O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): About 2½ years ago now when I like all New Zealanders saw the ominous approach of COVID-19 we saw what it was doing around the world. We looked at China we looked particularly at Italy and we knew it was coming. An announcement was made that we were going to lock our country down for an unknown period that could be up to six weeks or two months and it was something of an eye-opener for me. It was a bit of a road to Damascus because I remember sitting there thinking that you can't shut a country down for six weeks or two months because the long-term fiscal impacts will be so great that we would actually give away everything that we've got in the however many years we measure ourselves as having been in New Zealand. But I do remember that the Prime Minister at the time said If we look after the people the people will look after the economy." and that's exactly what happened. We did look after our people and in doing so the dire projections that were made in most of the fiscal and Treasury predictions at the time didn't come into play and they didn't come into play because we did concentrate on that which makes up a country: its people. So we did that and we do now find ourselves in a much better position than we would have been by doing just that—by concentrating on our people. Now I move forward to the document we're discussing today or the background to it: He Tirohanga Mokopuna 2021. As the previous speaker has said it does make some quite ominous reading because on sitting and reading this document it outlays many scenarios. It looks at the demographics to come it looks at the income to come and it looks like the state of the world. Taken alone you could walk away and you could actually end up thinking the way I was thinking in March 2020 which was that "Yes we're were in real trouble here." Actually we've now run an overlay of this—run an overlay of this—of people. Now you've heard some speeches from across the floor in which they presuppose the status quo and that's when I sit on this side of the House and feel very fortunate to be here because those members on the other side of the House such as the member who just spoke the shadow Minister of Finance—what they make all their predictions on is the fact that nothing will change because they know it can't change because they represent the status quo. They represent those who benefit from the status quo; therefore nothing can or will change. We've only got to have a look at the history of this country to see the major changes that have taken place that have enabled us to be where we are today. I look at the Treaty of Waitangi and that was unique. That was something that for the first time colonials did respect or attempted to respect—let's not talk about what subsequently happened. But there was certainly an attempt to acknowledge that the indigenous people—Māori—did have rights in this land and that's something that had been pretty much ignored everywhere else that Europeans had gone beforehand. That has laid the framework to where we are today and for many of the things we consider we consider against that framework. The next thing was the land reforms of the 1890s. Now New Zealand was essentially owned by about 270 families around the country who were only interested in grazing this country and weren't interested in intensifying. They weren't interested in the burgeoning meat trade because they were doing very well thank you from just producing wool and sending it back to old Blighty. Certainly Jock McKenzie at the time and Richard John Seddon realised that this country was not going to thrive if we allowed those who were beneficiaries of the status quo to call the shots and of course calling the shots they were. You've only got to have a look at the occupations of those who were in this place or the equivalent of it at that time. So fortunately for us here today again those changes were made and we now have a country that is able to turn into the intensive productive agricultural country that it is. That simply would not have happened had those who were the beneficiaries of the status quo been listened to. I then move through to the Depression and we compare ourselves with the United States here. When we locked down and when the world's economies collapsed around our ears what did we do? We basically retrenched right across the board. They had Herbert Hoover in the United States and here we had the then country party led by Forbes which I think was the name of the leader of that Government who essentially looked after the status quo. The decision was made that they would entrench the spending and those who really suffered were those who were on the periphery—the poorer people. But the ones who got through the Depression—in fact history will show that many of those families who made quite a lot of money during that time actually had money when going into it. Then coming out of both those situations where there was the New Deal in the United States under Roosevelt and of course here we had Michael Joseph Savage we entered into a major State house - building regime—again things that we are beneficiaries of today. All those things again were opposed and they were all things that couldn't possibly have been done by a centre-right Government at the time. So in the time given to me—in fact I see that the time has gone very quickly—we could actually go through many of these things but we arrive where we are today at this report. Now again those dire projections have been made. One of the things that comes through here is the change in the demographics that is going to happen in this country and the reason why we simply must invest today where we are is that the money that we have we've borrowed. An amount of it has been borrowed. We've been through a fiscal shock a long-term shock a hundred-year shock against which again we could have retrenched. We could have basically not borrowed any money. We could have allowed the businesses who have benefited greatly despite the accusations from across the floor from wage subsidies and the other fiscal stimulants that have happened and—Hon Member: But it's just to help pay the wages.GREG O'CONNOR: —unless they're in tourism or hospitality they've generally done pretty well. And those members over there who are complaining at the moment I would challenge them to go and talk to their local tradies and ask them or go and talk to the businesses involved in construction and see what their biggest problem is. Their biggest problem is actually an inability to deliver and at the moment it's certainly not a shortage of orders on their order book—that's not the thing those members will hear. Again we've got ourselves into that situation so we now go to look at the future and this is a good document. We've heard all the speakers here talking about how it is essential that we do look at the world we will be in in 2040. The bottom line through here through the different scenarios is that you can put a template against it as to what we are doing today and what we are doing today is investing in our people. You will see that the money that has gone on apprentices for example means that we will have a generation of highly trained people through the next 20 or 30 years because we're getting that with those tradies I talked about before many of them are looking at retirement. They will be replaced so we will have a workforce capable of keeping this country working. We look at the money for education and again I'll go back to something that the speaker Nicola Willis talked about which was Better Public Services. What they were was cheaper public services. Anyone can run a surplus if they don't pay the bills and they don't do the maintenance. What this Government has had to do in preparing ourselves for the scenarios painted here in this report is to ensure that we do have the actual schools available where our pupils will be taught. There's no point in talking about the need for education if we've got nowhere to teach them and that's what happens if you don't pay the bills and you don't do the maintenance. For example if you don't build the classrooms and you don't maintain the classrooms which again was a legacy of the last National Government then you end up where at some stage someone has got to pay those bills—because the status quo says "We don't need it right now for schools." I look at what happened in Tauranga as a very good example. If you don't invest in the sorts of services that your young people need you end up with a town that is where it is now and that's why you need to appoint a commissioner. So against the background of this I look at what this Government is doing where our investments are going and where the borrowings are being invested and I am satisfied that knowing what's coming we're doing what we can now to ensure that we inure ourselves against that. Thank you Madam Speaker."