we have seen is a gloss of paint slapped over the top of it and Steven Joyce saying we have dealt with all of the problems and things are getting better. They are not getting better. Schools are still consumed byNovopay problems and the Government is simply turning a deaf ear to those problems. That is not good enough. It is time forNovopay to be scrapped so that schools can get on with the job of teaching and learning and not be constantly distracted by having to deal with payroll issues.Teachers work incredibly hard. We value the work of teachers. We value the work of school support staff—that is everyone from the teacher aides through to cleaners caretakers school administrators librarians. They all work very hard for the benefit of our education system. They deserve to be paid what they are owed. They deserve to be able to rely on the fact that their pay packet will be in their bank account each fortnight. At the moment they cannot have that reassurance. It is a year and a half now sinceNovopay was implemented. It is still not working. That is simply not good enough. It is time for the Government to actually step up and say that ifNovopay cannot deliver—and clearly it cannot—it is time to pull the pin on it and put in place a system that works because this has gone on for long enough.Moving on I want to talk about a couple of other issues that were raised during the financial review process. The first is the introduction of partnership schools because of course more information has become apparent since the financial review into theMinistry of Education took place. It has now become apparent for example that partnership schools are receiving up to five times the average funding of State schools. That is clearly wrong. The Government of course is trying to load the deck in favour of partnership schools succeeding but if every other school in the country was given a level of funding equivalent to what is being given to partnership schools I am sure that they would be doing a lot better as well.This is a Government committed to creating a two-tier education system: a small minority who will do very well out of it and the vast bulk of the rest who will simply deal with whatever is left over at the end of it. That is not good enough. Our focus has to be on making sure that every school in New Zealand is a great school and that every teacher is a great teacher. I do not think we should be creating a two-tier teaching profession and I do not think that we should be creating a two-tier schooling system and unfortunately many of the policies of this Government go in exactly that direction. We should be focused on making sure that every child in New Zealand has the opportunity to reach their full potential and that means we have to recognise the enormous work that is done by the dedicated and committed group of teachers that we have in our classrooms already.I want to say that I am awaiting with interest the outcome of the recent announcements around the expert teacher positions. There are sector working groups working on that. I have made it very clear that we will wait and see what comes out of that working group process because if there is broad buy in and support for some of those roles from within the sector then we will support those as well. I have got real reservations about some of those roles that have been announced but we will await the outcome of that process before we make any further announcements on that.What is very clear however is that the lack of trust that exists within the education system at the moment will be one of the biggest impediments to any change being successful. People simply do not trust that the current Government is going to implement this new system in a way that will be respectable of the teaching profession—that will genuinely embrace the nature of a strongly collegial and collaborative teaching profession an autonomous teaching profession. People do not trust that the Government is actually going to deliver on those things so although they may think that there are elements of the proposals that they also agree with they are very very reluctant to sign up to this package because they simply do not have trust in the current Government to deliver on it. That is true right across the board in education and that has got to be addressed.TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Chair. There are so many issues inside education funding that it is very difficult to contain oneself to a single topic or to be contained to only 5 minutes. I could for example point to what is an obvious ploy of the National Government of announcing headline-grabbing budget lines in one Budget taking a month’s worth of media coverage on that budget line then quietly removing that same budget unspent in the following year and then using the same bookwork transaction to give itself another headline. I could for example point to the National Government’s lauding of its investment into education. It is going into this election crowing about its increasing spending into education. The fact that much of this spending has nothing to do with a commitment to education but is a requirement due to a large natural disaster—a requirement to rebuild the educational facilities of Christchurch—appears to be lost on its backbenchers as is the fact that much of this spending is required to rebuild schools throughout New Zealand. It was a National Government that changed the building code and the building standards and that approved faulty materials—millions upon millions to fix past National mistakes.I could warn the New Zealand public about the current trumpeting by this Government of its supposed increased investment in education from the Budget under discussion to the more recent Budgets. I could warn the New Zealand public that when the Government says that it is investing more than ever before in education it does not mean this tofutureproof the public education system; rather it is fattening the goose for sale. National is implementing a marketable business model over our public schools so that should it successfully gain a third term in Government it will extend the partial privatisation via charter schools to all New Zealand schools as was previously advanced by this party in the 1990s.But I will have to content myself with a single piece of propaganda from this Government directly from this Budget. This single example shows how the National Government’s policy of “plug and play” when it comes to Ministers which leads to a reliance on officials’ high-level thinking which in turn leads to unintended consequences impacts negatively on the children of New Zealand. I refer to the Budget announcement on increases to the early childhood education equity funding—the Budget announcement that said: “$47.9 million is being invested over 4 years in Equity Funding to support learners in our target communities.” What were the targets for this supposedly additional funding? They were to be: “A. Low socio-economic community” “B. Special needs and non-English speaking background” “C. Language and culture other than English” and “D. Isolation.” The Ministry of Education and the Minister of Education made the following statement: “We expect that services that receive Equity Funding will use the increased funding to increase the enrolment and participation of children from the priority groups by taking actions such as: keeping ECE fees low so children from priority families can support and maintain regular participation encouraging and supporting family/whānau to actively engage and support what their children are learning … provide additional resourcing for learning in te reoMāori and Pasifika languages.”So how has that worked out for New Zealand? Well let us talk about the New Zealand Playcentre Federation an organisation internationally recognised an organisation that goes directly to low early childhood education costs with the direct involvement ofwhānau and family and even more than that an organisation that provides opportunities for those family members those parents to gain education at no cost. Well as we debate this Budget Playcentre is nationally in crisis. Unless the current funding context changes then at least 483 playcentres across New Zealand will continue to crumble and they will close.Playcentre’s only hope is to hold on long enough for a change of Government later this year.How about mobile kindergartens? How about the killing off ofHunterville’s mobile kindergarten through Government funding cuts and increased compliance? Mobile kindergartens involve teachers travelling to a number of rural or isolated areas with a range of equipment and resources and running kindergarten sessions for young children and their families. They provide early childhood education services in areas in which few other early childhood education services are available. Who will fill this gap? They will close. They are about to close running at a $100000 loss because the funding model no longer fits. Who will fill that gap for our rural children? Private business? Do not be ridiculous. There are not enough numbers to provide the commercial viability of a business to go into these areas but that does not minimise the Government’s responsibility to rural communities for their children to be able to access these services inside marae inside community halls.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):Tēnā koutou e te Whare nui o te WharePāremata.Tēnā koutou katoa. I am pleased to take a call on Vote Education although it saddens me because the education space should be a manifestation of harmony for thebenefit of all our children’s learning instead of which it is now a highly contested space between those who seek to privatise and those who want quality local public education which includes innovation to be the priority. That is what we have been struggling with I guess under Vote Education for the last couple of years.We need foreign charter schools like a fish needs a bicycle. We need privatisation in the same way that we need the aforementioned bicycle. We actually need to think about what the public-private partnerships that have just been announced by the Minister of Education today will do to the quality public education system which we are trying to strengthen. It is very interesting to see the cost-cutting and the property speak in the Cabinet paper that I have just been trying to read which shows that schools are going to be “bundled together”—I love the rhetoric here—to see whether there is money to be made out of them under the name of relieving teachers and principles from managing school property.Well if one has read any of the international literature on public-private partnerships the contract still has to be managed by the school. Schools have to deal with the private company that is making the money—or not—out of the school and many of them have been left holding the baby. That is very very worrying when we see the master plan for privatisation that has been rolled out this afternoon in this country.Christchurch of course is the Trojan Horse for all of this. I was there last week and one of the principals said to me that it takes him far more time to manage his school cleaning contractor than it does to have people work for him directly. He said that managing contracts is actually far more time-consuming and difficult than just dealing with the people whom he knows who used to come in and clean his school. That was a minor example of his concerns about public-private partnerships about which he knew nothing. He is from east Christchurch and is very intimately involved—supposedly involved—in the brave new world that is being created in the modern learning environments.The other thing that was interesting that was said to me was that a modern learning environment might be some colourful beanbags and some new classrooms but in reality the community remains the community with a lack of the resources that they need. He said: “We as schools are still going to struggle with dealing with what is really going on with homelessness with enormous stress with poverty with low wages and with families that are under stress.”So at the heart of the debate although the Government will continue to deny this under Vote Education is the reality of the child poverty statistics which the Crown has admitted have been underestimated by up to more than 20000 children. That is why we need to encourage our best people into teaching and like others we watch this space to see how things play out in terms of the $350 million that has been allocated to give more money to executive principals and others.But we also need to acknowledge that we have to address the fundamental issues of inequality and the Green Party has done so. The Green Party has developed a package on the hearts and hubs of communities how schools can be better at meeting those needs open our doors and be dedicated communities. There is a huge and ironic difference between the idea of a public-private partnership with services managed by a manager to make sure they are efficient and the idea in the Greens package of dedicated school coordinators to organise programmes with communities.That could be Te ReoMāori it could be adult and community education it could be language classes it could be social workers it could be dental health it could be parenting programmes it could be whatever the community wants not to see whether it is more efficient whether more money can be made and whether the Government can cut its spending on property but to build communities. Free after-school and holidayprogrammes for children in decile 1 to 4 schools a school nurse in those schools and lunch for those decile 1 to 4 schools if they want it based on how they want to deliver it—all of these can be done and we have costed them for under $88 million per annum. And we have received very positive feedback from educators and communities about this package. We think it is a far better investment than investigating privatisation of school property or paying executive principals who have got to look after 10 other schools and mentor them 2 days a week while running their own schools.We think ours is a better investment. It is the difference between shallow and deep support for schools and communities in the reality that we face. Principals of low-decile schools tell me that low-decile environments require a different skill set and a lot more resources. One example they gave me was school support staff. This principal had taught in both decile 10 and decile 1 schools and said that much more needs to be spent on school support staff in low-decile schools.Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education):Tēnātātou e te Whare.Tēnā koutou katoa. I am really pleased to be able to take a call in this financial review debate because I would like to take the opportunity to publicly commend the Ministry of Education for the fine work it has been doing in a very challenging portfolio. We have heard from speakers this afternoon and if we were to believe everything they said we would be surrounded by an education system characterised by doom and gloom when in fact out there our schools—over 2500 schools catering to 832000 of our 5 to 17 and 18-year-olds—and over 5000 early childhood education centres of a diverse range of provision are doing exciting and fulfilling and constructive things.As Minister of Education I am very reliant on a family of education agencies within the government sector to undertake that work. The Ministry of Education is key amongst that. One of the first discussions I had with the new Secretary for Education Peter Hughes was what our particular role and contribution would be through the Ministry of Education. A significant change is going on. Whereas once the job of the Secretary for Education and of the ministry was characterised as being sector leadership what we have recognised very clearly—unlike previous administrations—is that the leadership of the sector properly remains with boards of trustees our parents around the country and the principals of those schools. The role of the Ministry of Education is to provide the systems support to back those schools to be successful in delivering high-quality teaching and learning so that achievement can rise for all of our children. And that is what the Ministry of Education is doing.There is a system change going on. It is being recognised by the sector leaders. That system change includes changes such as ensuring that what we are asking of schools really does add value to their operational environment and is not simply about compliance. They are appreciating that every fortnight now the Ministry of Education is communicating with them about the key issues and concerns that they need to be aware of. They are getting the support from our regional offices which are working with them on understanding what our investment in data means for more effective operating of their schools but more properly on making sure that they are causing learning to happen and that they know that it is happening.So I would like to commend the Secretary for Education his leadership team and the ministry as a whole which is full of very committed people up and down our country whose job it is to back our 2500 schools and over 5000 early childhood education providers to win. Why? Because we want to be responsive to parents. Whatever community they come from and whatever level of socio-economic status they have parents want their children to be successful and they put a great deal of trust into the schools and early childhood education providers to ensure that that can be the case. And there are professionals in schools whose jobs are to make sure that they are able todeliver their skills their training and their expertise to make sure that learning and engagement are occurring with the young people in front of them and that they are able to give information to parents in ways that parents can therefore be empowered to support their own children’s learning at home and in the community.We have seen the importance and the necessity of ensuring that parents are being well supported and that has led to the transfer of the authority and all of the funding from the Ministry of Education to the New ZealandSchool Trustees Association. That has resulted in Budget 2013 in an 84 percent increase for the association. It is the organisation that works with over 16500 parents relations and community people who want to see their school succeeding. We want to ensure that parents are getting reports in plain English so that they understand how they can help their children learn and we are constantly improving that reporting by getting feedback from parents about what they require. We are investing in a tool kit for parents about the questions they can be asking their children’s teachers so that they get the answers that help them to be informed and helpful towards their children in their learning journey.The Ministry of Education has been entrusted with $9.7 billion of taxpayers’ money to bring about a lift in achievement not for three out of five of our kids not for four out of five but for every one of our children and young people. We know from the research that the critical in-school difference is made by the quality of teaching and the quality of leadership. That saw in January this year the Prime Minister in his state of the nation address prioritising education and investing $359 million in four new roles. Those new roles will give better career pathways for our profession and they will support the status and the profile of the profession so that we can keep attract and grow the quality of teaching and leadership because in schools that is what makes a difference to achievement.And we want to back our profession to win. That is why this Government will be introducing legislation very shortly to transform the New Zealand Teachers Council into a 21st century professional body that is fit for the demands of the 21st century. That is why we have invested the $359 million that I have just talked about. That is why we are hosting education festivals in Auckland Wellington and Christchurch so that schools can showcase to each other and to the public all of the great things that they are doing within schools. That is why we have launched aninspiredbyU website so that each and every one of us gets the opportunity to thank those teachers who have made a difference in our lives. That is why New Zealand went in to bat to host theInternational Summit on the Teaching Profession.At the end of March we will be hosting in Parliament nearly 20 Ministers of Education from around the world because they want to come to New Zealand to see what the particular levers are within our system that are making a difference but also how we can confront together the challenge that is a challenge to many education systems which is how we deliver both excellence and equity to all of our children and young people. Our Ministry of Education our Vote Education and this Government are absolutely committed to backing our system to win and to putting our money where our mouths are.Speaking of that money we are also investing in the platform of schools.That means school properties which have been dismissed by previous speakers here. Modern learning environments really do create the context within which these quality teaching and quality leadership practices can make magic with every one of our New Zealand students. Network for Learning the connecting up of schools to the ultra-fast broadband has been a $700 million investment by this Government because we know that the 21st century demands new ways of learning and we want every New Zealandchild to be successful New Zealanders operating on a global stage. That is what this New Zealand education system is committed to.There was some scaremongering about privatising our education system. How five partnership schools out of 2500 schools can somehow characterise a privatising agenda is beyond me ChickenLicken. The sky has not fallen. What this Government is prepared to do is trial other alternatives invest in other options to make sure we do get the five out of five of our young people succeeding. We cannot keep doing everything we have always done or we will keep getting the results we have always got. Instead the result we are getting is a 2.5 percent increase in National Certificate of Educational Achievement overall a 4 percent increase inMāori achievement and a 7 percent increase in Pasifika achievement. In terms of getting under-fives into early childhood education we have seen a rise to nearly 96 percent when our target is 98 percent.Look our numbers our performance and our track record speak for itself. The $9.7 billion that has been entrusted into Vote Education is being spent wisely. That investment is showing a return. When I use language like that it is not about privatising; it is about proving to the taxpaying parents out there that what we are doing in education is making a difference for each and every child.Mr Chair I can and will go on. I will go on and talk about all the wonderful things that we are doing across the education system. In terms of early childhood education one of the key principles of the New Zealand education system is to provide choice to parents whether it is playcentre or kindergarten whether it is parent-led or teacher-led whether it is home-based or centre-based. Those choices are ones that we profoundly believe parents in New Zealand have the right to make on behalf of their children for what they think is the best learning opportunity. That is equally true of our formal and compulsory education system. We have small rural schools. We have large metropolitan schools. We have faith-based schools. We havecoed schools. All of these choices are available to our parents so that their children can have the education they deserve to create the best possible New Zealand we can have.Report noted.Crown Law OfficeReport noted.Vote Treaty Negotiations Non-departmental appropriationsHon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations): This is such an important area that I think a brief statement by me on where we are at and how we are going is appropriate. I am disappointed that the Labour Party has not chosen to speak about this area because it is so critically important. I am very proud of the Office of Treaty Settlements and the outstanding work that has been done by its very dedicated band of highly qualified and utterly professional civil servants. They are an outstanding bunch of people ably assisted by some excellent Crown negotiators. The Crown negotiators who number among them people like the Hon Paul Swain the former Labour MP for Rimutaka who is the chair of the Crown negotiators do a wonderful job indeed. There is the former Labour member of Parliament for Tukituki Rick Barker who has been doing some tremendous work for me up in Taranaki. There is John Wood a former twice-appointed New Zealand Ambassador to Washington who was responsible for negotiating the great and historical settlement withNgāiTūhoe and who has also been doing some tremendous work on the Whanganui River. So there are some really fine people who have beenworking with the Office of Treaty Settlements and the reality is that they have made excellent progress in the last few years.I was so proud to be with some of my parliamentary colleagues signing a deed of settlement withNgātiKurī. I want to also mention PatSnedden who did some wonderful work with the TeHiku Forum iwi. I wondered whether we would ever get to the stage where we signed deeds of settlement in the far north but we did. Four of the five TeHiku Forum iwi have now signed deeds of settlement and I believe that those iwi and that area will go from strength to strength.As we come down the country I of course have to mention the work that has been done by the Office of Treaty Settlements on theNgāpuhi mandate. That really has been something in the nature of a Homeric epic. A couple of weeks ago I delivered to both factions the decision that we have made on the mandate. I really do endorse what the Hon Shane Jones has been saying in public that now is the time for theNgāpuhi factions to come together for the negotiation to see what they can do to get a good settlement because one reads in theNew Zealand Herald for example stories about the economic suffering in places like Kaikohe. Now is the time to negotiate a settlement so that those sorts of communities in the north can benefit economically and also socially and they should talk to theirwhānau in the TeHiku Forum iwi because they can see what can be achieved when you work together for a common aim.I am very pleased with what is being done inTāmaki and Hauraki. They are very complex negotiations. Of course the House will soon be debating theTāmaki collective legislation. MichaelDreaver an outstanding Treaty negotiator has been doing great work inTāmaki and down into Hauraki and I hope that before the end of the year we will have deeds of settlement with at least 11 of the 12 Hauraki iwi as well as two settlements with theMarutūahu collective and with the Hauraki collective.I am so very pleased with the work that has been done in Taranaki. Again I have referred to the work of Rick Barker and Paul Swain. This really is bipartisan work. I have got those guys involved since they have left Parliament and they have done a great job working with TeĀtiawaNgā Ruahine and Taranaki. When those deeds are signed that will leaveNgāti Maru and the collective settlement for that province and that really is good.I know that the member forIkaroa-Rāwhiti will have more than a passing interest down the East Coast. Great work is being done with discussions with TeTira He ToaTakitini in HastingsRangitāne ki Wairarapa and now withNgāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa. So there is a lot of work going on down there and I would hope that in the very near future we are going to have some full and final settlements.So this is very important work. We know that we are not dealing with full compensation but Treaty settlements are about more than money. They do provide iwi with a strong economic base but importantly they deal with acknowledging the historical wrongs making that apology and as we see for example withNgāti Whare we deal with social accords as well. A town that really was the victim of the 1980s extremist policies of the Labour Government a town that suffered greatly was a town called Minginui. It always amuses me to hear the Labour Party members talk about poverty when for 9 years they did nothing about Minginui. I am on a steering group with the Mayor ofWhakatāne and numerous others dealing with—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable Minister. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.Report noted.Ministry of Social DevelopmentJACINDA ARDERN (Labour): It is my pleasure to take a short call on the estimates for social services. I think it is appropriate that we reflect on recent events in this portfolio. For the last few months the Government has been claiming that it has made progress on key indicators. When I say “key indicators” I do not actually mean child poverty necessarily because the Government has chosen not to make that a Public Service target. No child poverty has not been imbedded within the Government’s key goals for this portfolio. Instead it has decided to pick off things like immunisation insulation of housing and so on.No one is denying that they are important areas where we would like to see gains but it would be disingenuous to suggest that any of those do anything to make a nudge make a dent in the core issue of child poverty itself. But even then even though it is not a key goal of the Government to reduce child poverty it has still made a claim—in fact the Minister of Finance made the claim in the chair today—that that has been one of the key focuses of this Government. So says the Government that has spent probably the most substantive Government spend on tax breaks which did not positively affect those families. That Minister still tried to claim that at the fore of his thinking was child poverty and income inadequacy. How can that be? Where have we seen a dent in child poverty figures? The reality is that we have not.If you ask the Government what it has done on child poverty the one thing it continues to raise is that it is focused on moving people from benefits into work. Well that completely ignores the fact that two out of five of the children living in poverty—and that is probably likely to change based on the recalculations that are happening as we speak—are in the homes of the working poor. They are in families where the parents are fulfilling the social contract of old: if you work a 40-hour week you can provide for your family. It is not so. It is not so under this Government.We have a new class of working poor. The Government refuses—refuses—to address income inadequacy and as long as it does it will not make a dent in our child poverty statistics. In fact we know that the statistics are actually worse than we first thought. For a long time now we have been ashamed at the fact that we have 265000 children living in poverty. We now know as of a week ago that we have 285000 children in poverty. That is 27 percent of children in New Zealand. How do we know? Well we know that Treasury made a mistake. It double-counted the accommodation supplement. There are more families worse off than we first thought.But actually there is another devastating statistic that we have not placed enough emphasis on. There is an increase in the number of families who are living on not 60 percent of the median household income which is the general measure we tend to use but on 50 percent or less. That means the number of families living in severe poverty has increased from 12 percent to 14 percent. That is something that all of us should be worried about.What is the Government’s reaction to that? Well actually the Government has said that even then even though there are 20000 more children in poverty than it first thought it has still made good progress because it is fewer than in 2010 when we reached a ridiculous high of 300000 children in poverty—another new statistic based on the recalculation. So apparently we should celebrate that we have gone from absolutely dismal ridiculous failure to shameful failure. There is nothing to celebrate in any of those statistics.The fact remains that still not enough is being done by this Government to move away from the in-kind assistance that it has focused on and towards addressing systemic change. Everything that the Government has put out to try to step away from the fact that we have this now higher and more shameful child poverty statistic has been aboutWorking for Families. Government members say: “Look we’ve got Working for Families. That’s cushioned the recession.” and secondly “All this does is prove that the recession was worse than we thought.” Well I would like to challenge that. No one is doubting that the recession had an economic impact. No one is questioning that. But also on this side of the House our argument has been that it was in the Government’s power to do something that would actually change that and it did not.JAN LOGIE (Green): There are 285000 children in this country living in poverty. That is because of this Government’s decisions. That number boggles my mind. I grew up in a city of around 45000 people. To think that six cities’ worth of children in this country are now living without the basics offends me at a very deep level. About one in four of our children are now living in poverty. They are our children and their poverty is our poverty. As already mentioned two out of five of these children have parents who are working. To quote—as has been quoted many times in the last year or so in this House—the words of Nelson Mandela: “Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity; it is an act of justice. Like slavery and apartheid poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.”—that is by the actions of the Government its policies and budgets; policies and budgets that we have not seen from this Government.This Government has chosen not to measure poverty. It has knowingly hidden the real levels of poverty from us while it happily used figures that it knew were incorrect to justify its performance. Today in this Committee it has listed off all the money it is spending on these children—these lucky children—and told us that the Salvation Army has suggested that the Government spend less on children. That is disingenuous and frankly offensive. This Government has taken $1.1 billion a year from all of us and given it to the top 10 percent of income earners. That is $1.1 billion a year it could have used to reduce poverty to feed our kids and make sure that they are warm and healthy. The 285000 children without the basics cannot be dismissed with misinformation.Under this Government there are 45000 more children living in poverty than when this Government came to power. That is an entire city’s worth of children without enough. This Government has told us child poverty is a problem of the parents. Then it has told us the country cannot afford to pay family carers a legal wage. It has told us it cannot afford to extend paid parental leave. It has told the courts that rest homes should not be required to pay women equal pay for work of equal value. It has reduced the bargaining powers of workers. It has made it more difficult to get disability support. It is not informing beneficiaries of their protections and entitlements. How can parents help their children when this Government is creating barriers to the basic entitlements and undermining the ability of those in work to look after themselves and their children?I hear from far too many sole parents that they are trying to look after their children but feel ashamed for not being in paid work. I have heard of parents having to choose between buying medication for their children and food and worrying that if they choose food then there may be a notification to Child Youth and Family for neglect. That is the level of pain that this Government is responsible for and it is not the vision of an inclusive society that this country was built on.Children have told us directly that they really worry when their parents are stressing out about not having enough money and school lunches are not going to solve that. Children have told us that they think that this Government is giving money to the rich people and that those rich people are spending it on things they do not need. We need to listen to the wisdom of our children. Poverty may feel inexorable to those burdened by it but the truth is that we can reduce it. It is a matter of values.MELISSA LEE (National): I would like to start my contribution by talking about what Miss Ardern talked about. She seemed to discount the fact that immunisation forour children is important and that home insulation is important. These are very important factors. These are the deliverables that we have delivered as a Government.As Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister for Ethnic Affairs I am often meeting dignitaries from many different countries who visit our shores and often their conversations turn to compliments about New Zealand and how New Zealand is in an enviable position with our economic outlook even with the devastating earthquakes that Canterbury has gone through. New Zealand is in fact on track to deliver a surplus in 2014-15 when most other countries are in deficit. What this means is that we start to pay off our debt. What the Opposition members do not seem to understand is that when they borrow the money to pay people whatever they actually promise they are putting our future and the future of our children and our grandchildren in debt for a very very long time.More jobs have been created. Seventeen thousand fewer people were on a benefit in December 2013 compared with the year before. There are 12000 fewer kids in benefit-dependent homes than there were in December 2012. Long-term welfare dependency is falling and we are continuing to help families and older New Zealanders with income support. In the past year this Government helped 80000 people off welfare and into work. Paid work is the best route out of hardship for families who are finding it difficult to make ends meet. I remember a saying that is something like this: give a man a fish and it will feed him for a day but when you teach the man how to fish it will feed him for a lifetime. When you just give him a handout he may be able to feed himself and his family for a day but when you actually teach him to work and go and find a job he might be able to provide for himself and his family for the rest of his life.There was an extra $900 million in the last Budget alone that was targeted for vulnerable children and their families. I am very proud of what this Government has actually provided for New Zealanders in the last 5 years of being in Government. This is a very different picture from when voters elected the National-led Government back in 2008. The worst global financial crisis had struck New Zealand and New Zealand was already in recession. Treasury advice signalled that we would be in Budget deficits and increasing debt for a very very long time. The debt projection was actually $150 billion and the current debt projection is around $50 billion. That is like cutting $100 billion off the debt—not million but billion. If you look at it in a family situation imagine that a family has a $150000 mortgage and they work really really hard to reduce the mortgage debt down to $50000. That difference will make a humungous difference to the family and what they can do as a family and the budget that they actually have. That is what this Government has delivered for New Zealand: $100 billion off our debt. That I have to say is an amazing outcome that this Government has delivered for New Zealanders.This Government is focused on growing our economy to provide more jobs and rising incomes to provide a positive result for New Zealand. But many families and businesses are still finding it quite difficult. I know. I have heard from even my community from people within the ethnic communities that often they are the ones who are in fact struggling because they come from other countries often they do not speak the English language and they find it difficult to get into careers or jobs that they were used to in their home countries. Yet they actually celebrate the fact that they are living in this country which is very generous compared with where they come from. We provide for New Zealanders. On average wages are increasing faster than inflation and business confidence is at its highest level in 20 years.SUE MORONEY (Labour): Well look after that speech from the member Melissa Lee I think we need to put the record straight a little. We absolutely need to put the record straight because it was under Labour that we had the lowest unemployment ratefor a very very long time in this country. It was under Labour. Remember this: under a Labour Government we had the first or second lowest rate of unemployment in the OECD but under this Government that has slumped to about eighth or ninth place the last time I looked. New Zealand is probably down to about 12th place now in the OECD for unemployment numbers. Why is that important? What that tells us is that every single one of those OECD countries went through the global financial crisis. Not many of them were in the privileged position that New Zealand was in because of the surpluses that the Labour Government saved up over 9 years. Over 9 years in every single year there was a surplus and that meant that New Zealand was in a much better position than almost any other OECD country when it came to dealing with the global financial crisis and when it came to dealing with unemployment.What has this Government done—what has it done? New Zealand has slumped in the OECD when it comes to the number and the proportion of unemployed in our society. Government members celebrate that—they celebrate that. Melissa Lee and the Hon Paula Bennett think that they have done a fabulous job. Well if they looked at the international community and they looked at what they were given on a plate—on a plate—from the Labour Government then they would know that they have failed. They have absolutely failed.Hon Jo Goodhew: Oh what a mess we were given—10 years of deficits.SUE MORONEY: Jo Goodhew can yell and scream as much as she likes but the facts speak for themselves. Go Mrs Goodhew and look at the OECD ratings. We were the first or second in the ratings under the Labour Government and we have now slumped. We have now slumped. So that is the record of this Government and no one should be confused about that.The other record of this Government is that not only has it had a very poor track record in terms of actually bringing down the number of unemployed during the global financial crisis but it has miscalculated and made its policy decisions for the last 4 years on false figures—on false figures—from Treasury. The Treasury figures—Andrew Little: That’s right. I think it was deliberate.SUE MORONEY: —I think it is deliberate Mr Little; I agree with that—have confused the whole picture so that 20000 children living in poverty were not being counted by this Government. No wonder its policies are wrong. No wonder it has not worked out that the way to address child poverty is to actually increase the financial resources of those families. That is the answer to it. Fiddling around with immunisation is not going to actually address the issue of the financial problems and the crises that those families find themselves in.Hon Jo Goodhew: Don’t you call saving lives fiddling.SUE MORONEY: Jo Goodhew may yell and scream about it but that is still not going to get one more cent into those families where they actually need to be able to provide food provide decent shelter and provide the necessities of life for their children. I think it is a disgrace that we have 285000 children in poverty in New Zealand—and the number is growing; every time Treasury revises its figures it is growing—because this is the land of milk and honey. We are not one of those countries without resources. We are not one of those countries without the means to get by. We are a South Pacific country with everything going for it.Well we did have everything going for us when we had a Government that had a plan in place a Government that cared about addressing inequality and a Government that brought in the Working for Families package. That party opposite called it communism by stealth but that package brought the largest number of children out of poverty that we have ever seen in recent times in this country. On this side of the Chamber we are deeply proud of that because that is the practical way of actuallyaddressing issues that matter to families—the real issues. They are not the trumped-up issues not the trumped-up figures from Treasury and not the diversion that the Government seems keen on pointing fingers at members over on this side of the Chamber. The Government needs to actually address the very real issues that its policies are creating for everyday New Zealanders every day of the week. As for the assertion that the Government is somehow getting all this number of New Zealanders into work it is not.ALFRED NGARO (National): It is always interesting to listen to chardonnay socialists talking about the whole aspect of poverty because the thing is that for all the talk I would like to see where the action is. Mrs Moroney talked about a proud record under the Labour Government. What she forgot to do is continue to read the Salvation Army report of 2008. This is what it clearly says. This is this proud record that she talks about. It says that the social outcomes achieved over the previous 5 years under the previous Labour-led Government were “somewhat mixed and in some areas quite disappointing.” That is the record that that member talks about.Chardonnay socialists talk about the issue of poverty but my concern is that they do not know what true poverty is and how to work with a community to be able to solve those issues. The Salvation Army noted that “More of our children appear to be at risk of harm more of our young people are engaged in petty crime there is more violent crime and more people in our jails.” Again that is the record that the member just talked about. The Salvation Army talked about how overall New Zealanders were “chronically indebted” and that “home ownership rates have fallen.” That is the Labour Government of 9 years which was in surplus and had much to give yet with all that it had with as much money as it had it still could not solve the social issues that are there.The report continues. I know that Labour members do not like to hear it. They have gone quiet on the other side. Iain Lees-Galloway is yawning. Why? Because he does not like to hear the truth. Here is more of the truth. The report lists the billions and billions of taxpayer dollars that had been spent and yet concluded that this spending “seems to have contributed very little to [New Zealand’s] social progress.” So if you are going to use the report if you are going to use it as a basis to found your ideals then do read its history. Read its history. That is what it is saying.In fact it says that many indicators were going backwards in 2008. There were rising numbers of referrals to Child Youth and Family and more children in Child Youth and Family care. There was rising youth offending. For all the talk and all the rhetoric Labour members are just a bunch of chardonnay socialists talking about things but not getting on with action. This is a Government and a Minister for Social Development who are getting on with the action.Let us talk about rheumatic fever prevention: $21.3 million—that is the figure. I was honoured to be with the honourable Minister of Health Tony Ryall. We were at Finlayson Park School—the largest primary school in the whole of New Zealand predominantlyMāori and Pacific children—with the 800 kids who are there. We launched the Rheumatic Fever Prevention Programme. Parents came along. This is not just about talk; this is about action. That is what this Government is actually about.Let us talk about early childhood education its expansion and the targeted approach. There is $172 million in total early childhood education investment. We know that it is really important to deal not only with the health issues when we talk about poverty. What about the educational needs of our children? There are a number of our children who need to be engaged. Do you want to know what the percentage of early childhood education engagement and participation was under the Labour Government of 9 years? It was 65 percent—65 percent. If you want to talk about what is shameful that is shameful. What is it under the National-led Government a Government of action? It is88 percent—that is what we have got—and climbing. So we are seeing the investment in our children as absolutely important as well. There are 700 more children in high need—with $9.3 million announced from current funding from the Targeted Assistance for Participation Fund that is there.Let us talk about kin carers and grandparents raising grandchildren.Phil Twyford: Come and stand in TeAtatū.ALFRED NGARO: There is $35 million of additional funding Mr Twyford. There is financial help and a reference group to decide how best to spend this. Let us talk about what is needed for the kids Mr Twyford. You can have all the talk and the rhetoric and it is all just talk. He is another chardonnay socialist who grew up in Ponsonby and somehow managed to go to the peninsula. But when we talk about what happened to the children over those 9 years there is nothing—nothing. That is what happened OK?Let us talk about what we are doing.Microfinancing—the Government is exploring with banks and NGOs alternatives to loan sharks for low-income earners. You see we know where the risks are and we are actually doing pragmatic and practical things to address them. What about housing insulation? More bedrooms more homes more land supply warrants of fitness $100 million to expand home insulation targeted at low-income families—you see I am just going to keep going right the way through. You are going to love this. Why? Because it is not just rhetoric and it is not just “chardonnayism”—Dr Rajen Prasad:Chardonnayism!ALFRED NGARO: —it is action that is actually happening on the ground. I know that Mr Prasad loves to hear this: 3000 new State house bedrooms 500 new homes a warrant of fitness trial to start with Housing New Zealand homes. We know that the issue around having affordable housing and accessible housing is absolutely critically important to our families as well.Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development): I just want to thank the speakers who have sat down. What they have pointed out is something that is really important. Is it not interesting though that what we have not had from the Labour members is a discussion on welfare? This is supposedly Labour’s hot topic. This is supposedly where it holds the Government to account. It is supposedly our weakness. The reality is that we have 17000 fewer New Zealanders on benefits today than we did 12 months ago. Do you know how many children that is? That is 12000 fewer children living in benefit-dependent households.Do you know what this Government’s legacy is? It is nearly $500 million more spent on support for welfare. That means 354 more front-line staff who are working with people. That means that where we used to see around 10000 people face to face we now see more than 100000 people face to face. That means we call them in and we talk to them about what they can do not what they cannot. We talk about the training that will support them into jobs. We then put real money behind them which then sees them going into jobs.What we see is that more than 8000 sole parents have themselves gone into work. What I hear from those sole parents who come up to me is: “I have to admit I never thought I would be thanking you but that was the first time someone asked me what I wanted to do what I could do and what support I needed for that to actually happen.” That means real support like aiding people to get a driver’s licence. It means helping them with their CVs. And yes it means helping them gain confidence because more often than not if you have been out of work for a long time if you live in a family that has not worked then actually having that confidence to put yourself out there is huge. The difference between this National Government and what you have heard from theOpposition tonight is that we celebrate their success. We believe in them and their capabilities. With the right support at the right time they can make a difference in their lives.So we talk about poverty and we certainly have the Opposition raising it as their sort of topic. What the Opposition does not talk about because they might be dirty words are parental responsibilities and families actually stepping in and helping each other and the fact that it takes a community and yes it takes Government support as well. Actually that sort of backing without putting the right support in—throwing money at them and hoping—was what we saw in the 2000s and it did not make a difference to those people who needed it most. It is hard complex work that needs wraparound support to lead people to independence. That is the difference for families that are struggling in New Zealand.We do that through the Children’s Action Plan because we see some our most vulnerable children not able to access the kinds of services and help that they need—and it is not all about Government; more often it is more about how they can help themselves. More often than not it is role modelling that shows them there is a different way in life. More often than not it is access to that health care that they need and access to education for their children.While we are at it we will talk about education because without a doubt getting those children into early childhood education and seeing them stay in school longer will hold the biggest difference. We have seen a huge reduction—a 30 percent reduction—in teen pregnancies and teen births in this country. That is something to celebrate. I myself go around every teen parent unit I can and meet every teen parent I can. Do you know what the best thing is I think about being a teen mum and I was one myself? It is that you get to love your children longer. If you have them earlier you actually get to have them for a bit longer and you get to love them a bit longer.But you know what those girls can do? They sit in front of me and I say to them “So why are you here? Why are you in education?” and they will go “Oh because you told us we had to because we couldn’t get the benefit without it because we’ve got to create a better future for ourselves.” Every single determinant every research you look at and every evaluation report will tell you how we know those children will do well. The one determinant that will make the biggest difference for those kids is their mums. Their mother’s educational achievement whether they have got work experience and how solid their relationship is are the best things we can do for those kids. So what are we going to do? More than $40 million is going into childcare so that that mum can be in some form of education. We actually set some responsibilities for them. We expect them to be in education if they want a benefit. We expect them to do budgeting courses. We expect them to do parenting courses. And we are making a difference.Report noted.Ministry of Foreign Affairs and TradeReport noted.Department of CorrectionsJACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): I want to tell the Committee about what is probably a very topical aspect of corrections which the Law and Order Committee saw for itself last Friday on a trip to Auckland. It was a combined visit having a look at policing and corrections in Auckland. If I am to focus down on corrections it is a good story to tell because we did two visits to corrections facilities. The first one was to the women’s prison at Wiri. What was most notable for the committee was that this was avisit to a working prison so the focus on rehabilitation is extremely strong in the women’s prison at Wiri. Most of the women—I think it was in the high 90s—are doing something like 40 hours’ work per week and that is to prepare them for their release. We know they are going to be released so the 40 hours of work is to prepare them for that.The committee made up of cross-party membership—the Greens New Zealand First Labour and National—had a good tour around Wiri and we went into two or three different real work situations. The first one was into the kitchens where we saw the women preparing meals as if they were in a real commercial kitchen. That was because if you are not going to teach them what a real commercial kitchen is like if you are going to wrap them in prison cotton wool then you are not going to show them what the real work environment is like on the outside. The gentleman who was the supervisor has worked extensively in the private sector in hospitality and he was very proud of what his inmates were achieving. So we looked in the kitchen and not only were they preparing every meal for the inmates but they were also doing all the meals and manning the canteen for the workforce for the men’s prison construction at Wiri Prison.I was pretty impressed actually when I walked into that commercial kitchen and saw not only the women measuring out however many grams the prisoner allowance was for the women in the women’s prison but also making things like pizza andpanini to be sold in the canteen for the workforce that was building the men’s prison. So they were learning things like obviously how to prepare food how to budget provisioning and all those skills surrounding working in a commercial kitchen. They were operating the kitchen within the confines of being within a prison but pretty much in line with what they would find in the outside world. It seemed to me that the women prisoners in that environment were not only enjoying themselves but clearly they were learning new skills. There were a couple of women there making muffins to go on sale the next day. There were as I say pizzas andpanini and hot chips and all those things that get sold in a shop catering for workers.We then went into the distribution centre and again there are a lot of skills involved in distribution centres. Think aboutEziBuy and the huge distribution centre there or think about any supermarket chain and the distribution network needed there. What blew me away about that portion of the visit was that the women were getting qualifications in running forklifts. I said: “Oh crikey how many men have forklift skills and qualifications?”. Well it is mostly men. I said: “OK how many women?”. Hardly any. Well hello there will be a number of women leaving the prison system who are qualified to run forklifts.I met in particular two women and I do not recall their names. One woman said: “Look I know I’ve made mistakes.” She was convicted for fraud. She said: “I got out on parole. I went back to where I came from. I was struggling I didn’t have enough money and my kids needed stuff. I was back in my old environment and I went back to what I knew which was fraud.” She got caught she is back in prison and she is saying: “Look these skills I’m learning now I want to use them so that when I do go back out on parole”—and she will go back out on parole—Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Corrections): Can I start tonight by congratulating the magnificent staff of corrections who have worked professionally and enthusiastically and in a dedicated manner for the financial year that we are currently reviewing. We are lucky in this country to have such a professional staff manning our prisons and looking after the 34000 to 35000 people who are serving community sentences.As the previous speaker Jacqui Dean said there is a lot happening in our prisons and with those who are serving community sentences. This Government has set them atarget of reducing reoffending by 25 percent by the year 2017. Reporting against the Better Public Services target at September of last year we had reached 11.4 percent. The current figure stands at about 11.7 percent. That is as a result of some outstanding work from our staff. So yes we have increased the amount of education that is being made available to those who are serving sentences in our prisons and those who are serving community sentences.Every person now who enters a New Zealand prison gets an educational assessment and has developed for them an educational plan. They are getting skills training they are getting on-the-job training as we have just heard from Jacqui Dean. They are getting drug and alcohol rehabilitation and that has certainly ramped up. We have three working prisons. They are structured around a normal 40-hour week that includes both work and qualification and skills training. The three youth prisons that we have also have a 40-hour work week but it is based around education and gaining qualifications.A number of outstanding things have happened throughout the last financial year. One of them that I would like to mention picks up on the previous speaker Jacqui Dean talking about working in a commercial kitchen. That is fantastic and they are learning extremely good skills and doing a great job. Rimutaka Prison in this last year took part in Visa Wellington on a Plate. MartinBosley the chef went and worked with some of the prison cooks and then delivered to the public a restaurant-quality meal as part of Visa Wellington on a Plate. It was the fastest-selling offering from Visa Wellington on a Plate and the organisers have come back again this year wanting the prison to continue with this. One of the staff was actually taken on immediately and worked in a commercial kitchen. The skills that both the waiters and the cooks learnt will stand them in very good stead I am sure.I just want to pick up on an area that is given a lot of prominence from time to time mainly from a critical point of view and that is around prisoner health. Just today I got the latest magazine from the Department of Corrections which focuses on health. I just want very quickly to take this opportunity to talk about a couple of things that are happening that have not perhaps had the prominence they deserve. First of all this Government has opened a High Dependency Unit in a prison—20 beds initially mainly for dementia patients because like the general population the prison population is ageing. We have over 100 prisoners who are aged over 70 and we are now expanding that unit by another 10 beds. It has been extremely successful.At Auckland Region Women’s Corrections Facility the health service has now taken on board the fact that it is a working prison and the women are working a structured 40-hour week. They do not want to take time off work to go and visit the nursing staff so the nursing staff have now made themselves available 7 days a week. They are making themselves available around the normal work hours for those women. It is a fantastic partnership approach to health.Whānau Ora visits on a regular basis now in the Northland prison and it visits during regular visiting times so that it can work with the families who are visiting prisoners. They are generally hard-to-reach people and it knows they regularly visit their family members in that jail. That is a very good time forWhānau Ora to be talking to them. I could go on for much longer.Report noted.New Zealand PoliceHon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Police): The Police too have had an outstanding year. This country is well served by its over 12000 Police employees and again I want to take this opportunity to thank them for all their hard work throughout the year and to congratulate them on the results they are getting in keeping this country safe and protecting our communities. We have seen over the last 3 years a continual reduction inrecorded crime totalling a 17.4 percent reduction in recorded crime. That is a 33-year low. That is the proof of the work the police are doing. I know that there are people in this Chamber who hark back to the good old days; actually policing is now a very technologically based service. It uses good information. Our police are the best equipped they have ever been and they are looking after our communities and keeping them safe in all sorts of different ways that perhaps were not even dreamt of 5 or 6 years ago. I want to touch on just a couple.There are 34 neighbourhood policing teams across the country. They are working in our most vulnerable communities. These are places where we see huge amounts of crime committed again and again and again against the same victims. They are focused on those communities that are continuallyrevictimised by a small number of criminals. They are working with each of those communities to find ways to address the drivers of crime. In some parts it is about drugs and alcohol—there is no doubt about that. In some of the other parts I have visited teams have talked about a very common problem being the lack of access to supermarkets. People had to do all their shopping at a grocery store where everything is much more expensive and their money was not going far enough so transport—community vans mobile vans etc.—was made available to take people to the shops. There is a whole raft of things: getting rid of graffiti working with people to keep their houses safe etc.As for boy racer offences I announced not long ago that we have seen them halved—halved—in the time since we introduced that piece of legislation. That is not about catching young people and crushing their cars. That is about keeping communities safe both from the nuisance value those boy racers create in the communities they tear around and also from the harm to some of the innocent bystanders and the innocent passengers who have been killed or maimed by the excessive speeds seen from these boy racers. We have seen deaths of 15 to 24-year-olds drop down from 105 when we introduced the legislation to 66.I also announced an increase in foot patrols. This is about having the police much more visible out in our communities where they can prevent crime happening. There has been an increase over the last couple of years in the number of foot patrols by 155. In 2011 they had just on 41000 foot patrols; in 2013 they had 104000. When I go around New Zealand and talk to people about safety in their communities the first thing people say to me is that the police are much more visible. They see them out on the streets walking around talking to people and keeping an eye on the hot spots.The other thing I would say is about a programme called Turning the Tide. Very quickly this is working with iwi to address the drivers of crime in theMāori community. We are seeing some enormous successes. If I talk just about my own electorate of East Coast and about Gisborne the police have placed a policewoman inside therūnanga of Ngati Porou. She is doing an outstanding job working with her iwi trying to prevent crime trying to keep people safe. She has got a fantastic garden programme running with some of the gang members at Kaiti. She has got them into education getting some skills and training and the kids are at school—all sorts of incredible things. These people are working quietly on the ground often unseen out in our communities. We are lucky to have such a fantastic police service which is working to keep New Zealanders safe.Report noted.Vote Housing Non-departmental appropriationsHONE HARAWIRA (Leader—Mana): Kia ora Mr Chairman. The first point I want to make about funding for affordable housing is how woefully inadequate the Social Housing Fund actually was particularly when you consider the staggeringly highneed and secondly how little of that woefully inadequate amount was actually spent on housing.I have got to highlight those figures here. Only $28 million was actually allocated and only $16 million was spent. How bad is that? The Government takes only 2 days to decide to spend $30 million on RioTinto but in a whole bloody year cannot spend $28 million on housing for the poor. How is that for poor performance? The Government got only $28 million but through bureaucratic inefficiency it managed to spend only $16 million and has delivered only 165 houses. What a shambles.But that is not the worst part. The worst part is that the Government’s policies are leading to huge numbers of low-income families being evicted from their homes State houses being disposed of and large tracts of State housing land being sold off to make way for high-end housing estates because National believes that the private sector is the best place to provide for housing. E hoaēharatērāi tepūrutūtaenoa iho.[Friend that’s simply just not bull’s droppings.]There is nowhere in the world where the private sector provides quality long-term affordable housing for the poor and it certainly ain’t happening here where thousands of families are forced to rent high-priced damp draughty and cold flats houses and caravans on the open market because the State no longer wants to bother.Those living in State houses are being shunted out of them as we speak—like the family who have lived in a home in Glen Innes for the past 33 years but are about to be evicted by Housing New Zealand this Friday as part of the sale of State properties to the private sector and the redevelopment of the area. Housing New Zealand says it is evicting the family for alleged antisocial behaviour. Is it not funny how a family can live in a house for 33 years without any major problems but the minute that mum speaks out against policies that have led to the eviction of friends and neighbours whom her family has known for decades all of a sudden her family are being evicted for antisocial behaviour? Betty has lived in Glen Innes all her life. She is a postal worker a cleaner a member of the Amalgamated Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union and a regular volunteer at the Glen Innes Primary School.Late last year Betty’s sister’s family were evicted from the home where their family had lived for 54 years. Betty herself has just come out of hospital where she underwent a procedure for breast cancer. She is tired she is unwell and now thanks to these Housing New Zealand policies she is about to become homeless. Betty’s family want to stay in their home and fight the eviction and the public are invited to support them by marching with her this Thursday at 6 p.m. on Taniwha Street in Glen Innes.The housing crisis in low socio-economic areas like Glen InnesPōmare and Maraenui has actually been worsened by Housing New Zealand policies that demonise poor families and devastate communities leaving empty houses and unsafe neighbourhoods. If that was not enough the Government is now reviewing all tenancies and shifting the allocation of State housing from Housing New Zealand to Work and Income New Zealand bringing even greater insecurity and evermore bureaucratic harassment for low-income families. That is not a future that any Government should be seeking.The Government should instead take a positive approach to the problem by engaging in a comprehensive programme of building 10000 new State houses every year for at least the next 5 years to help address the critical shortage of healthy homes for low-income families and because building homes does more than just provide houses for people. It creates thousands of jobs in design architecture carpentrycabinetmaking community infrastructure and all the related jobs that come with a strong and vibrant housing sector. It helps to build healthy families and healthy communities because when people are working everybody is happy.I have no doubt that a Government-funded home-building programme would be well received by local bodies and by iwi both of whom have a huge interest in seeing their communities engaged in meaningful work and who would happily come to the party on consent issues and availability of land for housing development. There is no question that we do have a housing crisis but we also have the ability to deal with it quickly and positively. All it takes is the political will to do so. Kia ora.ALFRED NGARO (National): I want to acknowledge Mr Hone Harawira and his comments especially around Glen Innes. I want to talk about Glen Innes because I have lived in a home in the area for the last 18 years. I know the people well and the community well. I know the struggles and I know the issues that he talked about.Phil Twyford: You’re not very popular there now.ALFRED NGARO: I am Mr Twyford actually. The fact is that we have worked quite hard there for quite a long time.Tāmaki Transformation which came under the Labour Government started to look at a whole-of-community perspective and housing was one of those issues. Out of that issue we worked collectively with the Government agency a whole community working together to address these issues.But here is one of the shameful things that the Labour Government needs to be held to account for. It had some of the worst housing stock in the whole of New Zealand. Fifty-eight percent of that area the communities of Glen Innes Panmure and Point England was State housing stock. It had some of the worst stock. In other words under that Government’s watch there was a lack of maintenance and there was a lack of repair. In other words there was a lack of concern—there was a lack of concern. For all the talk let us talk about the action and let us talk about the reality. Nothing was done over 9 years in those very communities. I can take you to the streets. Flanders Street—we can go up there—andRopata Avenue. We can name the streets. I am not sure that Mr Twyford can name the streets but we can name the streets where the homes and the houses that these families had to live in were really shameful. If you want to talk about Government responsibility that was shameful.So what did this Government decide to do? This is what it decided to do. It was time for change. Inside of that change yes there were difficulties and struggles because some of those families had been there for such a long time. But I can say this. A number of the community initiatives are there even at the moment. There is an organisation calledNgā Iwi Katoa which Monte Cecilia Housing Trust is involved in with DavidZussman and there is a collective of the community working together with theTāmaki Redevelopment Company to try to address some of the critical concerns that are there. This is what we are doing as a Government to address them. There have been 6960 new tenancies started and 200000 people in our houses. But I want to talk about some other things. When they were asked and surveyed right across the board with regard to how they found the service and what it was doing yes there were some areas of need but 76 percent of those surveyed were satisfied with their house maintenance and the customer services centre. That was not the figure under a Labour Government of 9 years. That was not the figure that was there.Hone talked about the importance of having healthy housing and home insulation. One of the things we have had over this period of time is 2000 whole-of-house upgrades. We have spent $190 million to improve the quality of our houses. You see again this is a Government of action not just of talk. This is a Government that has made a difference to those homes. We have insulated 8295 homes. In other words we are making a difference to the care and concern of the families—even those families that are in Glen Innes. There have been 390000 maintenance actions. We know again that the maintenance of and repairs to a number of those homes was quite critical to our families.I also want to talk about social housing and the whole thing around the third-tier sector—the third sector of the housing market that is out there. I can say this. We know that Brian Donnelly for instance of the New Zealand Housing Foundation the Salvation Army the Monte Cecilia Housing Trust and a number of these collectives have come together and said that this is the right intent this is a good initiative and they want to see the ability to come in to that sector to truly make a difference. Here is the difference that they can make. They can make a difference because they can meet the needs of those housing issues for their communities in particular. So there is $2.9 billion for housing to add bedrooms to 3000 homes to build 500 new homes and to complete home insulations and repairs inside our Housing New Zealand stock.That is the difference that this Government is making. We are now starting to hear families that are saying: “Now not only do we have healthy homes but we can access things like health services and education.” There has been a concern about some of our families even in Glen Innes. We had the petition forPōmare and Maraenui as well. What we know is this. I want to commend the new Chief Executive of Housing New Zealand Glen Sowry who even in his first month went and visited the homes. He visited them with the case managers to see what was actually happening on the ground and saw how it was making a difference. Here is the difference. Mr Chris Hipkins was in Maraenui about 2 or 3 weeks ago and he celebrated the success of what was happening. They were making a difference to address the issues—PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—TeAtatū): I want to address the question of why this National Government has so completely failed to address the housing crisis. I think that is the interesting question. Everybody knows that there is a housing crisis. It is affecting first home buyers. It is affecting State house tenants. Government agencies are routinely referring people to live in campgrounds. There are 285000 children growing up in cold damp homes and who are constantly sick because of the state of our housing stock. The country knows that there is a housing crisis. The National Party knows that there is a housing crisis. That is why Nick Smith runs around like a jack-in-the-box every 2 days. He would turn up to the opening of a door handle. He has got some half-baked scheme he announces every couple of days like the one where he was flogging off broken-down old State houses in parts of the country where there is no housing crisis. He was flogging them off at knock-down rates to make it look as if he is doing something. We know that there is a housing crisis. The National Party knows it. But why has it not done anything about it? That is the interesting question and that is what I want to address.Let us take the issue of these loan-to-value ratio lending restrictions. They have had the effect of locking out a generation of young New Zealanders from the dream of homeownership. Over the last week I have visited a number of cities around the North Island and some of those places are cities where first home buyers have been the worst affected in New Zealand by loan-to-value ratio lending restrictions. I am talking particularly about Napier Wanganui and Palmerston North. These are places where first home buyers have basically had the drawbridge pulled up. They have been told to go away—do not bother do not come back; you are not going to be able to buy your own home.I met a young family in Hamilton. They had moved from Auckland to avoid Auckland’s high property prices. They were a young couple with kids. They moved to Hamilton to avoid the skyrocketing house prices in Auckland. They told me that now because of loan-to-value ratio restrictions that have been broadened by this Government and because of the 20 percent minimum deposits they are 3 years away from being able to summon up a deposit. This is a family with professional well-paid jobs so imagine the stretched lower-middle and middle income people who believe that they should be able to own their own home. They are utterly locked out.Let us look at healthy homes. The Minister of Housing announced the other day a pilot scheme—he re-announced last year’s Budget commitment—involving 500 State houses to see whether the Government could make a warrant of fitness scheme work. The State houses are all already insulated. They have been retrofitted and insulated. They do not need a warrant of fitness pilot scheme. What they need is for the Minister to pick up the phone and tell the chief executive of Housing New Zealand that he wants those houses built to a certain standard so that they are warm and dry. So instead of doing the thing that is necessary—tackling cold damp homes in the private rental sector—this Minister is doing more busywork with a trial warrant of fitness with his own State houses.The third example of this Government’s total failure to address the housing crisis is its mismanagement and incompetent neglect of the State housing asset. We currently have 4000 empty State houses in New Zealand—4000. By coincidence there are about 4000 people languishing on the waiting lists and that is after Phil Heatley narrowed the eligibility criteria so tightly that hardly anybody these days qualifies to get a State house. In the last 12 months the number of State houses in New Zealand has decreased by 700. Under this National Government there are fewer State houses than ever before.Iain Lees-Galloway and I were in Palmerston North last week. We visited Highbury in Palmerston North. Palmerston North has about 90 vacant State houses. In Highbury they are boarded up they are covered in graffiti and they are a magnet for vandalism and crime. Such is the neglect of the State housing. It is the single most valuable publicly owned asset. We have $46 billion worth of State housing and all over New Zealand in every provincial city you can see them rotting boarded up and covered in graffiti. This Government has brought downtown Detroit to Napier to Palmerston North to Hamilton to Gisborne to Wanganui—you name it.Hon PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei): It is probably worthwhile doing a timely comparison between the Labour Party’s record on housing when in Government and what has happened under the current Government. Nothing would be more apt than to remind New Zealanders of interest rates under the Labour Government from 1999 to 2008. People will recall that during those heady years of Helen Clark and that big-spending Government interest rates for first-home buyers were around 8 percent or 9 percent or 10 percent per annum. That is right.Jacqui Dean: Up to 11 percent.Hon PHIL HEATLEY: First-home buyers who are listening to this speech today will sit and wonder how they would ever cope if a Labour Government came in and started running mortgage interest rates at 8 percent or 9 percent. I stand corrected by the member for Waitaki Jacqui Dean who reminds me that actually interest rates hit 11 percent under the Helen Clark Government. I do apologise—under the previous Labour Government mortgage interest rates for first-home buyers were around 9 percent 10 percent  and 11 percent. Under the National Government we have seen interest rates oscillate at around 5 percent and 6 percent. They may go as high as 7 percent but not the dizzying target of the big-spending Labour Government of 11 percent I am sure. So there you have mortgage interest rates—a housing issue for all who borrow to buy a home which is usually everyone.The second comparison would be those houses in Highbury and other parts of the country where the Labour Government allowed gangs and gang members to run rife not just in State housing but in State housing neighbourhoods. It allowed scams to occur such as subletting. It allowed people to undertake violent behaviour—picking up glass and the pickets from the picket fences and beating up their neighbours—and did not do a single thing about it in State housing neighbourhoods. Today we see the statistics where up to 400 State house tenants have been moved on in the last few yearsbecause of their violent dysfunctional and antisocial behaviour in State housing neighbourhoods. The Labour Party members have gone quiet on the other side of the Chamber because they know that they never dealt with those problems in State housing neighbourhoods but the National Government has.The third issue is the insulation of State houses. I would be very proud if I was Nick Smith for being the Minister of Housing who oversaw the insulation of every single State house in New Zealand that could be insulated. How is it that the Labour Party after 9 years of Government left not thousands but tens of thousands of State houses uninsulated? State houses were old cold and mouldy under the previous Labour Government for almost a decade. Why has the barracking stopped? Why are the Labour Party members no longer heckling me in the Chamber? They go quiet in shame. Congratulations to Nick Smith on insulating every single State house across New Zealand that could be insulated.That brings me to the warrant of fitness. Nick Smith is introducing a Housing Warrant of Fitness trial for States houses across New Zealand. The Labour Government never did it. Do you know why? Because its State houses would never pass a warrant of fitness. The idea that the Labour Party would introduce some sort of warrant or housing standard for private sector landlords—because this is what the Labour Party waxes lyrical about: private sector landlords across New Zealand needing to up their game. The fact of the matter is that while in Government the Labour Party could not even insulate or provide State houses of good quality in its own stock let alone in the private sector’s. It never introduced a warrant of fitness because it could not even meet that standard in State housing and it could not do it in the private sector area.Fifthly of course the Labour Party when in Government with its legislation and regulation prevented land being supplied across New Zealand in the provinces and the metropolitan areas so that houses could be built. In fact under that—Hon PAULA BENNETT (Associate Minister of Housing): I was not going to take a call but there has been some misinformation that I felt needed to be cleared up. I am an Associate Minister of Housing and the Minister for Social Development. Yes there are some changes going on with how we work with those who need houses how we work with the waiting list how we get people into homes and how we look at reviewable tenancies and at who is in our houses and who should be looking at alternative options so that we can free up some of those houses. I agree with all members of the House that we have some people living in situations that none of us would wish on anyone quite frankly. To do this we need those who are most in need actually living in homes. So since 2011 we have advised people who are going into Housing New Zealand houses that those houses were not necessarily a house for life and that we could be looking at some of the need as we went forward.There are big changes happening on 14 April. We have certainly made them public but I am not sure that they are getting the kind of attention that they perhaps should be. No longer will Housing New Zealand place people into homes. That will be the responsibility of Work and Income and I think that is really important for the well-being of those people. Mr Harawira raised concerns about that and felt that it would be marginalising people. In fact it is the complete opposite. The reality is that we know a lot about people who are on benefits. We know how many children they have we know what their income is we know what their needs will be longer term and we know their history of benefit receipt or with Child Youth and Family. By taking all of those things into consideration when we place someone in a home we can also be looking at the wider social concerns.So the reality is that if we set someone up in a home their children are engaged in school. We have the right kind of support going in to them whether it be via an NGO aprogramme like Family Start or Parents as First Teachers or one of those great programmes that works with them. We keep them there for a very long time so that they have that sense of community and are able to stay engaged in work and schools. However there are some people who are paying market rent in a Housing New Zealand home. That means that their income is such that they could actually afford supposedly to be in a private rental. So then it gets really interesting to look at what the barriers are that are preventing them from going into a private rental. Quite often it can be bond payments quite often it can be fear and quite often it can be just knowing what they know. So we can actually put things in place that will assist people to overcome those barriers so that we are freeing up homes for those most in need.One of the other really important things is of course that we are opening it up to social housing providers. So people like the Salvation Army Vision West Community Trust in my own patch out in west Auckland and other organisations that actually do engage in social housing will be able to access income-related rents and that is massive for them. That means that they can offer the tenants in their homes income-related rents which of course greatly reduces the cost for the individual or family and equally also makes it much easier for the organisation that is supporting them because they are no longer reliant on just the accommodation supplement.What you will see from 14 April is that we will have people on a waiting list that will be going out to social housing providers as well as to Housing New Zealand. They will be advising us on the homes that they have available. We will then be making the best call for that individual or family as to where they live and what best suits their needs. We then get far better wraparound support for them. We get to identify what all of the issues are. Although it is a massive change and there is always some risk in how Work and Income will handle that with the increase in staff for specialised services I know that we can make a really big difference. We will be making some announcements very soon on reviewable tenancies. They will be sensible they will be common-sense and they will working alongside someone over a period of time. So someone is not going to get notice of 1 month or even 2 months or for that matter even 3 months. We will be working with them on what other opportunities there are and how we can place them into homes. So I really welcome this.I have heard other members raise the issue of how many houses have been insulated. I cannot even start to go on about the special housing areas in Auckland and the difference they are making in homes being built and opening up other opportunities for New Zealanders. This is a complex and a hard area but it is one that I know National is making a difference in and Nick Smith deserves all recognition for the work that has gone on.Report noted.Ministry for the EnvironmentNICKY WAGNER (National—Christchurch Central): The mission for the Ministry for the Environment is environmental stewardship for a prosperous New Zealand and I believe that it is truly delivering on that goal with three significant environmental firsts in the last year. The ministry is strongly focused on improving New Zealand’s freshwater management and it has led comprehensive reform in this area.Based on the Land and Water Forum which in itself was a real breakthrough in terms of getting long-overdue action on water the Ministry for the Environment has developed the first ever National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management and now a new national objectives framework for fresh water. This framework is scientifically backed and will deliver real reform for freshwater management. It will support communities to set freshwater objectives and water quality bottom lines to preserve ourecosystem and human health. I just want to note that the numeric values that inform the framework and bottom lines have been provided by over 60 freshwater scientists from both the public and the private sectors and from academia. These values have been tested against a reference group of water users so they are practical and sensible initiatives. The framework will provide a solid platform for maintaining and improving water quality in all our rivers our lakes and our wetlands. This is something that I think all New Zealanders will support.Another first for the ministry is the work behind the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act which we passed last year. New Zealand now for the very first time has a legislative framework to ensure environmental protection for our oceans. This is essential regulation and is long overdue. Although there has been an oil and gas industry operating in New Zealand waters for over 50 years there has never been any protection and it is absolutely time to introduce that now. This Act will protect our seas and National has done it.But probably the most influential first is the work that the ministry has completed to introduce the new Environmental Reporting Bill which will come into the House later this week. Without objective long-term monitoring and reporting it is impossible to make scientifically valid and intelligent decisions about our environment. This bill will provide comprehensive and independent reporting and that reporting will be analysed by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The reporting will be on the domains of air climate and atmosphere fresh water marine and land with an overlay of biodiversity across all those areas. Finally we will have credible environmental information to underpin our decisions. Too often in this Chamber we debate the quality of the information rather than the actions that could make a significant difference to our environment.So I want to congratulate the Ministry for the Environment on the work that it has done as evidenced by these three firsts: the national objectives framework for fresh water which will improve water quality across the country; the exclusive economic zone legislation to protect our ocean environments; and the new environmental reporting legislation which will provide scientifically based information to influence future environmental decision making. With these three firsts New Zealand has been gaining a reputation for its innovative approach to bringing together successful environmental and economic policy. That is something that underpins National’s blue-green philosophy based on our belief that looking after the environment and growing our economy can and must go hand in hand for the long-term well-being of all New Zealanders.Report noted.Ministry for Primary IndustriesHon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): I will take just a brief call. I refer members of the Committee to aRiddet Institute report that actually outlines in a very clear way the importance of the area of responsibility that the Hon Nathan Guy and his department his super-department the Ministry for Primary Industries are responsible for which is a very big part of our economy. And the fact that it is leaderless is putting our whole economy at risk. To use the Minister’s own words: “Biosecurity is my No. 1 priority.” Well I appreciate that but we need more than words to carry it through.In the year gone past in the biosecurity area the Minister for Primary Industries has let into New Zealand onion fly in garlic from China palm kernel expeller has finally been identified as a high biosecurity risk we have gotPsa in kiwifruit we have gotTheileria running rampant through livestock in the North Island and we have got porkimportation where his department took the pork industry to court costing hundreds of thousands of dollars so that we could insist on getting pork from Canada into this country with huge risk. We have caught fruit fly and we have got peach scale on kiwifruit and the Minister says that biosecurity is his No. 1 priority. If that is as good as it gets he has failed miserably and the department has as well.Food safety is another crucial area of the Ministry for Primary Industries. We have had dicyandiamide because of a failure of oversight. We have had meat stuck on the ports in China. We have had botulism because the Minister’s own Government departmentAsureQuality failed to give good advice to his ministry the Ministry for Primary Industries and then failed to give it to Fonterra—hundreds of millions of dollars of cost. And then with the meat exports from this country again we have got faecal contamination.In every crucial area of our economy in the primary sector oversight by the Ministry for Primary Industries is failing—absolutely failing. The Government’s response is that we will havePrimary Growth Partnership funding—that is a slush fund for its mates where $350 million of taxpayer funding has been handed out for different projects. The key performance indicators and the response on those projects are so bad that the Office of the Auditor-General is currently investigating all the Primary Growth Partnership grants. There are three areas—one where the Government is throwing money at its mates; the other areas are biosecurity and food safety—where failure after failure is occurring and putting our economy at risk.What has happened in trade another area under the super-ministry? Well the last good thing we had in trade was the responsibility of my good friend and colleague the Hon Phil Goff and that was the free-trade agreement with China. If it was not for him and that deal dare I say it this economy would be on its knees.So what has the National Government done? Well it has tried to progress free-trade agreements in a couple of different areas. TheTrans-Pacific Partnership has failed. It has stalled and in spite of the Minister of Trade the Hon Tim Groser being overseas at this moment pulling back from a free-trade agreement with Russia which is not a bad idea at the moment I would suggest he has shown no real progress in the area of trade.So to come back to the area that we are talking about the Ministry for Primary Industries is an absolute failure in every area of its core responsibilities. In biosecurity we are at serious risk in food safety our reputation has slumped and with the Primary Growth Partnership I think the report of the Auditor-General that will come out in about June we think will be incredibly revealing and will expose the links between the National Government the National Party and the people who have received funding from this slush fund. In the area of trade where there has always been some hope that the Government is going to deliver for New Zealand again the Ministry for Primary Industries has failed. The results are cuts for funding in this Government’s first Budget cuts to biosecurity and merging a whole lot of responsibilities into one big super-department to the point where even the independent report on botulism said that the core responsibilities of the Ministry for Primary Industries are being compromised.IANMcKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): One could tear that last speech from Damien O’Connor apart with a chainsaw but instead I will take it apart gradually. There has never been a time in New Zealand when the primary industries have performed better than they are doing now. One has only to look at the dairy sector the wood sector even the sheep meat sector—they are performing outstandingly well. This Government—Dr David Clark: They don’t like what’s going on at Invermay.IANMcKELVIE: No but of course what is going on in theManawatū is very different. This Government has put much energy into the restructure of the Ministry forPrimary Industries to enable food safety the land-based productive sector biosecurity and fishing to operate in a—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time for this debate has expired.Report noted.Clauses 1 to 10 and schedules 1 to 5agreed to.Bill reported without amendment.Report adopted.