Court Simon; Rurawhe AdrianSIMON COURT (ACT): Yesterday we learnt that the Government will set out an implementation unit to be run by the Deputy Prime Minister. The focus will be to ensure that the Government's plethora of announcements on mental health infrastructure housing and climate change are actually delivered. Call me old-fashioned but making sure Ministers deliver on a Government's promises used to be the job of the Prime Minister. But there's no accountability inside the Prime Minister's Cabinet and that's partly because there's so little talent on the bench. You can't sack a Minister when there's nobody there to replace them. We have a marketing-led Government and its Achilles heel is delivery. The Prime Minister announced in 2019 that it would be a year of delivery for the Government. It turns out no one had told the doctor and no one had booked a birthing suite. The year of delivery never arrived. We were promised 100000 KiwiBuild homes over 10 years. Labour delivered just 871. In July 2020 Grant Robertson announced around 150 so-called shovel-ready projects all able to start within the next six to 12 months—an easy win for the Government because many of them were already under construction. They just needed more money. Few others have started. The Government was going to plant a billion trees over 10 years. It turned out that of the hundred million a year most of them would be private sector trees and they're still not meeting their targets. Auckland light rail is still a pipedream greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise the number of children living in poverty is stagnant and that's why the Prime Minister wants to talk about COVID. It was a COVID election with endless announcements from the Beehive theatrette—anything to divert attention away from delivery. Only COVID-19 saved the Government from having to admit in an election year that they had delivered practically nothing. The most critical and important project sitting on the Government's list is the not even in the implementation unit's brief. New Zealanders were going to be at the front of the queue for COVID-19 vaccine. Fewer than 5 percent of us have been vaccinated and we're second to last in the OECD. The world will soon start opening up and we are going to be left behind at this rate. But here's the real issue: the Government doesn't trust the private sector. They don't like the private sector. There's virtually no commercial experience in this Cabinet. It ignores the advice of the private sector with the skills and experience to actually contribute and deliver. They ignore the advice of businesses most likely to be affected by delays and uncertainties and the loss of productivity that's associated with this Government's failure to deliver. There has been virtually no private sector involvement in the COVID-19 response. Grant Robertson said this implementation unit is needed because the Government is delivering projects that are complex and across departments. Well it must come as a surprise to the Government and the infrastructure Minister that almost every single infrastructure project crosses multiple asset-owners and affects multiple stakeholders—surprise! The private sector knows how to deliver stuff and the fact that it's been frozen out by this Government is one reason of many why it has failed on so many fronts. Here's the reality: the so-called implementation unit will change nothing until this Government changes its attitude to the private sector. We could make progress on so many of our country's issues if we look beyond the Wellington bureaucracy whether it's harnessing the energy and knowledge of local organisations who want to run charter schools and engage kids who've been underserved by local State schools whether it's replacing the Resource Management Act so that the private sector can get on with the business of building houses or whether it's better collaboration with the private sector to deliver better hospitals and elective surgery. The New Zealanders who live outside the Wellington bureaucracy often have better knowledge about how to get results. That is why it is the most cynical abuse of power for this Government to announce it has the plan or the solution when it has no real idea or intention to deliver. Almost every announcement whether on infrastructure climate or mental health is simply a political magic wand—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired. [Interruption] Order! [Interruption] Order! When I say Order! Your time has expired" I mean it. I'm going to give the member a warning: do not read a speech again in the general debate. I didn't interrupt him—the member is new—but that's the last time."