Volume 665 Week 50 - Tuesday 3 August 2010 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Volume 665 Week 50 - Tuesday 3 August 2010 
[Sitting date: 03 August 2010. Volume:665;Page:12879. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Tuesday 3 August 2010 
Mr Speaker 
 took the Chair at 2 p.m. 
Prayers 
. 
Members 
Speaker—Granting of the Right Honourable Title 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House) 
: 
 I wonder whether as Leader of the House I might offer you on behalf of the House our best wishes and congratulations on the occasion of your receiving the title of Right Honourable from the Palace. I think that this recognises the importance of the role that you occupy and further adds to the dignity that you have brought to that role—our congratulations Mr Speaker. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 The Opposition also associates itself with the kind and generous remarks of the Hon Gerry Brownlee in respect of this recognition being given to the service that you give Mr Speaker not only to the House but to the public and the country. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I humbly thank all honourable members for that. I feel very humble about it. 
Obituaries 
Esme Irene Tombleson QSO CBE 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I regret to inform the House of the death on 30 July 2010 of Esme Irene Tombleson QSO CBE who represented the electorate of Gisborne from 1960 to 1972. I desire on behalf of this House to express our sense of the loss we have sustained and our sympathy with the relatives of the late former member. I now ask members to stand with me and observe a period of silence as a mark of respect for her memory. 
Honourable members stood as a mark of respect. 
Visitors 
Singapore—Minister of Community Development Youth and Sport 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I have much pleasure in informing members that the Hon Dr Vivian Balakrishnan Minister of Community Development Youth and Sport of the Parliament of Singapore is within the precincts of the Chamber. I am sure that members would wish that he be welcomed and accorded a seat on the left of the Chair. 
The Hon Dr Vivian Balakrishnan accompanied by the Deputy Speaker entered the Chamber and took a seat on the left of the Chair. 
Questions to Ministers 
Electricity—Generation from Renewable Resources 
1. 
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green) 
 to the  
Minister of Energy and Resources 
: What phased milestones does he have if any to achieve his aspirational goal of 90 percent electricity generation from renewable sources by 2025 as stated in his draft energy strategy? 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister of Energy and Resources) 
: 
 The questioner fails to recognise that the Government does not determine the investment decisions that will be needed to increase the availability of renewably generated electricity. The Government does however set the regulatory and policy environment in which those investment decisions are made. The Government’s changes to the Resource Management Act and the introduction of the emissions trading scheme are significant encouragements to the development of New Zealand’s considerable renewal energy potential. Phased milestones would be possible only if we lived in a command and control - style economy; we do not. 
Dr Kennedy Graham 
: In the context of his regulatory framework for encouraging renewables how many dollars of new funding has his Government committed to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority’s Marine Energy Deployment Fund? 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: The Marine Energy Deployment Fund was set up some years ago. It has not been added to but I can inform the member that I have recently announced a grant to the Chatham Islands that will make a considerable difference to electricity consumption and the price for consumers should it prove successful. 
Dr Kennedy Graham 
: But is it not true that the fund has been cut by a million dollars? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I apologise to the honourable member but I ask him to repeat his supplementary question. I ask members to remember that it can sometimes be a little hard to hear members at the back of the House. 
Dr Kennedy Graham 
: The Minister commented about an additional component within the fund but is it not true that the fund as a whole has been cut by a million dollars? 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: It is fair to say that the fund and the concept have been extremely unsuccessful. The number of projects put up that are viable has been extremely low. Yes there has been a transfer of some money out of that fund to other energy saving activities. 
Dr Kennedy Graham 
: How much of National’s promised $35 million of new funding for solar power has his Government committed to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority’s solar hot-water programme? 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: I do not recall that a dollar amount was ever put on it but I can tell the member that the Government has moved to continue the $1000 subsidy for solar hot-water heating. We have further introduced an opportunity for people to get a subsidy for heat pump heating. We have also made sure that those grants are associated in a dollar amount and measured against the energy efficiency that those appliances can achieve. 
Dr Kennedy Graham 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. With due regard to the answer which I appreciate I point out that the question simply asked how many dollars have been committed. Does he have a figure? 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: I am happy to say that my recollection is—and I will check it and correct it if necessary for the member—that it is in the vicinity of $8 million. 
Dr Kennedy Graham 
: In that case is it not true that there is no new money for renewables and that New Zealand is therefore no more likely to reach the 90 percent aspirational target within 15 years as it ever was? 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: No I think that is quite wrong. If one were to look at the number of projects that are currently consented awaiting consent or appealing consent the total megawatt capacity is some 5300 megawatts on the books ready to go. Of that 80 percent is renewable-based generation of electricity. 
Hon Nanaia Mahuta 
: Does the ranking of petroleum and coal development as the No. 1 area of focus in the draft energy strategy and the pushing back of greenhouse gas emissions as the last area of focus reflect the Government’s fossil fuel bias; if so how will New Zealand possibly meet the target of producing 90 percent renewable energy by 2025? 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: No I can report that in the last year 73 percent of electricity was generated from renewable sources. During the period of the Labour Government the use of thermal fuels tripled. So no we think we are on the right track. 
Hon Nanaia Mahuta 
: Does the Minister stand by his statement that the draft energy strategy was revised in order to meet the Government’s economic growth agenda; if so does that explain why the draft energy strategy has been quoted to be light on detail to leave a lot to be desired and to have a scarcity of solid information because there is no growth agenda? 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: I cannot believe that anyone who had read the document would make that analysis and I certainly have not seen it. 
Income and Employment Gap—Parity with Australia 
2. 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: When he said New Zealand would catch up with Australia has National since it became Government narrowed or widened the gap in average weekly earnings and levels of employment? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister) 
: 
 Because of the difficulties in comparing data on a consistent basis last week I asked the Parliamentary Library for its annual series on average weekly earnings which I presume is the same source as for the member’s figures. It shows that between 2008-09 and 2009-10 the weekly wage gap between New Zealand and Australia if we measure this in absolute dollars increased slightly from $213 a week to $219 a week. If we measure this as a percentage gap as we always did in Opposition it decreased from $30 to $29 and in fact it decreased from 35 percent. [ 
Interruption 
] Well if the members want to talk about closing the gap one gap that I know will be closing is the time between when he is— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Just to assist the honourable Leader of the Opposition because of that unnecessary additional part to the answer maybe the Prime Minister might like to answer the bit about levels of employment. 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: I was getting on to that. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I could not hear it. But if the Prime Minister assures me that he did then I will accept his word for it. 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: I was getting on to that but it was just getting a little noisy. None of this takes away from the fact that the average after-tax wage in Australia is now just over $50000 a year while in New Zealand it is just over $39000 and there is a lot of catching up to do. In terms of employment again if we use absolute numbers the difference in employment has widened by 200000 whereas if we use percentages the employment rate in New Zealand is actually higher than it is in Australia. As I have said before catching Australia will never be easy. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: In answering the question last week to the House about average weekly earnings for Australia and New Zealand why did he not quote the figures for 2008 2009 and 2010 and own up to the fact that even on his statistics since he became Prime Minister the wage gap between Australia and New Zealand has got wider and not narrower as he promised? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: Firstly because it has not. Secondly— 
Hon Members 
: Oh! 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: No it has not. Secondly because for 2009-10 I did quote that number in the House last week. Thirdly if the member is so hopeless that he cannot ask the right question or think on his feet then it is no wonder that David Cunliffe is— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! 
Hon Phil Goff 
: How does the Prime Minister explain the Statistics New Zealand figures out today that show that wage increases over the last year have increased at a slower rate than prices have gone up that they have increased at half the rate that they were increasing at when Labour was in Government 2 years ago and that they have increased at half the rate of Australian wage increases over the comparable period? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: I think it is worth remembering one thing: the parting gift after 9 years of a Labour Government was a recession. That is what New Zealand inherited from those people over there. But if we want to talk about prices let us do that for a moment. The price of electricity under a Labour Government went up by 72 percent—negligible claims here. Interest rates under a Labour Government went through the roof. The price of petrol under a Labour Government was $2.11 versus $1.75. An emissions trading scheme under a Labour Government was twice as expensive as one under National. I could go on and on— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: A point of order has been called and no one will go on and on. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: I know that the Leader of the Opposition in his question made a reference to the previous Government and the record of the previous Government so there was a fair licence for the Prime Minister to make some comment about that but we have now got to the point where the Prime Minister is reciting a whole lot of information that is unnecessary to the question. He should get on with the substance of the answer which is the question that Mr Goff has put to him. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: A point of order is being considered. Regrettably the question also asked how the Prime Minister explained something and of course how the Prime Minister might explain something is the Prime Minister’s business. But the member is quite right with his point of order. I think we had heard quite enough. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: With unemployment rates in New Zealand under his watch for the first time in more than a decade exceeding the unemployment rates in Australia does he expect the household labour force survey this week to show an increase or a decrease in New Zealand unemployment at the same time as the Australian unemployment rate has been declining? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: I am not going to make predictions about the household labour force survey nor is it my job to do so. What I can say is that one way to get employment rates rising and unemployment rates down is to have flexibility in the labour markets. That is something the Leader of the Opposition believes in when he is on Jamie Mackay’s Farming Show but not when Andrew Little is running the show. 
Chris Tremain 
: What impact will the Government’s income tax cuts on 1 October have on relative after-tax incomes between New Zealand and Australia? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: What an excellent question! When the Government’s tax cuts come in on 1 October the gap in after-tax wages between New Zealand and Australia will have narrowed a little since December 2008 factoring in Australia’s tax changes on 1 July. Based on average weekly ordinary-time earnings and adjusted for effects like exchange rate changes New Zealand’s average after-tax income will be about 78 percent of Australia’s compared with 75.2 percent of Australia’s average after-tax income in December 2008. Tax cuts are just one of the Government’s policies to get faster growth and boost incomes. Other measures include investment in roads broadband and electricity; cutting red tape in science and investment; balanced employment law reform; Resource Management Act reforms; more money for tourism; aquaculture reforms; trade negotiations; and controlling debt. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: Does he expect inflation in New Zealand over the next year to peak at a level of price increases more than double that of Australia; and is that because he is pushing up consumption taxes to 50 percent higher than consumption taxes in Australia? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: Firstly as we know there will be a rise in inflation caused in the first instance by a rise in GST. But of course the Reserve Bank Governor looks through that so that will have no impact. But I might add that inflation under this Government’s watch has been about half of what it was under the previous Government’s watch. Of course one way to get inflation to go through the roof is to spend money like there is no tomorrow. That is what the previous Government did. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: Can the Prime Minister confirm that this sheet showing what appears on the National Party website today under the heading “Building the Recovery” is totally blank and that that is an uncharacteristically honest reflection of National’s plans and thinking in this area? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: No but I can confirm that it shows the number of people who have signed up their support for Phil Goff as Labour’s leader. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: Does the Prime Minister have sufficient conviction in the promise he made to New Zealanders that he would close the wage gap with Australia by 2025 by committing to setting benchmarks against which his progress towards that goal can be measured year by year? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: There are a number of things. Firstly I stand by the goal of trying to close that wage gap by 2025. Secondly I stand by the view that it is a very complex thing and will take some time; no one has ever argued that it will happen in one day. I stand by the data produced by the Parliamentary Library which shows the gap is already closing. But if I could just take one moment I want to read— 
Hon Phil Goff 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Before the Prime Minister takes another moment you will recall that my question is quite specific. It is about whether he would commit himself to benchmarks to measure his progress towards his own objective. He has not touched on that at all. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member has repeated his question and reminded the Prime Minister of what he asked about benchmarks. I invite the right honourable Prime Minister to answer the question. 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: I make a challenge to the Leader of the Opposition. I will have benchmarks at exactly the same time as Labour tells us when we will get into the top half of the OECD under Labour’s leadership. 
Public Service—Scrutiny of Spending 
3. 
CRAIG FOSS (National—Tukituki) 
 to the  
Minister of Finance 
: How is the Government making progress with its plan to deliver better front-line public services and ensure better value for money for taxpayers? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 The Government is making good progress starting with a Public Service where under the last Government spending was out of control and value for money was not a focus at all. Since then we have put the Government’s finances back in order we have capped the number of State sector bureaucrats and we have demanded that Government agencies provide more services for less to the public. As part of this process we have over the last two Budgets reallocated $4 billion over a 4-year period from low-cost and ineffective services to higher priorities and more effective front-line services. 
Craig Foss 
: What are the latest steps he has taken to ensure that spending by Government agencies is prudent and contributing to the Government’s priorities? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: There is a very wide range of initiatives because there is so much to be done but today the Minister of State Services Tony Ryall the Hon Rodney Hide and I announced a review of spending on policy advice across Government departments and agencies. Between 2002 and 2009 total Government spending on all policy advice jumped by more than 70 percent from $510 million to $880 million. This growth in policy advice was even faster than the rapid growth in other Government spending during that period. We suspect that some in-depth investigation is needed to ensure that we are getting value for money. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Is slashing policy advice the latest in his so-called step change steps for building the recovery that include other great enterprises such as liberalising overseas investment building a cycleway to nowhere mining national parks and catching up with Australia; if so just how much does he think it will add to economic growth? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I think the public would regard it as not just responsible but required for this Government to look at the $880 million worth of policy advice that built up under a Government that they regarded as reckless and out of touch and thought should be thrown out of office. That is why we are looking at it. 
Craig Foss 
: Why has the Government announced the review of spending on policy advice? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: We have announced the review of spending on policy advice because we are mounting an effort right across Government to ensure that we are getting value for money. That effort has included substantial reviews of health education accident compensation and housing. Policy is an area that as yet has not had the scrutiny of this Government applied to it and it is time that we did that because the previous Government built up the spending on policy to $880 million. 
Grant Robertson 
: Can the Minister confirm that the figure he just used of $880 million came from a search of Budget appropriation data with the word “policy” or “policies” in the title field; is that an indication of the rigour of this review? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Well our even asking the question is much more rigorous than anything that ever happened under the previous Government. One of the reasons the public rejected Labour is that Labour believes that every dollar of someone else’s money spent on anything is value for money. Well that is wrong. 
Craig Foss 
: What trends in public sector spending did this Government inherit and how has it addressed them? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: In the 5 years ended 2009 public sector spending jumped by 50 percent—I repeat 50 percent—or twice the rate of the increase in Government revenue. In the 9 years ended 2008 the number of people working in the Public Service grew by 50 percent—I repeat 50 percent—or more than 15000 people. That growth was almost twice the number of police officers across the country and was equivalent to three times the total number of people in the New Zealand Army. This Government has decided that kind of growth cannot continue and we will apply tight scrutiny to all spending. 
Grant Robertson 
: I seek leave to table the terms of reference for the review which confirm that the Budget increase data was gained by searching on the terms “policy” and— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is no objection. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Child Abuse—Minister’s Statement 
4. 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
 to the  
Minister for Social Development and Employment 
: Does she stand by her June 2009 statement that stopping “the heinous and incomprehensible abuse of New Zealand’s children” is a priority? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 Yes I absolutely do. Interestingly the article that the quote was taken from was about a programme run by the local district health board to reduce shaken baby syndrome. The board had been seeking funding for the programme since 2006. I stepped up and arranged funding for a 3-year pilot which has been running for a year now. 
Hon Annette King 
: Does she think a $2 million advertising campaign will reduce violence against children in light of John Key’s comments about another anti-violence campaign that “People who are putting their child in a dryer and turning it on aren’t sitting back watching television and saying ‘Oh gosh now the government is telling me over the TV it’s not a good idea.’ ”; if she does not agree with the Prime Minister why would she waste taxpayers’ money on this programme? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: I am sure that even that member would appreciate that it is an incredibly complex and distressing area. There are some families whom the campaign will help; there are others whom it will not. It is about raising awareness. I think the previous Government found it a difficult and complex issue. We have taken a number of initiatives a number of others are coming up shortly and we are taking steps towards protecting those children who need it most. 
Hon Annette King 
: In response to numerous parliamentary questions she has claimed “Every day … I invest energy and passion into making a difference in the lives of children and young people … with a continuing priority on the vulnerable under two year olds.” but do one small pilot programme another review committee and a publicity campaign which she has said have been the Government’s actions to date really indicate that this Government is serious about addressing child abuse—something that National when in Opposition said was so easy to fix? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: I find it a sad day when we are playing politics with these young people’s lives and I can assure the House that that was something this party did not do. I will give a bit of an indication of some of the things we have been doing. We have the First Response pilot which is being run by the New Zealand Police Child Youth and Family and Shine which is an agency in Auckland. We have 16 Child Youth and Family social workers in hospitals now and that is a new initiative introduced since we have been in Government. We have multi-agency discharge meetings for children who have turned up at a hospital abused to determine what happens to them when they leave. We have data sharing happening between agencies that has never been there before. We have the Auckland District Health Board programme to prevent shaken babies. We also provide respite care for families who are under a lot of duress to try to give them a break so that they can actually do more. Those are just some of the new initiatives that have been introduced since we have been in Government. 
Hon Annette King 
: If 40000 child abuse notifications 5 years ago was a national shame as was said by National in Opposition what does she call 110000 notifications at present a figure that is predicted to rise to 125000—her own prediction for next year? Does she believe that 9 years in Opposition to develop a policy and 18 months since the election is long enough to put together the Government’s solution to child abuse or does she now realise that child abuse is a complex and difficult problem as Labour tried many many times to point out to National when it was in Opposition? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: What I will talk about is the fact that at the end of March 2010 Child Youth and Family had 90 unallocated cases. It is those sorts of numbers that make a difference. Equally in terms of investigations that are open for over 90 days in 2005 there were over 5000 of them and today there are 129—129. As we know notifications have gone up because the police are reporting any incident of family violence they go to where a child was present. We are seeing increased awareness by the public and I encourage that and think it is a good thing. We will step up and take these initiatives which I think make a difference. 
Hon Annette King 
: Does she agree that a growing underclass—with many people living in poverty and with many children going to school hungry being beaten regularly living in fear of abuse and living in squalor—contributes to child abuse as claimed by her Cabinet colleague Judith Collins; is she aware that the number of children living in poverty has increased by over 40000 since she became the Minister; and when will she put faces to the children who are represented in these statistics? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: I do not think there is any doubt—and I have heard from a number of people who work in this area and take it very seriously that they also think this—that this Government is stepping up to the issues and making some of the hard decisions around it. I find it quite disappointing that Labour members have decided that because there is so much strife and chaos going on in the party they will play politics on this issue today. But I think there is no doubt about it and there is no one who can identify— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I ignored the previous instance when the Minister accused the other side of playing politics in asking a question but it is not on. Members of this House are entitled to ask questions. Ministers do not have to like the questions but they should not make accusations when questions were genuinely asked. At the same time I must say that the questions were very long and it was extraordinarily difficult to sort out whether they were being answered. But certainly we should not have accusations that in asking a question—[ 
Interruption 
] I am on my feet. We should not have accusations that members in asking a question are just playing politics. 
Katrina Shanks 
: What has the Government already done to tackle the problem of child abuse and neglect? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: I am proud to announce that tomorrow the Minister of Police the Hon Judith Collins and I will sign a memorandum of understanding between the New Zealand Police and Child Youth and Family to ensure a close working relationship in such a critical area. It sits above the new child protection protocol which specifies how the two agencies will investigate child abuse and is also on top of the multi-agencies that we have been opening this year. 
Te Ururoa Flavell 
: Tena koe Mr Speaker. Kia ora tatou. Is the Minister aware of any initiatives taken by whanau hapu iwi or Maori communities in addressing the issue of child abuse? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: Yes. There are a number of initiatives out there. One example that I want to point out today is in Kaikoura where three women from a local hapu from NgatiKuri are working with young women on issues of abuse and violence to improve their outcomes. The programme is Te Ara Tika-wahine Toa and I have heard absolutely favourable things about it. I think it has the capacity to make a real difference on the ground. I commend those women for their initiative and support them in it. 
Foreshore and Seabed Act Review—Access Under Customary Title 
5. 
DAVID GARRETT (ACT) 
 to the  
Attorney-General 
: Will he commit to prohibiting Maori owners from charging other New Zealanders for access to beaches; if not will he at least limit the amount they can charge to $5 the fee currently charged by the Maori owners of Takou Bay in Northland? 
Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General) 
: 
 Access will be free for those areas of public foreshore and seabed where public access is guaranteed. The example the member uses is one of property owners whose land adjoins a beach and who are charging a fee for access over their private property. This Government believes in property rights and we will not be legislating away private property rights whether for high country farmers Waihi residents who live near the beaches or the landowners of Takou Bay. 
David Garrett 
: Leaving aside charges for crossing adjoining land can the Minister explain what the owners of customary title of foreshore and seabed will be able to charge for and what they will not be able to charge for? 
Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON 
: Any iwi or group that has customary title may for example be able to charge if someone wants to have a development on their area of customary title. That will be a question that will be worked out between the customary titleholder and the applicant for the particular development. 
David Garrett 
: Does the Attorney-General believe that it should be part of the rights of customary title to foreshore and seabed to be able to charge for access to it? 
Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON 
: The member has to understand that there is a distinction between the owner of coastal property and the owner of customary title. I would have thought that that member comes from a party that strongly believes in property rights. If someone wants to have access to the foreshore and seabed over private property there may well be an instance where that person has to be charged for it. 
Hon Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. We appreciate the statement about property rights but the question was specifically whether the owners of customary title in the foreshore and seabed as proposed by the Government’s policy would be able to charge for access—would they have that right? That question was never addressed. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: What I will do is invite David Garrett to repeat his question to make it clear. One of the reasons I am inviting the member to repeat his question is he did not need to have a lecture about what he should understand in the answer. I invite the member to repeat his question. 
David Garrett 
: Does the Attorney-General believe that it should be part of the rights of customary title over foreshore and seabed to be able to charge for access to it? 
Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON 
: Of course my beliefs are irrelevant; it is what is Government policy. Government policy is that access to the foreshore and seabed where those areas are in the public domain will be free. 
Health Services—Cuts 
6. 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
 to the  
Minister of Health 
: Why have there been numerous announcements of health cuts in the last 20 months if as he said last week the health budget in the last 20 months has increased by over $1.3 billion? 
Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health) 
: 
 The member is correct that the health budget has increased by over $1.3 billion in the past two Budgets. We are getting more front-line services. Despite this increase district health boards still have to prioritise their spending as they have always done. That is why under the previous Government the Feilding maternity centre was closed home care in Wanganui and Otago was reduced 30000 people were culled off waiting lists and elective surgery was reduced by some district health boards. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: If the district health boards are so awash with money as he says why are front-line nurses and other health workers in Taihape being forced to take a 10 percent wage cut in order to keep their health centre running? 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: The Government has never claimed that district health boards are awash with cash. The fact is that we are coming out of one of the worst recessions since the 1930s and the Government has been requiring everyone to look for value for money in spending that extra $1.3 billion well. Otaihape Health is in serious financial trouble and an independent report into its future has identified several things that need to change if it is to continue. It is getting strong support from the Whanganui District Health Board. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: Is the option of front-line nurses and other health workers taking a significant cut in their wages an acceptable way for him to keep our health services operating? 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: The Otaihape Health Trust is not owned by the Government; it is funded by the Government. The conditions by which people are employed are a matter for the trust. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: Given the desire he expressed to Treasury to be a more hands-on Minister why did he not intervene and appoint a statutory manager to Otaihape Health as proposed to local member of Parliament Simon Power rather than washing his hands of involvement and allowing the workforce to be forced to take this significant pay cut? 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: I just comment that from that question it is quite clear the member does not have an appreciation of what was happening at that private organisation Otaihape Health Trust. We know that an arrangement has been reached that should allow services to continue in that community. 
Dr Jackie Blue 
: What reports on front-line services for the thousands of New Zealanders who need access to medicine has he seen? 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: I am able to report that the Government’s $60 million boost to the medicines budget is benefiting over a quarter of a million New Zealanders. Pharmac has used the additional funding for medicines to introduce newly subsidised medicines including the first Alzheimer’s drug and new diabetes medicines. Access has been widened for patients suffering from conditions including several cardiac and respiratory problems depression Crohn’s disease and severe psoriasis. These patients could not have received access to these subsidised medicines just 2 years ago. 
Employment—Proposed Annual Leave Policy Changes 
7. 
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
 to the  
Minister of Labour 
: Why is the Government proposing to allow employees to trade up to 1 week’s holiday for cash? 
Hon KATE WILKINSON (Minister of Labour) 
: 
 Employees have been telling us that they would like more choice. They are keen to exchange some of their holidays for extra cash. There are a number of protections in this policy: cashing up the fourth week cannot be discussed when an employee begins his or her employment and cannot form part of the employment agreement; only employees can initiate a request; and if an employer pressures his or her staff into cashing up leave he or she must return the relevant holidays to an employee’s leave balance and the employee gets to keep the extra cash. The Government has been careful to ensure that the decision is freely arrived at by the worker that the worker is not pressured to do it and that there are adequate safeguards. 
David Bennett 
: What reports has she seen regarding the Government’s proposal to allow employees to trade the fourth week? 
Hon KATE WILKINSON 
: I have seen one report from 20 July from the Hon Phil Goff: “I don’t have huge objections to that as long as the decision is freely arrived at by the worker and the worker is not pressured to do it. If you’ve got that safeguard in then if somebody chooses to do that then I’m quite relaxed about it.” I have seen a report from Andrew Little from 31 July—the real boss presumably—announcing that Labour Party policy is now: “There will be no tradability of the fourth week of annual leave.” The very next day Mr Goff denied that he ever supported trading the fourth week. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The House has heard two reports and I think that is sufficient at this stage. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I know that this is really unusual but our side was really enjoying that. Could you let it go on? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That is very unlikely. 
David Bennett 
: What feedback has she received from the public on trading the fourth week? 
Hon KATE WILKINSON 
: Workers whom I have spoken to are delighted about the new choice available to them—[ 
Interruption 
]—and they want it to happen sooner rather than later. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I say to honourable members that I realise that all this gets members a little too excited but I want to be able to hear the answer and I am sure that other members do too. 
Hon KATE WILKINSON 
: However they would like to have some clarity about whether the Opposition actually supports this policy because in July Mr Goff supported tradability and now in August Mr Goff does not support it and is trying to claim that he never did. I can only ask what— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The Minister has no responsibility for what Mr Goff may think on this matter. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Is she aware that the annual labour cost index released today confirms that New Zealand average weekly wages have grown by 1.6 percent over the last year while Australia’s wages have grown by 3.1 percent; if so how will introducing yet another tool to drive down wages and conditions help to close the ever-widening wage gap with Australia? 
Hon KATE WILKINSON 
: This is only one small tool in the tool kit that encourages flexibility in the workplace in order to provide economic opportunities and job opportunities for New Zealanders. 
Schools Primary—Reports for Parents 
8. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
 to the  
Minister of Education 
: Is she satisfied that the quality of reporting to parents of primary school children is better than it was last year? 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 I have had feedback from parents that indicates that many schools are providing reports to parents that are clearer contain much information and are in plain language. Not all schools are meeting the expectations of all parents yet but it is early days and one would expect this in a bedding-in year. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Does she stand by her statement with regard to numeracy that one in five school-leavers is in the bottom 20 percent and that that is a disgrace? 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: First of all that statement is not contained in any report around the national standards that goes home to parents. I am not sure exactly where the member got that quote from; I would have to see it. He tends to selectively quote. 
Colin King 
: What reports has she received that suggest parents are receiving higher-quality reports as a result of national standards? 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: My office has received a number of emails from parents and teachers thanking the Government for the reports they have received as a result of national standards. One parent stated: “The national standards reports were clear and understandable. They helped us choose parenting strategies that best suit our child. National standards and compassionate treatment of children are not mutually exclusive concepts.” 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Does she stand by her comments including those in this weekend’s papers that she is disappointed that schools were only reporting on reading writing and mathematics in the new interim reports; if so why? 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: Yes because parents want to know lots of things that their children are doing at school. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Why then did she issue schools with a template interim progress report to parents that showed reporting in reading writing and mathematics only? 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: Because they asked for it. 
Te Ururoa Flavell 
: Tena koe Mr Speaker. Is there scope in the reporting framework to parents to embrace academic achievement other than in literacy and numeracy or that might for example respond to Education Review Office reports on Maori underachievement? 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: Yes absolutely. We encourage schools to have those wider conversations with parents. Parents have made it clear that they want to know all about how their children are doing at school—the good the bad and the ugly—and we encourage parents who are not satisfied with their reports to go back to the schools and talk to the teachers about getting that information. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Did she personally approve the template interim report issued in her name which reports on reading writing and mathematics only? 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: I saw it and I have discussed it with quite a wide number of principals who asked for some assistance and some ideas about how they might present the information. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Why then did she indicate that she is disappointed when principals and teachers use the report she supplied to them? 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: One of the most important things about the reporting of information from schools and teachers to parents is the rich conversations that they have together about the children. So it is not for me as Minister to get in between those conversations. But schools asked for help; we provided a template and we will provide any information that we can to help schools with those conversations with parents. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It was a pretty straight and simple question that asked the Minister why she was disappointed with schools that use the template she supplied. Further to the point of order I am taking I seek leave to table the template supplied by the Minister to schools. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Let me deal with the last part first. Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is no objection. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: In terms of the first part I say to the honourable member that he asked the Minister why she was disappointed. I think the Minister gave an explanation of what she expected in reporting and I presume she was disappointed if that were not what was going on. She did not believe that she should be interposing herself in that all the time. That might not perhaps be exactly the answer that the member sought. I thought he might have been more concerned about the previous answer than that one but I feel that on that particular occasion the answer was not unreasonable. 
Schools—Lifting Student Achievement 
9. 
ALLAN PEACHEY (National—Tamaki) 
 to the  
Minister of Education 
: What recent announcements has the Government made about supporting schools to raise student achievement? 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 Yesterday I announced a major new approach to lifting achievement for all students. Firstly experts with proven ability in lifting student achievement will be appointed to work closely with schools and build strong relationships. Secondly the $36 million announced for national standards in Budget 2009 will go towards new intervention programmes being developed for students who need extra support in reading writing and maths over and above good classroom teaching. Lastly I have asked the ministry to redesign its professional development for principals and teachers to make it much more targeted. 
Allan Peachey 
: What feedback has the Minister received on the new focus on lifting student achievement? 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: I received the following email this morning: “Many principals have felt that the professional development options available to schools have been too fragmented and piecemeal so a revision of the delivery strategy is welcome. I believe that this is in fact the strategy that will change student achievement.” 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The Minister just quoted from a document. I ask that that be tabled. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I have to rely on the honourable Minister’s word. Was she quoting from an official document? She says she was not and I have to leave it at that. 
Pork Industry Board—Thompson and Clark Investigations 
10. 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
 to the  
Minister of Agriculture 
: Will he ask the Pork Industry Board if they were aware that Thompson and Clark Investigations was collecting information for them on animal rights campaigner Rochelle Rees by means of a tracking device planted under her car; if not why not? 
Hon DAVID CARTER (Minister of Agriculture) 
: 
 I have. 
Keith Locke 
: Could the Minister explain what the answer was and will he investigate the matter further now that the Pork Industry Board has admitted receiving information from Thompson and Clark Investigations on domestic animal rights activists in an email sent today given that some of that information may have come from Thompson and Clark Investigations’ proven use of a covert tracking device against an animal rights activist? 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: I have yet to receive a response to my letter to the Pork Industry Board. But I think that three things are worth remembering: firstly this was a  
Sunday Star-Times  
article; secondly some allegations were made that were not substantiated in that article; and thirdly—this is important—the author of the article was that well-known fair-minded independent journalist known as Nicky Hager. 
Keith Locke 
: Does he think it is unusual that the Pork Industry Board would reply to me before replying to the Minister on this matter and does he not think it would be quite wrong for the Pork Industry Board to benefit from such unethical covert surveillance particularly given that even the police cannot use a tracking device without a very good reason and a judge’s warrant? 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: Nothing that the Pork Industry Board does surprises me. I certainly think that the board would be far better to focus on meeting the genuine concerns out there in relation to the consumption of pork products by consumers rather than engaging in this sort of tactic. 
Hon Damien O’Connor 
: Is the Minister satisfied with the time that it is taking to produce the new pig welfare code—a code that he promised would be delivered last year; if not when will he show some leadership and step in to resolve the pork industry issues? 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: I am disappointed in the time that it has taken to deliver the code. As was mentioned in the House last week we now expect the draft code to be finalised over the next few weeks. It is then a matter of undertaking a peer review before the draft code is presented to me but I gave my commitment to the House that I will process it as quickly as possible. It is worth noting that one of the reasons that it has been delayed is the threat of legal action from the Pork Industry Board. 
Overseas Investment Rules—Sale of Land 
11. 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
 to the  
Minister of Finance 
: Does he agree that but for the strategic asset test introduced by Labour any overseas purchaser of a New Zealand business not including sensitive land only has to have money have run a business show “good character” and not be an ineligible individual under the Immigration Act 1987? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 No this test has no bearing on those purchasers as it applies only to investments in sensitive land. 
Hon David Parker 
: Does he agree that infrastructure businesses with monopoly characteristics just about always turn a profit and are strategically important to the functioning of the wider economy? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: That may be the case but I suggest that the member review the legislation which I think he may have been in charge of before because the strategic asset test applies to sensitive land not to businesses. 
Hon David Parker 
: Does the Minister agree that it is important that the Government have discretion to decline the sale of infrastructure assets to overseas owners? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: The Government has to apply the law as this Parliament has passed it and as reinforced by regulation. Again I recommend that the member review that law because I am not sure that he is representing it correctly. 
Hon David Parker 
: Given the conflicting messages that we are getting from the Minister as to loosening the foreign investment rules and from the Prime Minister about tightening them could the Minister please tell the House whether he intends to loosen foreign investment rules or tighten them? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: What we have said publicly is that we have been reviewing them with the intent of ensuring that New Zealanders are able to feel that those things they think are important about New Zealand are on the one hand protected; but on the other hand that we accept the reality that in order to have jobs and incomes in New Zealand we need to have foreign investment. 
Resource Management Act Reforms—Consents Process 
12. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National—West Coast - Tasman) 
 to the  
Minister for the Environment 
: What new measures has the Government introduced to improve the efficiency of processing the approximately 50000 consents per year under the Resource Management Act 1991? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment) 
: 
 Yesterday the Government’s new regulations to provide an incentive for councils to process consents in a timely way took effect. In the same way that ratepayers face financial penalties for late rate payments councils now face a financial penalty for the late processing of resource consents. The penalty is a 1 percent discount to the consent applicant for each day over the 20 - working day statutory requirement up to a maximum of 50 percent. 
Chris Auchinvole 
: What data has the Minister received indicating deterioration in the performance of councils in processing resource consents? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Over the term of the previous Government non-compliance with statutory time frames grew from 18 percent to 31 percent and over the same period the number of councils granting themselves extensions grew from 3 percent in 1999 to 28 percent in 2008. This means that 59 percent of consents or 29000 consents in 2008 were outside the 20-day statutory requirement. Last year’s law changes limited the circumstances in which those extensions could be granted and these provisions provide a financial incentive for efficiency. This is about reducing red tape so that businesses can get on and create jobs and economic activity to help the recovery. 
Imprest Supply (Second for 2010/11) Bill 
First Reading 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 I move  
That the Imprest Supply (Second for 2010/11) Bill be now read a first time. 
Bill read a first time. 
Appropriation (2010/11 Estimates) Bill 
Third Reading 
Imprest Supply Debate 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 I move  
That the Appropriation (2010/11 Estimates) Bill be now read a third time and the Imprest Supply (Second for 2010/11) Bill be now read a second time 
. This is an opportunity for Parliament to debate the economy and I had been looking forward to it until I saw what a mess the Labour Party had made of its internal rifts splits and divisions. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Well that’s rich—their worst political leader in 100 years. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I knew that those members would say that and all I can say is that they are following the playbook almost to a T including having the leader make the mistake of saying that he would throw Chris Carter out of the Labour Party. One would think that those members would have learnt but they have not. Of course Chris Carter has played exactly the right card so that it is drawn out for several months while the leader’s position is progressively weakened by Chris Carter’s other accomplices within and outside the caucus. 
Of course there is one extra bit here. Usually in the playbook that we know about the president supports the leader; that is what usually happens. The president realises that he or she has to objectively oversee a process to deal with the member who has committed an offence. But not in the Labour Party; no not in the Labour Party. The president is out in the media looking so relaxed that one would think that he has just come back from a beach holiday and he probably has—a beach in New Plymouth. [ 
Interruption 
] No Andrew Little. He should be sounding a bit uptight in the media but no he is quite relaxed. Everything is playing out. At least John Key got into the caucus before he became the leader; at least John Key got into the caucus. Andrew Little does not have to because— 
Dr Russel Norman 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. We are debating the appropriations legislation and I would like to hear what the Minister of Finance’s economic strategy is. He has no responsibility for the Labour Party and this matter has nothing to do with the appropriations. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: Mr Assistant Speaker you will I am sure uphold the long-held tradition that this is a very very wide-ranging debate. I think that it is being conducted in an appropriate manner. The fact is that these matters are topical to say the very least and I think it is not unreasonable that the House might give them some attention. 
Hon Members 
: Where’s the plan? 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I am on my feet. I do not have to provide anybody with a plan. But I will say to Mr Gerry Brownlee that he is almost right with his interpretation. It is not a very very wide-ranging debate; it is a very wide-ranging debate. Members are free to range over those things. It is not the Speaker’s intention to censor what people say. The public and others will make judgments about the content and the veracity of speeches. All in all it is almost a general debate. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I agree with the comment that this matter is topical but fortunately—and I say this advisedly—it is irrelevant. It does not matter now which talking head of the left faction or the right faction it is or from outside or from wherever those members will do whatever they are doing. We are getting on with the economy. 
I will outline the main components of the Government’s economic programme. This Government is dealing with a very considerable challenge in respect of the economy. The economy went into recession in early 2008 because of the mismanagement of the previous Government and that was compounded by the global financial crisis. These are some of the measures we are taking. Today we announced the policy expenditure review which is part of our overall plan for better smarter public services. In the last couple of Budgets we have reallocated about $2 billion of spending over the next 4 years from low-cost and ineffective programmes and expenditure to higher-priority front-line services. That is a process that will continue. We have had to bring under control the runaway spending habits of a Public Service that was used to getting pretty much whatever it liked. We have also had to deal with the attitude issues and the culture in the Public Service—the combination of too much money and a lot of bullying. It created among civil servants a degree of passivity and lack of confidence in their own judgment. There has to be change if we are to meet the challenges of the next 4 or 5 years so a better smarter Public Service is one of our six drivers. 
Another driver is a growth-enhancing tax system. In Budget 2010 we delivered a fairly significant shift in New Zealand’s tax system and there is a pretty simple theory behind it: those things that have been harmful to the economy in excess such as borrowing for highly leveraged property and too much consumption now face higher effective tax rates. Those things that we believe will be better for the economy over the next 4 or 5 years such as investment exports and savings are now subject to a lower tax rate. That will all come into place on 1 October this year. 
I have to say that we are one of the few developed countries—if there are any others—reducing income tax rates and taxes on savings as the world emerges from one of the more significant recessions that it has had. We have cut the company tax rate to 28 percent which will now be lower than Australia’s and is likely to remain so. The average wage earner will be around $15 a week better off after GST and a family on the average household income will be $25 a week better off even after paying higher GST. Another pretty interesting statistic is that 73 percent of all New Zealand earners will face a top statutory tax rate of 17.5c in the dollar. That is because we believe that incentives matter right across the board. If people on the minimum wage want to do an extra hour of work we believe that it is important that they get to keep over 80c in the dollar for their extra effort. 
We are also focusing on lifting education and skills. There has been good robust public discussion about our national standards policy that we are putting into place. The Youth Guarantee is another innovative policy designed to make sure that young people do not lose contact completely with education and training in the workforce. And of course we are tidying up the tertiary education funding system to make sure that it is more focused on achievement than the previous system was. So those drivers are improving the tax system better smarter public services and lifting education and skills. 
No. 4 on that list is boosting infrastructure. I must say that the timing for this infrastructure boost has turned out to be highly appropriate. At a time when the domestic construction industry is really struggling it turns out that the Government’s large-scale investment is maintaining thousands of jobs as we spend billions of dollars on upgrading infrastructure that needs to be brought up to the levels required to handle a growing economy. I will go through those in detail. The State highway programme now amounts to $10.7 billion over 10 years; the national grid upgrade now amounts to $3.3 billion over 5 years; the broadband project amounts to $1.5 billion over 10 years; and investment in schools and other buildings the Government is investing in now amounts to $2.7 billion over 5 years. But it is not just about spending the money. What is even more important is upgrading the process by which those decisions are made because it has to be quality spending when we are borrowing that money. 
We have also embarked on an ambitious programme of cutting red tape and regulation. That picks up work that the previous Government had talked about and done a bit of. We are reviewing the Resource Management Act. A couple of other Acts we are currently reviewing are the Food Act which applies to every food outlet in New Zealand and the Building Act whereby we are moving along to the legislative stage with a sweeping reform to reduce costs and compliance in the building sector. Even with tough Budgets we have also invested quite heavily in better business innovation in an ambitious trade agenda to help particular sectors and to help to encourage research and development. 
Overall this is a very balanced but energetic programme designed to get this economy up and running after a decade of mismanagement when New Zealand squandered its opportunities wasted public money smothered the business environment and prevented New Zealand from taking the opportunity of what in retrospect looked like one of the more encouraging decades that the New Zealand Government could have had. In that respect I must say that Australia did do a better job over the last 10 years and that is why closing that gap will be such a big challenge. 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 When Bill English got to his feet and began to decry the runaway spending habits and the bad culture of the Public Service I thought that at last we were hearing a mea culpa. He is paid the highest housing allowance of any beneficiary in the country; he is paid thousands of dollars to live in his own home. If it started off as a bitter speech we can understand why. He is the man who took National to 21 percent in the 2001 election—21 percent. Worst of all he was a leader doing his best who was stabbed in the back by his own current party leader who had promised to support him the night before the party ballot and instead gave his support to Don Brash. It is no wonder that Bill English is a bitter man in the House. 
But I do not want to waste time on Mr English; I want to talk about what National promised New Zealanders. John Key said that the fundamental purpose of his Government was to narrow the wage gap with Australia. On any measure the Key-led National Government has failed in that purpose. The media showed that the wage gap with Australia had increased by $40 a week since John Key was elected Prime Minister. John Key came into the House and said that was untrue and had not happened. He tabled a document of the best-massaged figures he could provide and it showed that the wage gap had grown by $23 a week. But then—and this is what I objected to most—from Mr Brownlee and Mr Key there was the dishonesty of trying to disguise figures that represented the reality that New Zealand workers are much worse off. 
Mr Key and Mr Brownlee proudly became the joint holders of the title of “Wallies of the week” in the  
Dominion Post 
 last Saturday. Let us hear what the  
Dominion Post 
 had to say: “[Gerry] Brownlee for so brazenly claiming that the wage gap with Australia has shrunk under National when by any measure it had grown”. But wait there is an even better award for John Key. He was joint “Wally of the week” “for thinking anyone would be fooled by his inept attempt to manipulate the statistics to support his Minister.” They are the “Wallies of the week”. 
Well New Zealanders are not so easily taken in. They know they are not better off they know wages are not increasing at the rate of prices and they know the wage gap with Australia is growing wider and accelerating by the day. We got that information from Statistics New Zealand which today stated that the wage increase in the last year was 1.6 percent. Well inflation went up by higher than that amount. Every New Zealander going through the supermarket checkout knows that when John Key tells them that they are better off it is not true. 
What else did we find? We found that the wage increases in New Zealand in the year ended June grew at half the rate of the wage increases in Australia—half the rate. Most of all we learnt that the wage increase under this National Government in the last year was as reported by Statistics New Zealand well under half of what Labour gave workers in its last year of office. That is where the truth lies. 
Mr English can talk as much as he likes about Labour’s legacy; Labour’s legacy was a country with one of the lowest rates of unemployment in the world where wage increases were consistently above price increases and where people were better off in their workplace in the social policies that were being pursued and in their living standards. Mr English made a half-hearted attempt to say what his plan was. Well I hold up the real plan taken off the National website today. It is the policy statement  
2010 Budget: Building The Recovery 
. What does the policy say? It is a blank piece of paper. Oh no it has a copyright on it. But this sheet of paper is as blank as the ideas and the plan that National has to address the problems of this country. There is no plan. 
Mining in a national park or a protected conservation area is not a plan. John Key Kate Wilkinson and Gerry Brownlee told the House at the start of this session that that was their big plan for step change. They were going to dig up our national parks. Ask anyone in New Zealand and they will tell members that it was a load of nonsense economically and a load of nonsense environmentally. Now those members have slunk away from that policy with their tails between their legs. John Key denies that he ever had anything to do with it. But the truth is that 6 months was wasted during which this Government should have had a plan to lift New Zealand wages and employment rates and close the wage gap. 
I asked the Prime Minister in the House today whether he had the courage of his convictions and would stand by the promise that he had made to set benchmarks for progress towards the objective of closing the wage gap with Australia by 2025. The answer was no. There was no courage of convictions. We know that the promise to close the wage gap with Australia was simply empty electoral rhetoric. There is no plan we are not catching up and it is getting worse. The wage gap is growing. For the first time in more than a decade we have a higher unemployment rate than in Australia. Under John Key’s watch we have a higher unemployment rate than in Australia. 
When challenged this afternoon in question time as to whether he would predict that the employment gap with Australia would narrow he declined to make the prediction. I will tell members why. The Ministry of Social Development statistics already show that our dole queues are growing bigger while the Australians are cutting down their unemployment rate. The projection this week is that will continue. 
We do not have to be rocket scientists to know what New Zealand needs. It is pretty clear how we can move forward and Labour has put this into its plan. Labour’s plan is about upskilling the workforce because we know we need more apprentices not fewer. We know there is a looming skills shortage but this Government is doing absolutely nothing about it. We know we need more people with tertiary education but the Government is locking out an unprecedented 5000 people. We know we need to achieve better in education. National standards do not achieve anything; they just measure achievement. What achieves better standards is better early childhood education but that is what the Government is cutting. 
We know we need more savings because if we save more we invest own and control our own country. Why then did National cut KiwiSaver when the Australians were expanding their scheme? Why did the National Government cut the money that was going into the Cullen fund so that baby boomers could contribute towards their own retirement? We have fewer savings because of what the Government is doing. Government members can whine all they like about being tenants in their own country but they are causing that situation because they do not have a plan for savings. 
We know we need to invest in a smart economy. We will not catch up with Australia by making workers worse off by cutting their entitlements and cutting their wages. We will catch up with Australia and do well through a smarter economy smart technology and a highly educated highly paid and highly skilled workforce. This Government is not going in the right direction; it is going in the wrong direction. 
Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health) 
: 
 When their colleagues were applauding what was going on with George Hawkins the young guy from Rimutaka Chris Hipkins and the chap from Palmerston North Iain Lees-Galloway? 
I must pick up from where the Minister of Finance finished because it really is going according to the playbook of what happens when the Leader of the Opposition is on the skids. In that situation the leader has a speech and a little note will go around in an email stating “The leader is about to speak; please all make your way down to the Chamber”—and they did. But I have to say after hearing that speech from Phil Goff that it can only be summed up with these words from Chris Carter: Mr Goff is a very nice man but he just cannot win. What is more Mr Carter went on to say that there are many members of the caucus who feel the same way. They are the ones who did not stand when we saw the ovation following Mr Goff’s speech today and a lot of the members who did stand are also included in that group. 
The statement that Mr Goff is a very nice man but just cannot win came from someone who was one of his front-benchers until a few weeks ago Mr Carter. It is a bit like what used to happen in the Soviet Union where if anyone disagreed with the leader that person would be sent to the asylum. That is what they are saying about Chris Carter. It is very very impolite and it is not a reflection of the situation that Mr Goff finds himself in. 
What was sad about Mr Goff’s speech was the fact that it is clear Labour does not get that its “more debt higher tax” policies will not work for New Zealand. There is no awareness from the party opposite that we are coming out of the worst recession since the 1930s. Mr Goff was in a party that during the best of times squandered the opportunities New Zealand had and he now represents a party that has no coherent vision for the future of this country. He is a very nice man but he just cannot win when he has no plan or policies for New Zealand other than to spend another $300 million which is what Ruth Dyson is going around the country and saying we should do. Apparently we will fix everything by spending another $300 million. What we know is that that is not the case. 
During its term the previous Labour Government spent recklessly interest rates were persistently high exporters were struggling and the tax system clearly was not working. Under this Government we have a six-pillar programme of economic recovery for New Zealand the first of which is growth-enhancing tax cuts which are putting large amounts of money in the pockets of ordinary New Zealanders. Many New Zealanders will remember that Phil Goff and Annette King voted to put $500 a week tax cuts into their pockets and the pockets of Cabinet Ministers when they were in Government between 1984 and 1990. That is what they voted for: $500 a week in the pockets of Cabinet Ministers. Annette King and Phil Goff stuck their hands up and said “Yes thank you we’ll have the $500 a week tax cut.” 
What this Government has done is to give average wage earners the significant benefits they deserve. A family on the average household income will be $25 a week better off and the vast majority of New Zealanders will face a tax rate of no more than 17.5c in the dollar. 
Sue Moroney 
: Not after their early childhood education fees have gone up. Tell us about what’s going on with young children Tony. 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: Oh and what is her name from the Waikato? 
Paul Quinn 
: Moroney? 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: Was Sue Moroney in favour of Phil Goff’s voting to put $500 in his own pocket? Oh she was in favour of that. 
We have lower personal tax rates a lower marginal tax rate for the vast majority of New Zealanders and lower tax rates that make us more competitive with Australia thereby giving the right incentives to business and individuals to get ahead. We are also focusing very strongly on better smarter public services for New Zealanders and on getting the Government debt and spending under control. We know that we inherited a forecast that was a nightmare for the New Zealand economy. What we had seen was the world economic crisis economies heading way down and the previous Government not doing enough to prepare New Zealand for that situation. 
We have capped the Public Service bureaucracy and moved resources to front-line services and New Zealanders can see those improvements every day. An extra 13000 people received elective surgery last year because of the National Government’s investment. People are getting faster cancer treatment than they did under the previous Government and today I can tell the House that the significant extra $60 million investment that we put into community medicines sees a quarter of a million New Zealanders getting medicine that they would not have been given 2 years ago without that significant investment. 
Minister Paula Bennett has been leading a real drive for welfare that focuses on work. Not only has this been coupled with lowering personal marginal tax rates but also she has put together a package that encourages people to get back to work and take responsibility for themselves. Job Ops and Community Max are really giving young people in my electorate and elsewhere around the country the opportunity to get workplace skills and experience. 
Thirdly and very importantly Minister Anne Tolley is leading a significant sea change in education with national standards— 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: That’s not what teachers say. 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: Actually most teachers are getting on with the business of implementing national standards because they do not like the fact that one in five kids can leave school not being able to read and write well enough to get a job. They do not like that so they are working very hard to implement national standards in literacy and numeracy. The reports that parents are getting are providing much better information than was provided previously. We know that in education there has been significant investment such as a 4 percent increase for schools in their operations grant funding $350 million for school property over the next few years and very exciting things happening with Youth Guarantee and trade training in schools. It is excellent that we are investing in these trade academies around the countryside and really making a significant change. These are the things in education that will really deliver the lift in skills and attainment that we as New Zealanders want. 
Very importantly as the Minister of Finance said not only are we putting more money in people’s pockets focusing on education and getting better quality public services but also we are investing in infrastructure—an area neglected by the previous Labour Government. As it was throwing the cash around it did not focus on the really important infrastructure investments that can help our country grow. We will invest almost $11 billion over the next 10 years in roads and roading infrastructure in New Zealand we will invest $1.5 billion over 10 years in the ultra-fast broadband network and we will upgrade the electricity transmission. 
What is more there is nothing more significant than the Government’s public health investment in the Warm Up New Zealand: Heat Smart programme. Under that programme 50000 homes have been insulated. This is a significant public health measure. As we travel around the country we are already picking up on stories of families that now have opportunity and success as a result of having warmer and drier homes and their kids are no longer having respiratory problems like asthma and other difficulties that one gets from living in damp homes. That is a significant investment and a major public health programme. The health service has made a contribution. The Labour Party called that a cut in the health budget because we gave money to the Healthy Homes programme but that is one of the best things we can do in health. 
We are also making a significant investment in business innovation and in our trade agenda but also very importantly we are making a real commitment to cut red tape and regulation. Minister Kate Wilkinson is leading a huge effort to streamline employment law in order to give businesses and employees the opportunity to expand employment opportunities. The 90-day trial period is being extended to all businesses. Nick Smith is doing a great job on the Resource Management Act. Everywhere I travel around New Zealand people are saying that we are doing significant things in resource management in order to make it easier for people to invest in their businesses and get ahead. 
This is a Government with a real agenda for the changes that we are driving through. The Labour Party has a real agenda for change—its leader is a very nice man but he is just not up to the job. 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 We have just heard from Mr Ryall who is not a nice man. He is not winning for the sick and vulnerable people of New Zealand. When we go around this country we hear that they call him “Minister of Cuts”. People tell us daily of cuts that are occurring in health and most of it is by stealth. People wake up and find they have had their health service cut only after he has passed through and after it is too late to do anything about it. He had the cheek to mention the Healthy Homes project but he forgot to tell the House and listeners that the National Government cut that project by 60 percent in this year’s Budget. But of course he says it is not a cut; it is only a change. 
In 2008 we saw from National so many promises so many commitments many political bribes so much hype and more slogans than Goebbels could produce. We could call 2008 the “Year of the Great New Zealand Con” because 2008 was the year that John Key sucked in thousands of New Zealanders by his great propaganda machine. He talked about a “brighter future”; the “unrelenting focus on catching up with Australia” the “turbocharged economy”; the “fresh start for young New Zealanders” the “step change” in every policy one could see. Amongst all of that he promised to keep all Labour’s major policies. He said he would also keep those and that is why the media called him “Labour-lite”. 
Then we have to remember that the very policies that he said he would keep he voted against when he was in Opposition. He voted against Working for Families; he called it “communism by stealth”. But in the election campaign he promised that he would keep that “communism by stealth” programme. He does not now recognise that the programme lifted 130000 families out of poverty and last week in the House he had the cheek to say that the previous Government had done nothing about poverty. 
The Minister promised to keep interest-free student loans but in Opposition he said it was “irresponsible economic vandalism” and that National members would oppose it with every bone in their body. I say to them now: “Where is their spine?” because one part of their body has disappeared. National members were going to oppose it with every bone in their body but in the promise—the great New Zealand con—they promised they would keep interest-free student loans. National said it would keep the 20 free hours early childhood education policy but then it took out the word “free” and now we know what it means. It means “free with a fee”. 
National also opposed the seabed and foreshore legislation. How many members of this House have forgotten the “Iwi/Kiwi” billboards? National ran that campaign against Maori up and down New Zealand to divide this country and that has been forgotten by the National Government. It was all about optics when National was in Opposition. Now I believe that New Zealanders are starting to see through the great New Zealand con. They are saying they voted for a different Government. On a daily basis Opposition members—whether getting into a taxi meeting people on the street walking through the supermarket or collecting for charity somewhere—have people coming up to them and saying: “This is not the Government we thought we were getting. This Government is not giving us what we voted for.” I say that this Government cannot make decisions. It cannot make a decision and stick with it. It seems to us that the last person who spoke to John Key leads to the decision he makes that day. 
Today we have found out it is even worse than that; we now have “Government by Google”. Imagine that! We must be the first country in the world that has “Government by Google” as the chief Opposition whip has called it. When Government members want to find out what is happening they put a word into the Google machine a computer and out spits all the comments that they want. They do not do research they do not do any work they do not have a plan; they just have “Government by Google”. Government members do not have the internal fortitude to stick to their principles and policies. They do not stick to a plan. Why do they not stick to a plan? The answer is simple: they do not have a plan. It is so obvious now to all New Zealanders; there is no plan from the National Government in this country. It really is funny if it were not so sad. 
This is National’s plan: “Building the Recovery” policy statements. It is empty except it is copyright and also has an address on it for a Mr Oldershaw. Perhaps we should ring him and ask him what happened to the plan because the Prime Minister cannot tell us the Minister for Economic Development cannot tell us and the Minister of Finance cannot tell us. I ask whether there is anybody over there who can tell us what the economic plan is for this country. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: The next speaker can. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Nick Smith is the next speaker. If people can understand what he says they might hear a little bit of a plan. At least he has tried to have a bit of a plan even though everybody is laughing at it. 
There is no plan particularly around National’s biggest promise which is its biggest con of all. You see New Zealanders are proud people and we really like to compare ourselves with our closest neighbour. We like to think that we can beat the Australians at things like rugby on Saturday nights. The Prime Minister at that time the Leader of the Opposition said: “We will close the gap with Australia by 2025.” There were no ifs no buts or an aspirational “maybe” or “we will lead towards it”. When he said: “We will close the gap with Australia by 2025.” New Zealanders believed him. They believed that there would be a closing of the gap in wages in skills and in education. In anything we liked there would be a closing of the gap. 
This is the plan now. It is not written anywhere but behind the Government’s own closed doors and in smoke-filled rooms its members are saying: “We can’t do it. We can’t close the gap but we are going to fudge it. Let us now say it is aspirational.” The Government says that it is still committed to closing the gap even though it knows it can never make it. If we do not believe our goals and we do not have a plan we will never achieve anything. This Government is so good at telling us what the score will be but it never tells us how we will get to that score. It is a pretty crazy way of going about running a country. It is easy to tell people what one thinks the score would be; it is much harder to say what the game plan is to be able to reach that score. 
The Government does not have a plan. It has no commitment to this country. Fortunately New Zealanders have an alternative party that does have a plan. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Oh! 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: I tell members opposite that our plan is not secret or covert. It is not one that even those members do not know; every New Zealander will know Labour’s economic plan. We had one in Government and it saw us have the lowest unemployment rate in the world. It saw us with net Government debt and as a country that was growing that had invested in our young people and in apprenticeships and that had invested in the future in terms of savings. Labour got New Zealanders saving and we got families working. We invested in social services. 
That was the legacy for National and every day its members stand in this House and try to pretend that the recession we have gone through was the worst since the 1930s. I can tell Nick Smith that there were more people unemployed in this country when National last went out of office than there were in this latest recession. The Government has done nothing to address the current unemployment rate; in fact the Budget is predicting that in 5 years’ time unemployment will still be above what it was in 1999. [ 
Interruption 
] I tell that member to read his own Budget documents. That is what we are getting from this National Government. There is no plan to reduce unemployment no plan for a skills strategy and no plan for growth in this country. Anything the Government is doing is based on reducing the rights and the incomes of working New Zealanders not based on any growth or strategy that it could put in place. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment) 
: 
 The elephant in the room that has been ignored by the deputy leader of the Labour Party is simply two words: Chris Carter. You see those members opposite want to sort of pretend that the dramatic political events that unfolded in this Parliament last Thursday simply did not happen. I challenge the next speaker for the Labour Party to front up— 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: How much stress leave? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Oh it is Mr Cunliffe who will talk about the elephant in the room Chris Carter. 
This debate is about Budget 2010. It is the most visionary Budget that members of this House have seen in a decade. It is a Budget that addresses the challenges that are facing New Zealand in respect of our economy. In contrast we have the unfolding mess that is the Labour Opposition. Those members are so much more focused on the scraps amongst themselves than they are on the real issues that are facing New Zealanders. Is it at all unbelievable that we have a situation where mother Helen Clark and dad Michael Cullen have left the Labour house and the children are running riot? This is a leaderless Opposition and members on this side of the House simply point out the contrast. 
I raise a simple issue: can we believe Phil Goff’s policy pronouncements? He said on 20 July in respect of trading in the fourth week of annual leave: “I am quite relaxed about that as long as there are safeguards to ensure that the employer cannot abuse it.” Well the interesting thing is that 2 days later the president of the Labour Party a Mr Andrew Little who is not an elected member of this House said “No the policy is that there will be no tradability of the fourth week of annual leave under Labour Party policy.” I ask who is writing the Labour Party’s policy. Labour’s leadership has left this Parliament and it is now in the hands of a union leader. That exposes the depth of mess that there is within the Opposition. 
I remind members opposite of the legacy that Labour left New Zealand in terms of our economy. Over the 9 years that Labour was in Government the debt of this country grew from $90 billion to $180 billion. We have a situation— 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Net debt was reduced to zero. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Mr Cunliffe knows that consumption expenditure was out of control. Even more importantly I point out that over the period from 2002 not one new job was created in the productive export part of the economy. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: That’s rubbish! 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Mr Cunliffe knows that that is true. If we take the period of the last 3 years of the previous Government we see that in each one of those years economic growth was less than 1 percent. I faced the very first Cabinet meeting of this new Government when Treasury advised us that Labour’s legacy was a decade of deficits. Every single projected year from 2008 to 2018 had this country churning up additional debt. 
We have had to confront those basic economic problems by putting forward a growth strategy. I will go through each of the six key elements of this Government’s plan to lift our country’s economic performance. The first of those contained in the appropriations that we are debating is in respect of tax reform. It is the most comprehensive tax reform that New Zealand has had for more than two decades. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Rubbish—wimped out! 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Well I have a challenge for Mr Cunliffe. I ask him what he would do. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Fix LAQCs. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Ah we have some Labour policy. My question for Mr Cunliffe is whether Mr Little has signed off on that latest piece of policy we are hearing about from Mr Cunliffe. I suspect not but I suspect that Mr Cunliffe will be building a chummy relationship with Mr Little as the months of speculation over Labour’s leadership go on. What we see in this Budget package are tax changes that will help drive economic reform— 
Moana Mackey 
: The Minister has destroyed ACC. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Now we have Moana Mackey chipping in about accident compensation. Let us look at Labour’s record on accident compensation. Within days of being appointed as Minister I say to Moana Mackey I was called into an urgent briefing because of the mess that members opposite left in the accident compensation scheme—a debt of $2.4 billion in the second to last year of the previous Labour Government and a $4.8 billion loss in just the accident compensation area in its last year in Government. That is absolutely financially reckless and it is one of the reasons that the people of New Zealand will not trust Labour with the Treasury benches. So tax reform is at the heart of the 2011 Budget. 
The second major element is regulatory reform. Regulatory reform in respect of the Resource Management Act has both a phase one and a phase two. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: That’s not going to change the world. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Well I put this to Mr Cunliffe: what did Labour do in its last year in Government when 27000 resource consents were not processed in the statutory time frame? What did it do? It did zip. In fact it got worse in every single year that Labour was in Government. What did its members do about the prolonged and protracted legal disputes over getting resource consents for new infrastructure? If members ever want to see a disaster in relation to Labour’s record they should look at the Wellington motorway and the decades that it took for its consent. 
A third key element of this Government’s programme is the $320 million commitment in this year’s Budget to research to development and to innovation. If we are to grow the economy and if we are to close the gap with Australia investing in our scientists and in innovation has to be a key part of the programme. Equally so this Government has been committed to constraining growth in the public sector. How many members opposite really in their heart of hearts believe that it is OK to have the public sector grow by 50 percent—huge growth in the public sector—at the same time as the economy grew by just 10 percent? That was absolutely unsustainable and that is why today the Government has announced a further important piece of work on ensuring value for money for the taxpayer in those key areas of public sector policy advice. 
Hon Members 
: Cuts. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Members opposite shout “cuts”. Those members believe in a bloated expanded Public Service an unproductive Public Service and a Public Service that grows at a huge rate. The truth is that Labour members care more about navel-gazing in Wellington than they do about real services for New Zealanders. 
Then there is the huge programme of Anne Tolley and Steven Joyce: investing in skills development and in better standards in education. Of course there is the programme on infrastructure investment. I have a simple response to Annette King in terms of her challenge on closing the gap. When will the tax policy that this Government has introduced come into effect? It will come into effect on 1 October. When are the resource management changes that we passed last year coming into effect? Only yesterday. When will the infrastructure that we have invested in start to pay a dividend in terms of growth? The truth is these are long-term policies that will pay rich dividends for New Zealand. We are here for the long haul. 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I stand to speak in the appropriations debate. I wish to particularly address the Government’s economic strategy. The Government speakers in between attacking the Labour Party have outlined an economic strategy with six different elements. I think it is important that we actually address the Government’s strategy. 
One of the key elements that the Government has addressed is the issue of changing the taxation system. There in particular Government members have talked about the changes they are making to the income tax rates. It is worth noting that the changes overall to the taxation system are fiscally negative—that is the Government will have to borrow around a billion dollars in order to pay for its tax changes. It seems to me that when the Government is already running a deficit borrowing in order to fund more tax cuts is fiscally irresponsible. I am genuinely surprised that the Minister of Finance who quite rightly makes quite a big deal of the fact that he tries to be fiscally responsible put forward a Budget this year that involved the borrowing of very large amounts of money in order to fund tax cuts. 
The second part of the tax cuts is that they tend to go towards the wealthy. New Zealand already has dramatic inequality. We are one of the most unequal countries within the OECD and that has enormous costs. The fact that we are so unequal is closely linked to the facts that we have one of the highest imprisonment rates that we have very high crime rates and that we have real problems with health and education. Those are linked to the fact that we have a highly unequal society. The changes that the Government is making in terms of the income tax rates and in terms of hiking the rate of GST will result in a more unequal New Zealand and that will have all of those downstream effects. 
It is also notable that the other change that the Government introduced was to lower the company tax rate. That was done on the basis of the mistaken belief that Australia would lower its company tax rate further and that New Zealand had to follow it. As it turned out Australia did not. But putting that to one side it is interesting to look at the Inland Revenue Department advice on lowering the company tax rate because the Inland Revenue Department said the major beneficiaries from the lower company tax rate will be foreign companies and that foreign companies operating in New Zealand have a much higher rate of return on equity than New Zealand companies. The reason that the Inland Revenue Department gave for the differential between the return on equity of New Zealand companies and of overseas companies is that overseas investors in New Zealand tend to target monopolies or oligopolies where they can maximise their profit rates. Those sectors of the economy where there is very little competition such as the banking sector where there is very little competition aside from Kiwibank are targeted by foreign investors in order to have higher rates of profit. 
So by cutting the company tax rate we are rewarding the foreign companies that are involved in the New Zealand economy not to export overseas. Most of the foreign companies involved in New Zealand are not export companies—that is what the Inland Revenue Department advice said. Those companies are in fact largely rentiers that simply receive an above-average rate of return. They are receiving an economic rent from their investment in New Zealand with very little benefit for New Zealand. The big investment in the telecommunications sector is another example of overseas investors seeking just an economic rent but producing very little for New Zealand. 
The changes that the Government is introducing to the taxation system will not only make New Zealand more unequal and will not only result in a higher debt for the New Zealand Government—around an extra billion dollars—but will also reward foreign companies against the best advice of the Inland Revenue Department. It is hard to see how the tax changes that the Government is making are part of any kind of coherent strategy. 
The second part of the Government’s strategy that I will talk about is infrastructure investment which Government members talked about. I think some parts of the Government’s infrastructure investment make sense. I think the grid upgrade makes a lot of sense. If we are to have a number of sources of renewable energy throughout the grid we need to have the grid in good shape. I also think that making sure that people have high-speed Internet access is very important particularly in a world where energy prices and particularly transport energy prices are very likely to be high. For people to be able to work from home by having high-speed Internet access is a good idea. I think we can question whether having wires rather than having other forms of delivering the Internet is the best way of doing it but none the less getting high-speed Internet access is a good idea. Likewise the buildings for schools is a good idea as is home insulation. Normally that would not be thought of as a piece of infrastructure but in a way it is infrastructure that is incredibly valuable to New Zealand in terms of reducing health costs making sure that kids go to school more often and making people warmer and drier. 
The part of the Government’s infrastructure programme that I think is particularly absurd—there is really no other way to think of it—is the motorway investments. Those are the same waste-of-money programmes that the previous Government followed through. Labour and National share a kind of obsession or fetish with building motorways. This is in a world where quite recently Lloyd’s of London produced a report that talked about rising oil prices and said Governments around the world needed to look at alternatives to relying on oil and becoming dependent on oil. We have now had more than a decade of Governments—and no doubt more are planned—that want to increase the New Zealand economy’s dependence on imported oil. This is in a world where we are somewhere near to the peak rate of oil production where the price of oil will become only more expensive with time and where we have to constrain our greenhouse emissions—or we certainly will have to constrain our greenhouse emissions. Yet we are building infrastructure that will result in an increased dependence on oil and we are building infrastructure that will result in more greenhouse emissions. Not only is that the case but we have to borrow money in order to do it and we are wasting vast amounts of our taxes on these white elephants. I think the Minister of Finance talked about the $10.7 billion over the next decade that he plans to waste on new motorway projects. 
The ridiculous thing about the Minister of Finance’s contribution on infrastructure was that he talked about how the Government wants to upgrade the decision-making process before it makes infrastructure investment decisions. We know from the papers that we forced out of the Government that the benefit-cost ratio on for example Steven Joyce’s “Holiday Highway” north of Auckland is actually less than 1—that is for every dollar that the Government spends on it it will get less than $1 in return using the most generous pro-roading assumptions to generate the benefit-cost ratio. So we know that the decision making around these major infrastructure projects is actually very very poor. The roads of national significance have been selected by a political decision-making process and now the Government wants to say it has upgraded the decision-making process for infrastructure investment. In fact its own studies show that the investments it is making in motorways are actually of very poor quality and are a waste of large amounts of money. Of course this issue is actually about Steven Joyce running in the Rodney electorate at the next election: getting Mr Lockwood Smith on to the National Party list so that Steven Joyce can win the Rodney seat by building the “Holiday Highway”. That is the actual decision-making process behind how we have ended up spending billions of dollars on the “Holiday Highway”. 
The third part of the Government’s programme is the so-called regulatory reform programme. I say to those who are unaware of this that the last time that National got its hands on regulatory reform it implemented the Building Act a laissez-faire regulatory reform that resulted in leaky houses. It will cost the New Zealand economy around $20 billion according to reasonably conservative estimates to fix the problems created by the Building Act of 1991 which was the last time that National interfered with the legislation. That Act was a laissez-faire piece of regulation that said the Government did not really care and people could put up whatever they liked to build. That has resulted in a massive cost. So although it is very attractive in the short term for the Government to say it is saving money the long-term costs are enormous. Likewise when the Government weakens the laws around irrigation and the protection of rivers for example that has a dramatic impact on our clean and green reputation further down the track. 
The other part of the programme that I will touch on is the Government’s approach to innovation. The Government strategy is what I would call an extractive strategy—it is very much focused on mining minerals oil and also water—and an innovative strategy really seems to be missing. We need to have a clean technology strategy for the New Zealand economy: a strategy that says we want to make the most of the international market for clean technologies which is only increasing over time. But the Government seems to pay no attention to the green economy and seems to have no understanding that the future opportunities around the globe for a country like New Zealand lie in the green economy—an economy where cleantech greentech high-tech products and services will be very much in demand. New Zealand would be in a position to supply those. 
So when we look at a number of the Government’s strategies we see that they do not seem to address some of the big issues that face us. How we move our economy towards a much more sustainable basis how we reduce our carbon emissions and how we reduce our dependence on oil are all serious issues that seem to be completely missing from the Government’s economic strategy. For that reason the Green Party does not support that economic strategy. 
Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS (ACT) 
: 
 The Budget is now more than 2 months old and it is becoming more obvious why the Government did not tackle some of New Zealand’s main economic problems including a lack of economic growth in that Budget. It is clear that the Government goes about its decision-making process in much the same way as Labour did over its 9 years in Government. 
The big problem we have is that the Government always asks the wrong question. When faced with a major issue the Government asks what it can get away with; what it can sell to the public. When one asks that question one will always come up with the wrong answer. The real question that should be asked is what the Government should do in relation to the particular policy area in the interests of the country. Having decided what one should do in the interests of the country one then asks how one markets that decision to the public. 
Getting that round the wrong way has serious consequences and I want to talk today about one of the consequences of that approach—that is the consequence for the poor and disadvantaged. I believe it is extremely harmful. In fact what makes me more cross than anything else is the way that National Labour the Maori Party and the Green Party claim to want to help the poor and disadvantaged then implement or advocate policies that do absolutely the opposite. 
This afternoon I would like to discuss how we deal with the issue of disadvantage. I agree with the other parties when they say that the key issues faced by the country include unemployment race crime health education housing welfare and the economy. Where I disagree with the other parties is the way in which we solve these problems. The country simply cannot solve these issues by seeking short-term solutions over the next 3 months or 18 months. None of these issues can be resolved in my view to the satisfaction of the public unless they are placed in a medium-term context. 
Because these issues are linked fundamentally and voters know it they cannot be solved if we look at them in isolation as we have done over the last 15 years. Poor parenting lack of motivation inadequate skills alienation unemployment and delinquency all reinforce each other. Low incomes inadequate housing poor health lack of opportunity and lack of economic growth are all part of the same syndrome. In these circumstances delivering real gains to disadvantaged people is crucial because that automatically delivers something of value to everyone else. 
Although income is obviously important to disadvantaged people income in itself is not enough to remedy their situation. Their deeper need is for the incentive and the opportunity to contribute more to society through their own efforts. By helping them to achieve independence and contribute more to society we not only transform their future but improve everyone else’s. 
These gains have an important role to play in creating a dynamic growth economy higher incomes for everyone and a fairer society. The alternative is a society with a permanent underclass—alienated people with no stake prosperity or social harmony. That is one reason why the community as a whole is desperate to see a recovery of the growth and investment needed to develop our future potential. 
The social cost of very low growth over the last 15 years has damaged the security and well-being of people at every level of society. Those costs however hit the disadvantaged harder than anyone else but their reaction to disadvantage has an impact on everyone. Deep down the public knows that growth is the only way to get sustainable jobs and avoid an ongoing erosion of living standards and well-being. That necessarily involves a reduction in waste inefficiency and avoidable burdens on those who create and contribute to growth yet Labour National and other parties see any proposal to eliminate waste as a negative and as one to be avoided at all costs. In other words there will never be a solution to our problems while this mentality actually exists. 
If we truly want to help disadvantaged people we need to end the vicious cycle we have at the moment where the disadvantaged are often forced into education in which they learn nothing life on a benefit or unproductive jobs that simply perpetuate their problem. Until we recognise that scope for constructive personal choice is the basis for the dignity of human beings we will simply not move ahead. 
The central feature of disadvantage is in fact not a lack of money or housing and so on; it is a total lack of choice. The disadvantaged need the kind of help that puts people on their feet able to make a contribution and make gains for themselves in doing so. We ignore the policies that can do that at our peril. 
The Government has increasingly allowed over the last 18 months in my view Labour and others to portray even the smallest attempt to change as the seeking of heartless efficiency at the expense of equity. Let us be clear about this: without improvements in efficiency improved equity is in fact impossible to achieve and even existing levels of equity come under increasing threat. Until New Zealand realises this economic fact then New Zealand’s relative decline of the last 15 years will continue. 
The fact is that waste consumes resources that could otherwise have been available to improve equity levels throughout the community. Certainly everyone involved in wasting resources collects a rent dividend or pay packet but they do so at the expense of the whole community. We need to be very clear about this: the benefits of privilege are concentrated in the hands of well-organised groups. For example a lot of the help that this House and the country provide to Maori goes to a few and not to the many and that needs to change. 
The issue of helping Maori people is deeply interlocked with all the other issues of disadvantage at every level. Perceived equity in these circumstances is critical. The objective for Maori people must be to open up effective opportunities for them to share fully in the nation’s future. Moreover the need is to place them in a position to do so in a self-sustaining way based on their own skill and their own imitative. That is not simply or even fundamentally a question of righting past wrongs or of restoring lost lands and fisheries to them. 
Complete justice based on the past in my view is impossible and in attempting to restore it we must take care not to make bitterness a permanent feature of our race relations. Justice for Maori people has to be based on what will work best for them and the community for the rest of the century. Their central problem is a lack of knowledge and skill which are essential for self-esteem and success in the year 2010 and beyond. Unless that deficiency can be remedied the Maori people will remain as they are at the moment—at a permanent disadvantage. 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 I apologise for interrupting Sir Roger Douglas; he was on a bit of a roll in laying down all the solutions for Maori people for the next hundred years. I thank Sir Roger very much. 
Exactly 150 years ago to this very day on 3 August 1860 on behalf of a gathering of chiefs at Kohimarama in Auckland Tamihana Te Rauparaha presented a petition to the Native Secretary asking that the Conference of Maori Chiefs of New Zealand be established and made permanent while at the other end of the country the warship  
Victoria 
 was coming into New Plymouth with the commander of the forces in Australia and his staff on board. So as we consider this appropriation legislation today which allocates extra funding over the next 3 years for Treaty settlements we are reminded to look to the lessons of our history to help set the guidelines for our future—our history in which 150 years ago today Maori were looking to step up to the challenge of nationhood while the Crown was girding for war in Taranaki. 
It is in line with the importance of settling those historical Treaty claims in order to help grow the Maori economy that the Maori Party supports the resourcing in this bill for extra staff to support Treaty negotiations and Treaty settlements which many iwi and Maori entities are now using to unlock the potential value of the Maori asset base through further research and development. 
But we note that this bill is not the only thing we want to see in the Government’s Budget planning; we also note that the Treaty has far greater value to our society than of just backstopping recent Treaty claims. In 1970 NgaTamatoa’s activism forced New Zealand to come to terms with Maori issues particularly those related to the Treaty of Waitangi and by 1974 Waitangi Day had become a national holiday. In 1975 Whina Cooper led the great Maori land march to Wellington—to protest the loss of millions of acres of Maori land in breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi—which led directly to the establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal. It was NgaTamatoa that helped organise the petition to the Government that gave birth to the revitalisation of the Maori language—a taonga under Te Tiriti o Waitangi—and which led to the emergence of kohanga reo in the early 1980s. 
If we were to question the Minister of Maori Affairs he would tell us that although significant progress has been made in the area of language revival it is still not enough. Hence he announced last week a $250000 review of the Maori language sector to update the Maori Language Strategy and to ensure that Government expenditure on te reo was meeting Maori aspirations. Again that was a great move and one that we fully support. 
Of course it would be remiss of me to forget to mention the foreshore and seabed march of 2004 which challenged the Government’s intention to deny Maori rights to the foreshore and seabed enunciated under the Treaty of Waitangi and which gave rise to the Maori Party for which I speak today. 
On another level just yesterday the Waitangi Tribunal released the second instalment of its report into the history of the conflict in the Urewera in which the tribunal recommended the return of part of the national park to Tuhoe. I am reminded that only a fortnight ago the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples Professor James Anaya respectfully urged the Government to reconsider its decision to refuse to return the Urewera National Park to Tuhoe. 
While I am talking about Tuhoe I see that the Commissioner of Police Howard Broad says that he would like to bring Tuhoe and the police together before he leaves his position next year although Tuhoe say that it is unlikely that the rift between the iwi and the police will be resolved any time soon. None of this is rocket science. As Tuhoe negotiator Tamati Kruger said the basis of good relations between Maori and the Crown is goodwill and sincerity the absence of which jeopardises the very basis of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. In fact that is also the very reason why I have drafted a bill to establish a parliamentary commissioner for the Treaty of Waitangi: to promote respect for the Treaty as the nation’s founding document and constitutional blueprint to review and investigate Treaty-related issues to provide information and analyses to the general public to promote respect for the Treaty and to provide advice to Parliament on Treaty issues. I just add again that it was also the advice of the United Nations special rapporteur that the principles of the Treaty provided a foundation for Maori self-determination as guaranteed under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples based on a real partnership between Maori and the Crown. 
Finally I wish to speak about the Government’s radical reshaping of our society to cope with the effects of a global recession and its failure to protect the most vulnerable in our society from its impact. A 2 percent lift in benefits will do nothing to help those already living on a knife-edge particularly during a period when GST has been increased prices are going up job losses have been huge and the economic recovery has been slow particularly for Maori. The Maori Party remains committed to ensuring Te Tiriti o Waitangi becomes a document that the whole country will one day see as the basis for good relationships between Maori and all others in Aotearoa the source of sound environmental policies and practices the footing for strong and positive growth in our economy the background to the nation’s commitment to eliminating poverty and addressing the injustices that limit the potential of a great sector of our society and the foundation for a legal framework that encompasses tikanga Maori and Pakeha legal principles for the benefit of all New Zealanders. Kia ora tatou. 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Police) 
: 
 It is with great pleasure that I rise to speak in this debate particularly in relation to the areas of corrections and police where we have had a standout year in terms of public confidence and the delivery of services. That is not to say that everything is always perfect and it certainly will not ever be perfect in portfolios that deal with the worst-behaved people in New Zealand—prisoners and criminals generally. But I can say that there has been a real turn-round. In corrections we have gone from a situation whereby the very best level that public confidence ever reached when Phil Goff was the Minister of Corrections was 40 percent. That is how many people had faith in corrections. That figure is now at an all-time high at 61 percent and that is a pretty fantastic result particularly for the hard-working staff at the Department of Corrections who have to put up with just about every form of abuse from members opposite as they possibly could. These staff have been able to stand up to that and they have delivered well beyond what I think even they believed they could deliver. 
Let us look at what they have delivered. At the moment about 8500 prisoners are in our cells which is up from 5000 prisoners in 1996. The last decade under Labour was characterised by massive increases in the prison population. Under Labour’s watch four new prisons were built and a fifth was started—the rebuild of Mount Eden Prison. Did Labour increase drug and alcohol treatment for prisoners? Well nobody noticed if it did but we are doubling it in the first 3 years of a John Key - led Government. As well as doubling the amount of drug and alcohol treatment for prisoners we are also increasing the availability of literacy and numeracy training. 
I was very interested to hear the speech before from the Hon Sir Roger Douglas when he spoke about education and the need for people to get education and about how it is our poorest people who miss out on so much. It is a sad but true fact that about 90 percent of our prisoners are basically illiterate and about 80 percent of them do not have basic numeracy skills. When we look at that very sad fact and at the fact that they have also undergone years of education we have to wonder what went wrong. Well I do have something to say to them and it is that there is hope we have national standards and I am very glad that Minister Tolley has the wherewithal to bring it about. Nothing we ever hear from Labour members in Opposition would ever give any encouragement in education. I am very pleased at the work Mrs Tolley is doing to try to make sure we do not have people ending up in prison. 
We have also seen a massive increase in the number of people whom we have to deal with in the Community Probation and Psychological Services. Under Phil Goff’s leadership there was one bad news story after another about that service. We now have a very well-trained group of people—our probation officers and psychologists—who work together with their managers to use their discretion training and intelligence to try to bring about change for the better in people’s lives. I have been thrilled with the quality and calibre of the people we have in corrections and I am very proud to be their Minister. 
The number of escapes has also come down. In 1999-2000 which was the first year in office of the last Labour Government there were 40 escapes from our prisons. Now with a greater number of people in prison in the last year the number was 12 most of whom were “walk-aways”—people in work parties who are low-security prisoners. We have seen the first of the public-private partnership work going on with corrections working on that with the Infrastructure Unit at Treasury. It is really good to see the department taking such a lead role in this. We are seeing the first contract management work going on and that is progressing well. We are seeing double-bunking increase. When Labour was in Government 21 percent of our cells were double-bunked. We never heard Labour members talk about that when we were in Opposition but the fact is that that is true. That amount of double-bunking has been increased because although Labour left us with four brand-new prisons it did not leave us nearly enough beds for the forecasts that it knew were coming down the pipeline at us. 
We have also brought in container cells and I am really pleased with those; they are outstanding. Container cells are cheap quick waterproof and extremely humane but they are spartan. Although I have been accused by the Opposition of pulling a stunt on this matter I have to say that they have been a standout success. I understand that prisoners are practically lining up to go into them because they are considered to be some of the best-quality accommodation we have in the prison estate. 
The department has really brought itself together and has looked at ways in which it can deal with the safety of staff and the safety of prisoners. The number of serious assaults on our staff went down to two in the last financial year down from 11 in the financial year before that. Part of that is as a result of the staff safety project and part of it is as a result of the razor blade project and change in policy which now means that people like George Baker are not allowed to retain and store razor blades in their cells so that they can then make them into weapons. That has been a standout success as there has been a 61.5 percent reduction in attacks using razor blades. Of course it is also a way of dealing with people who sometimes have suicidal tendencies to make sure that we try to keep them safe. 
Cellphone blocking which was started under the previous Government has been completed under this Government. The New Zealand Department of Corrections is the first such department in the world to have this in all of its prisons. That is a fantastic achievement. I also have to congratulate the technology sector on the way in which it has worked with corrections and continues to do so as technology consistently improves. I was in Australia recently for a meeting with other corrections Ministers and I was thrilled to see that a New Zealand Government - owned company Kordia has been asked to be the lead adviser for the Australian states on how they can bring in cellphone blocking. As a Kiwi Minister it was absolutely marvellous to be able to sit there and say “Isn’t it great.” I did not even once remind the Australians that it was a New Zealand company but everybody knew they just were not saying. 
In relation to my other major portfolio police it is also marvellous to be the Minister of the finest police in the world. [ 
Interruption 
] I know that Mr Cunliffe might think that that is going a bit too far but it is not. I ask him to name me one other police force in the world that New Zealanders would rather have. The fact is that there is no other. Our New Zealand police are renowned for their lack of corruption and the fact that they are respected by people from one end of the country to the other. I am sure many people would be very proud to be the Minister of Police. I consistently come across people who want to thank me for the work of the New Zealand Police. I do not want to take credit for it because it is not actually my work but I am pleased to be able to say that as a Government we have backed the police. When the police needed Tasers we got them Tasers. I have no idea why it took the Labour Party about 5 years of fluffing around and trying to work out whether the Greens would support it. Who cares whether the Greens support it; the people support it and that is what we should do. It is the right thing to do. It is good to have a Prime Minister who consistently backs the police and does not blame them when something goes wrong because some criminal has done a particular activity that has caused harm. It is great to have such a Prime Minister in the Rt Hon John Key who gets out there and backs the New Zealand Police and who backs me when I have to go out there occasionally and take the odd hit for the police. 
I think it is great to look at some of the innovations that the police are bringing in. Obviously this Government has supported them with a raft of legislation. Police safety orders are one of those measures. They have been in for only the last month or so. The New Zealand Police have taken to them like ducks to water. They have issued a couple of hundred of these orders and have been able to stop family violence before it has got to the stage where people’s lives are being put at risk or where people are being injured. These orders are already working well. The New Zealand Police have been very keen to take up any opportunity that they can in order to deal with the dreadful plague of family violence that we have in so many homes. 
The police have also taken up a whole lot of different work streams. Case management projects rostering to demand the national crime reporting line and community neighbourhood policing are all innovations that the police have been trialling around the country and most particularly in Counties-Manukau. The police have been working with other agencies to try to do better work for victims particularly the victims of child abuse. I know that that work is continuing. 
We are very lucky and very well served by the New Zealand Police. We always know that the 12000 sworn and unsworn police officers—our constabulary and our employee staff—joined the police force for the right reasons. I am very proud to be their Minister. I am very proud to represent them from time to time particularly around the Cabinet table. I know that they are the finest police force in the world. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 It is truly a privilege to follow Judith Collins the most humble and modest Minister of Police and Minister of Corrections in the entire Western World. We have of course the most uncorrupted police force in the whole world and that is all the Minister’s own work! I am gratified that the Minister has got Tasers for the police. Next she will want lasers then she will want bazookas and then she will want Sherman tanks for our bobbies on the beat. I am thrilled that the Minister has managed to lock up an extra 50000 prisoners. 
Soon she will be personally locking up the whole of Wellington—ka pai kia ora te Minita. It is almost as embarrassing as Nick Smith lecturing our departed former colleague about mental health issues. That would be funny if it were not so sad. He was the man who was the deputy leader of the National Party for about a day and then had to have 3 weeks’ stress leave. So let us not hear from members on that side of the House about stress in politics. 
We all know why Nick Smith was stressed do we not? It was because there was a little vote for the leadership and the majority of one changed at the last minute. Let us just recall who that one was. Who was to be Bill English’s right-hand man then mysteriously became Don Brash’s right-hand man? It was none other than the “Prince of Darkness” the Svengali of the National caucus: John Key. That is why “Honourable English” and “Right Honourable Key” do not take tea to this very day. It is why “Honourable English” says: “We will loosen foreign investment.” and “Right Honourable Key” says: “We will tighten foreign investment rules.” and it is why “Honourable Key” says: “It will be an aggressive recovery.” and “Honourable English” says: “It will be a bumpy ride.” They do not take tea. 
The lingering stresses of that time are with us still and that is one reason why this Government has no plan: its top two Ministers cannot agree on one. Therefore they lurch from polling and focus group to focus group and polling. I had to pinch myself in this debate because I thought I was in a parallel universe. I found myself agreeing with Sir Roger Douglas for about 4 minutes of his speech when he was talking about the importance of principle of getting one’s bearings of doing what one thinks is right and of making a difference for the sake of the country. I agree with him on all of that. I also agree with him that polling is helpful to teach one how to sell it and market it when one knows what to do. That is not what this Government is doing and he is absolutely right about that. 
What this country needs is a strategy. It needs an economic plan because every New Zealander knows that we are not making it. New Zealanders know that something is seriously wrong in the State of New Zealand to quote from  
Hamlet 
. They know when they are standing in the cold winds of winter outside boarded-up shops—and 30 percent of the premises in downtown Auckland are empty—that this is no kind of recovery. The families in Kelston and New Lynn in my electorate know when dad loses his job and they are living in a caravan that it is no kind of recovery. 
When this Government is talking about the brighter future and turbocharging the economy I say that it should tell that to the people who do not have their own home who do not have a roof over their heads and who cannot afford to pay for the groceries while this Government is borrowing to give a third of the tax cut money to the top 5 percent. A third will go to the top 5 percent and the Government is borrowing to do that—and it lectures us about economic strategy! 
The New Zealand people are sick of Government by focus group. They are sick of poll-driven stop-start flip-flops. They are sick of mining schedule 4 conservation land firing workers at will cycleways to nowhere that have created no jobs and a 2025 taskforce that did not see the light of day. We can always tell when a Government is on the back foot because to explain is to lose. Somebody should have told the National research unit when it was writing the key lines for this debate that to explain is to lose. 
That is why it is embarrassing for those members that Bill English in John Key’s absence had to reiterate what their so-called strategy was. We took notes because no New Zealander can work it out. Here is what those members said. They talked about tax reform infrastructure deregulation attacking workers’ rights and slashing public services. Let us go through them one by one starting with tax reform. Rebalancing failed. Property depreciation was underdone on private residences overdone on business assets and overdone on short-life depreciation. The Government missed $2 billion worth of avoidance rorts on loss attributing qualifying companies and it lectures us about tax reform! 
With regard to infrastructure it was the previous Labour Government that trebled the investment in infrastructure. It was multimodal for our roads our railways and our ports. It is this Government that has merely continued the level of spending but it has diverted it 12 times to the Kopu Bridge and now the election plan for the new member for Rodney Mr Joyce is based on the “holiday highway” to Wellsford. Fantastic! And those members lecture us about infrastructure! 
Mr Nick Smith talked about deregulation. Deregulation is like having a hedge and giving it a clip once a year. Of course we clip the hedge to keep it back and at bay because otherwise it tends to grow but clipping the hedge is not ploughing a field or landscaping one’s garden. It is just a hedge. Deregulation has its place. It is something that happens every year to keep the public sector in good order but it is not a growth strategy. Someone needs to tell the Government that deregulation is not a growth strategy. 
Then there is the issue of attacking workers’ rights. If the Government could not mine conservation land then it will mine the well-being of New Zealand workers by giving the right to any boss from the biggest Fletcher Challenge or Fonterra to the littlest corner dairy to sack their workers without notice without cause without the right to take a personal grievance and without explanation in the first 90 days of employment. 
I predict that there will be a lot of 89-day wonders in the workforce—a lot of 89-day wonders wondering why they got the boot. It is a plan to drive down wage rates. What is that strategy about? Will we get rich by trying to catch up with China on low wages—$1 a day or $1 a week? How low is low in the National Government’s limbo dance for worker degradation? That is not a strategy. I am looking at those members opposite with their heads hung down. Where is the—[ 
Interruption 
] Oh “The Maestro” is awake. “The Maestro” in the back row the brilliant architect of the Mt Albert campaign and the motorway to Mount Eden Prison is awake. Thank God somebody is. 
It behoves every responsible Opposition to say what it would do if it had the chance and the Labour Opposition is up for it. Labour has been working hard in the background. We have had policy working groups for Africa and this Government is in trouble because when our plan hits town the New Zealand people will see the difference between poll-driven panic and proper policy. 
Here is a foretaste in the economic area. No. 1 is a proper growth strategy and that includes investment in research and development not cutting research and development tax credits; fixing the innovation pipeline; and developing a productivity framework that covers capital skills and technology. Rolling out ultra-fast broadband would be a change. What an oxymoron! There is nothing ultra-fast about that roll-out; it has been 2 years and they have not put an inch in the ground. It is time for a reshuffle for Steven Joyce. 
Labour will invest in clean technology. We will leverage our clean green brand to create jobs build market opening and encourage exports with a proper economic development strategy which the Hon David Parker will lead. We will have a proper rebalancing of the economy. We will invest to close the savings gap build our domestic savings industry not cut KiwiSaver pre-fund New Zealand superannuation push harder on the tax system and stop the rorts. It is obvious—stop the rorts and remove distortions. 
We will walk the talk on fiscal responsibility including intergenerational equity. We will not put the cost of superannuation on our kids because we cannot tell the truth to their parents. We will close the external account gap which is partly exports partly savings and is a lot about owning our own future. Otherwise the one thing that John Key will get right—honourable—is that we will become tenants in our own country. We need Labour’s plan. 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 If that speech by David Cunliffe had been made at a job interview I would have said “No thanks.” [ 
Interruption 
] In fact he is; he is quite a nice guy I suppose. But I stand here as the Minister of Education in a Government that is serious about raising student achievement. We are serious about making sure that our children leave school with the skills that they need in this modern 21st century. 
I start today by taking us back in time: not too far back; just to the start of the previous Labour Government. Shortly before that time the then National Government had commissioned research from a team of researchers from the school of education at the University of Auckland. They looked at two communities in South Auckland Mangere and Otara and their research was called  
Strengthening Education in Mangere and Otara 
. They were looking to see how they could intervene: at the sorts of interventions that would be needed in schools in order to lift achievement by Maori and Pasifika children particularly but also by children who were living in a low socio-economic environment. I refer to the third report; there were three reports out of this research. The third and final report which was published in 2004—so in the time of the previous Labour Government—looked at three things: school governance reporting to parents and perceptions of Pasifika student achievement. I will pay particular attention to the conclusions that the researchers came to on reporting to parents. 
The researchers say in the executive summary: “The development of a partnership between schools and their communities formed a central tenet of the reforms of education administration”—that is Tomorrow’s Schools—“… This partnership was to be based on the free flow of information between schools and their communities.” The study examined described and explained the reporting practices of schools in Mangere and Otara. It “sought to answer the research questions ‘To what extent did the reporting practices involve parents/whanau as educational partners with the school?’ ”—does this not have a ring of familiarity to it—“and ‘What difficulties were experienced by school personnel and parents/whanau when changing their reporting practices in the directions required by the new regulations?’ ”. The first part of the study found that “student achievement was likely to be evaluated against implicit individual or class-based referenced standards. As a consequence parents of under-achieving children were frequently misled about their children’s achievement levels.” 
The study published a very famous story called “Lita’s Story” which was an amalgam of the stories that the researchers had heard in Mangere and Otara. It was basically about Lita who arrived at middle school 3 years behind her peers in her reading comprehension and about 1 year behind them in her reading accuracy. But neither Lita nor her parents or family knew about this. They did not know about it because first despite the fact that Lita loved her primary school—she felt safe and secure there she loved her teachers and her parents were supportive of the school and attended all the events—the teachers at her school had treated Lita as an individual starting with what she could do and carefully taking her on to the next level when they believed that she was ready. Apart from the reading assessment that the school did when Lita was 6 it really did not know how her achievement compared with national standards because it did not have the tools needed to make those comparisons and some teachers did not think that they were necessary anyway. Second the school had a policy of not saying anything that was negative in school reports. This meant that the teachers described only what Lita could do and do well. As a consequence of that neither Lita nor her parents had any idea of how she compared with other children throughout New Zealand of the same age. 
Why do I bring up that research? What happened to Lita in the story? She went on to high school and she failed. She left school without any qualification and this National-led Government has heard the same story over and over from parents. The previous Labour Government had that research. It knew that one in five children was failing in our education system that 150000 children were being failed by the education system and what did it do about that? That Government ignored the research. It had strategies and initiatives that piled up on teachers’ and principals’ desks but it did not address the key issues that the research had shown needed to be addressed for kids —not what teachers needed but what kids needed. What do kids need? They need honesty. They need their parents to know what they are doing well in what they are not doing well in and how their parents and their teachers will change the experience of those kids in the education system. That is what the research had shown that the kids needed. And did the previous Labour Government give that to them? No. For 9 years it sat on research like that and now the Labour members have the gall to stand up against us when this Government says we have talked about the tail of underachievement for too many years. 
Too many parents have told us that they wanted to know about how their children were doing and they have said that if they had known that their children were falling behind they would have taken some action and given them some help. Too many kids like Lita have left school without the qualifications that they need and they are now on the dole without any qualifications and without hope of employment. This Government said it would not stand for that any more. We said we would have national standards that are aligned to National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 2 and we would have that as a goal for every single child in New Zealand. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: You don’t trust teachers. 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: You see the Labour members keep talking about the teachers. This issue is about the children. I ask those members to focus on the children. The education system is there for the children and 50 percent of Maori children leave New Zealand schools without NCEA level 2—50 percent; that is half of them—and that has happened under the previous Labour Government’s watch I say to the Labour members who are sitting over there and shaking their heads. It happened under their Government’s watch. 
This Government has said it will not have that. Children deserve more than that and students deserve better than that so this Government has implemented national standards that mean that children will learn to read write and do maths. And we have done more than that. We know that the teachers are the ones who need to deliver this education. So we are redesigning in the announcements that we made yesterday the support that will go into schools. We are redesigning the professional development that will go into schools so that it is targeted. There will also be new interventions. The sector has said that reading recovery works well for kids in years 1 and 2 but it has asked about what happens after that. There is no reading recovery for kids in year 3 so we need to give some help to those children as they go into years 3 and 4. We know that in maths there are five different points where children have to learn some basics or otherwise they cannot progress. We have said we should put some resources into that. 
We have heard all the excuses from the Labour members sitting opposite about why they did not do things like focusing on fundamental skills for children like Lita. Those skills are reading writing and doing maths. Children cannot do science if they cannot read. They cannot play sports if they cannot count. They cannot do any of those things out there in the wider world if they cannot achieve a basic level of literacy and numeracy. This Government is focused on that fundamental goal. Our responsibility as a Government is to make sure that every single child in this country receives an excellent education. 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 The Minister of Education was quoted in the House today by Mr Mallard as having said that it is disgraceful that one-fifth of all students are in the bottom 20 percent of student performance. Unfortunately that grasp of statistical logic is matched in her Cabinet only by Mr Brownlee because in respect of students it will always be the case that one-fifth of students will be in the bottom 20 percent of performance. It can never be anything else. Sadly this lack of grasp of the fundamentals of portfolio extends beyond Mrs Tolley into the economic development portfolio which Mr Brownlee is responsible for. New Zealanders—not just politicians but also journalists and the wider public—are starting to pay attention to this issue because it has become increasingly obvious that the National Government does not have any plan to meet its promise of catching up with the fortunes of Australia and closing the wage gap with Australia by 2025. 
Why has that become obvious? Well of course the central plank of the Minister for Economic Development’s part of all that was the step change that he was going to bring about in the New Zealand economy by mining national parks. That was such a silly idea in the first place that it was eventually unpicked. After 40000 people marched down Queen Street in Auckland and after similarly large protests in other parts of the country from Invercargill to the north the National Government did what it always does and caved in to public pressure. That was the right decision on this occasion because it was always a nonsense to mine in national parks and other schedule 4 areas like the Coromandel but it laid bare the cupboard. The cupboard is bare when it comes to realistic ways in which the Government will bridge the income gap with Australia. 
The Minister for Economic Development came down to this House and tried to pretend that he was on top of his portfolio. He told the House that the wage gap was narrowing. The media were of course all over that immediately because it was obvious no matter what way we measure it that the gap has been growing and has not been narrowing. 
This is an important debate to have at this time because this debate is about the estimates. This is when Parliament votes taxes to be gathered and spent by the Government. Unless this Parliament has confidence in what the Government is doing to achieve its aims this motion that the House is voting upon should go down. This is the second Budget of three that will be delivered by Bill English and we have to ask whether the Government is measuring up. Of course Mr Brownlee has shown that the Government is not. He has shown that he has not even got a basic grasp on whether the gap is getting bigger or smaller. He said that the gap is getting smaller. 
What did the third-party commentators say about that? The  
Dominion Post 
 said: “Stats prove Brownlee wrong”. That was pretty clear and pretty definitive. On that same day John Key came down to the House after that headline had been in the paper trying to say that black was white—trying to say that the gap was narrowing. He came to this House and thought that we were all so dim that we would accept the statistics that he tried to palm off to the House. Then he was forced to table the document from which he was quoting. That document showed that even in the best massaged figures that the Government could produce the gap was getting bigger. That was the same day that the  
Sydney Morning Herald 
 had as one of its main headings: “NZ wage gap with Australia widens”. The article read: “Australian workers are being paid even more than their Kiwi cousins since National became the Government.” 
Another interesting paragraph further down noted that Australia’s top tax is higher than New Zealand’s and the reason that New Zealanders were going to live in Australia was wages not taxes. Mr English should take a lesson from that. Tax policy is not economic policy; it is but a subset of it. The Government does not have anything other than tax policy when it comes to economic policy—that plus a bit of reform of the Resource Management Act that the Government pretends will somehow cause the gap to narrow with Australia. What did the television stations say in respect of John Key after he came to the House and tried to blather his way through and deny the reality that the gap has been growing rather than shrinking? Under the headline: “Key too selective and slippery”. TV3’s Duncan Garner said: “John Key should stop the slippery act—immediately. … Yesterday’s performance in Parliament was too selective and too slippery for him to get away with.” So it is not just the Minister for Economic Development who has not been on top of things; the Prime Minister has not been either. 
What did the  
New Zealand Herald 
 say in the weekend? Its editorial on this issue stated: “Trudging along the same old road is not going to produce the desired outcome.” It noted that the stats showed that the gap has been growing with Australia rather than shrinking. Then it said that “This provided its own commentary on the Government’s attempt to close the gap which so far has encompassed little more than tinkering with the Resource Management Act and suchlike.” Again the editorial in New Zealand’s largest newspaper has said that really the Government is only tinkering. It has no significant plan to bridge the income gap with Australia. The editorial went on: “In reality the Government fears the political damage that would result from …” anything more significant. “This accent on short-term popularity has also engendered a cautious approach in other areas that might deliver long-term benefit including most recently the mining of conservation land.” The final sentence of the editorial really sums it up: “But when relatively little is done relatively little happens. Things can even go backwards.” That encapsulates the story of this Government. Relatively little is being done and relatively little is happening to bridge the income gap with Australia. As a consequence— 
Paul Quinn 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. My understanding of the Standing Orders is that only the speaker at any point in time is allowed to use assistance—placards and such. In fact we had the whip flashing around paper. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I did not see it. I hear what the member is saying. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: It is interesting that members opposite are breaking up my speech on this. The editorial in New Zealand’s largest newspaper the  
New Zealand Herald 
 concludes with this statement: “But when relatively little is done relatively little happens. Things can even go backwards.” That says it all about National’s economic policy. The cupboard is bare. The Deputy Prime Minister was caught on tape at the National Party conference a year or two ago saying of the present Prime Minister that he flits from cloud to cloud. We have seen one idea after another put up on a cloud. The first was a cycleway which was not a bad idea but it was never going to create many jobs. Then we had the Job Summit and nothing else of substance came from that and the 9-day fortnight which virtually no one took up. Then we had the idea that New Zealand would mine our national parks and that that would be the step change in the New Zealand economy. Those words about the step change in the New Zealand economy came from Mr Brownlee. In his Prime Minister’s statement at the start of this year Mr Key placed much credence upon that idea about the part that the increase in mining would have on New Zealand’s economic recovery. In his view that was a major part of how we would catch up with Australia. Of course the Government has abandoned that ambition. 
Since then the next idea floated on a cloud was the idea that we would be a financial services hub for the world. Well New Zealand which has such a poor savings record and thin capital markets just does not have a hope in hell of doing that compared with Australia. Just across the ditch Australia has better savings and deeper investment markets and it has some hope of being a financial services sector in a way that is not at all realistic for New Zealand. Instead the Government has gone backwards on savings. It continues to attack the wages and conditions of New Zealand workers by making terms and conditions worse in New Zealand than in Australia which again will be encouraging the flow of people to Australia rather than the other way around. 
When we look through the Estimates and see what the Ministry of Economic Development is doing that is new this year compared with last year one thing stands out for me: $1.6 million is being voted through the economic development portfolio for Rugby World Cup free-to-air broadcasting rights. How will that grow the New Zealand economy? That is shameful. We know that the extra $1.6 million extra that is being voted through the economic development portfolio has come about because there was a scrap between Te PuniKokiri and Television One about funding. 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 The speech made by the member who has just resumed his seat David Parker was a fine example of a speech from a party that lacks vision lacks direction lacks a leader and needs to step up and step forward for New Zealand. When it comes to Vote Employment there is a lot of talk at the moment about employment opportunities for young people for those who are struggling most and for those who are feeling the effects of the recession. 
We might think that the Opposition would be holding the Government to account and we just heard a fine speech on how it wishes to hold people to account and everything else. At the estimates debate this year at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee the previous Minister for Social Development and Employment the Hon Annette King did not even ask for Vote Employment to be debated. Labour purports to be the party that speaks for workers and wants to step up on employment but it did not even ask the Minister to present on Vote Employment. I ask members to ask themselves how that is asking the questions and identifying problems. 
Last year the Opposition did ask for Vote Employment to be debated so I fronted up but in the more than half-hour that I was there not one question on employment or unemployment was asked. I suppose after that performance last year Labour members decided to simply wash their hands of it and to not even ask questions about Vote Employment and what it means for people who are trying to find jobs. 
In all fairness I have to say that Annette King is probably kind of busy at the moment. She is trying to rally a party that is falling to bits. She is trying to find some meaning. Her name is not being bandied around as leader though which would be pretty hard for her to take I am sure. Let me quote Annette King directly from last week when the Chris Carter saga was all unfolding. She said: “I don’t know but as you know I am a former minister of police and let’s say we are following some leads.” Was that the handwriting on the letter or the fact that Mr Carter was on camera? Annette King is a former dental nurse so was she checking dental records? Maybe she was out there seeing whether he had kissed the envelope and whether she could trace it back through some sort of saliva test. That is what Ms King was spending her time on last week. As I say she did say that as a former Minister of Police she was following some leads. 
Annette King is stepping up and holding me to such account that she has withdrawn from the Social Services Committee. Let me put that in perspective: the most senior Labour member on that committee now is Dr Rajen Prasad. 
Hon Member 
: Who? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: Yes. Ms King has withdrawn from the select committee on which she is the Opposition spokesperson—the shadow Minister as such—and is no longer even on the select committee to be following it through. That is how much she is stepping up and seeing it as important. So there was no request to debate Vote Employment at the estimates debate at the select committee. There was no talk about what is happening on employment unemployment and what is going on there. But fortunately this Government is stepping up and doing something about it. 
So let us talk about what the Government is doing. We have invested an extra $302 million in response to the recession. That funding comes through in the ReStart package the Job Support Scheme summer student jobs the Community Response Fund and Youth Opportunities. Obviously Job Ops was such a success that the first 6000 opportunities were taken up very quickly so in the Budget we have just had we presented another $27.6 million in funding doubling the opportunities on Job Ops with an extra 6000 places. Since then we have announced another 1500 places on Community Max identifying the more urban areas that need those sorts of programmes. Job Ops works well in the towns and cities where we have a number of employers who can step up and take the young people on and quite frankly the results have been outstanding. Of those who have completed their Job Ops and done the 6 months’ work 92 percent to date have not gone back on benefits. 
Paul Quinn 
: Unbelievable. 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: That is kind of unbelievable. In terms of the young people who have gone through the Community Max programme more than 70 percent have avoided going back on to benefits. That is pretty outstanding. 
Earlier I was listening to the debate and I was hearing things about the comparison between New Zealand and Australia and where we are at with that. Let us take the percentage of the working-age population who are receiving an unemployment-related benefit. In New Zealand that percentage is 2.1 percent; in Australia the figure is 4.7 percent. That tells us that we are getting somewhere. It tells us that Job Ops is making a difference Community Max is making a difference and the economic stimulus we are seeing is making a difference but it is time to look at the balance and how and where we get it right. 
The summary of the Budget shows that we have introduced $88 million for Future Focus and some of the welfare changes. Members will see increases in abatement thresholds. That means that those who are on the domestic purposes benefit and those on the invalids benefit can earn $20 a week more before it affects their benefits. That will make quite a big difference. That level has not been raised for years and years and the increase means people on those benefits can step up. We have $53 million going towards that initiative increasing abatement thresholds for those who are affected. That goes into their pocket and I think that is a good thing. 
The Budget also introduced a new study loan for sole parents who are on the domestic purposes benefit with another $9 million in funding along with changes to out-of-school care and recreation which recognise that parents need help with after-school and before-school care. We are looking at how we can make that better organised get rid of red tape and make sure that those sorts of opportunities are there for those parents. 
Budget 2010 was the first time we saw $15 million go directly into initiatives for teen parents and that is something I am proud of. Not only are we supporting teen mums who we know struggle at times and can have a bit of a hard row to hoe—having a wee one to think of while they are still relatively young and trying to find their feet—but we are also providing parenting support for teen fathers. To me it feels sometimes that we do not acknowledge the role teen fathers can play and how they can do it. There are some good New Zealanders out there who want to back them and work alongside them. 
At the moment we are putting together a group to look at how we can work with those teen dads to help them. Supported houses for teen parents will make a difference—they absolutely will make a difference. We have $6.2 million going into that initiative and I hope I get to celebrate its successes so I can continue to prod my Cabinet so that we can get a bit more. These initiatives mean we are wrapping those services around those young people and their children over a period of time. It teaches them about what it means to budget live in a house buy food and cook it and raise a family at the same time. We all acknowledge that those things can be huge pressures on them and I am really proud of those initiatives. 
We have also developed the Community Response Model and we have seen $90.5 million go into it. That model means local places are more involved in decisions about social services making the services more regional and getting the funding at the grassroots. That is also making the current spend of $110 million through the family and community services group far more transparent with local people on those forums. Adding in another $90.5 million will make a direct difference to their priorities. It is about what happens for them locally what makes a difference and what we can actually do. 
We will be increasing GST and we will make sure that people are compensated for the increase. This will cost around $420 million and I am responsible for making sure that that is rolled out on 1 October. So I say to those superannuitants who are feeling the effects and are a little bit concerned that I give them my guarantee that they will see compensation come through for that change in GST. They will also see changes because of changes to the real wage and thus the percentage of that wage. 
So payments will increase by over 2 percent for those receiving superannuation the veterans allowance the unemployment benefit the sickness benefit the invalids benefit the domestic purposes benefit the disability allowance and the child disability allowance. We are making sure that some of those allowances are rounded and are equally recognised for the changes they need. 
This Budget is a great Budget that delivers to the people. It recognises the priorities of this country and where that money needs to be. I am very very proud to be standing up for those who need our help most. Thank you. 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 I would find it easier to accept a lecture from the member who has just sat down Paula Bennett if I was persuaded that she cared about some of the people whose lives are quite literally in her hands. If she cared enough then perhaps she would not be taking a 6-week stint on full pay to go to America later in the year to attend something that may or may not enhance her ability to do her job. If she had any sense of urgency around people who live on benefits and who are unemployed then I might have some sympathy for her. I do not get any of that from anything that member says. 
A plan is a systematic timetable that gets people towards a goal and it is very clear that the Government does not have one. The Government simply has a vacuum where a plan should be. A plan requires some strategic overview that links and binds actions together in pursuit of a goal. That means having enough of a vision to join the dots to be able to see how one portfolio relates to another and how one decision impacts on another and to be able to guide those in concert to achieve the end goal. 
We do not have a plan from this Government. We do not have a plan in this Budget because the Government has no idea what its goal is except to get closer to Australia. The Prime Minister has backed away from that goal in recent days because it is clearly becoming less and less achievable under this Government. 
To have a plan to have some sense of strategic forward movement there needs to be enough vision to join the dots. I will give a couple of examples. This Government has had two ideas about how to improve economic performance. The first was mining the conservation estate—that is digging up our precious territory which is part of our tourist attraction—and the second was building a cycleway. It had two ideas: dig up the conservation estate and build a cycleway. Did anybody get the Prime Minister to talk to himself about the connection between his role as Prime Minister and his tourism portfolio or the connection between Bill English’s role as Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister’s own portfolio as Minister of Tourism? 
Here we have two ideas: first to mine the conservation estate especially those areas that are most precious and are under the greatest level of protection; and second to build a cycleway. I will give the House an example of how those dots are not joined; I will give a very very local example. I am talking about Dun Mountain in Nelson where the Government still insists it is going to continue with prospecting despite the back-down—the humiliating back-down—on the grand plan for improving economic performance. But the Government was also promoting and announcing a few months ago the cycleway around Dun Mountain. One can only assume that now there is going to be a cycleway to view some open-cast mining. Tourists will come to our cycleway and look at our mining. They can look at how we are digging the wealth out of this country from underneath its surface instead of cashing in on the tourism potential developing the cycleway so that it can earn tourism dollars. Tourism is one of our biggest earners—if not the biggest earner—of foreign exchange. This is a classic example of the dots not being joined. The Government will continue to prospect on Dun Mountain regardless of the humiliating back-down and continue to build a cycleway. This is a nonsense. 
I will give the House another example. We had cuts to early childhood education. We will dumb down early childhood education because the Government says that we do not need 100 percent of our early childhood educators to be fully trained and qualified. It says that we do not need our 3 and 4-year-olds to have the best start possible with the best-qualified early childhood teachers; we do not need that any more. I ask the Government to take a nanosecond to join the dots between early childhood education and rates of incarceration. I tell Mr Key to join those dots. Everybody else in the community can join those dots but the Government cannot. 
If we do not invest heavily in early childhood education as the previous Labour Government did we do not give children the best start possible. If we do not give children the best start possible they will not be able to maximise their education opportunities. If they cannot maximise their education opportunities they will not be eligible for employment. If they are not eligible for employment they will be unemployed. If they are unemployed they will get into trouble. If they are unemployed they will not be able to sustain themselves and their families and they will head down the inexorable path to incarceration. That is called joining the dots and the Government seems incapable of doing it. 
These estimates have the very real potential to cause in a very short time Vote Corrections to be the largest vote that this Government expends on from general taxation. That will be the legacy of this Government. Where Labour would put money and did put money into early childhood education—[ 
Interruption 
] I have not begun on tertiary education yet. Labour invested in early childhood education because of that long-term vision and the long-term flow through. This Government is chipping away at that investment and it is eroding it. It prefers to spend money on Judith Collins’ portfolio of corrections. That is the portfolio that should have the least money put in it. 
I will give one further example; it relates to my shadow portfolio of trade. Somehow Mr Key cannot join the dots between an attack on workers’ rights in New Zealand and putting the trans-Pacific partnership in jeopardy. I will try to join the dots for the Prime Minister. If he is going on the attack on union rights and on access to workplaces by unions and if he is going on the front foot in order to shore up his redneck contingent he needs to realise that the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions does not operate in a vacuum; it operates in an international movement. Richard Trumka who is from the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations was going to visit here but he has pulled his visit— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Who cares? 
Hon MARYAN STREET 
: I tell Mr Henare that the Prime Minister ought to care because it is about trans-Pacific partnership. That is exactly what Mr Trumka’s visit was about. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Who cares whether a unionist comes to New Zealand? 
Hon MARYAN STREET 
: That member ought to speak to his more senior colleagues because I think they understand. The person who does not is the Prime Minister. He has no plan he cannot join the dots and there is no prospect for improvement under these estimates. 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Transport) 
: 
 I rise to speak in this debate because I am very very excited about the initiatives this Government is taking to grow the New Zealand economy. Before I continue I must point out to the previous speaker Maryan Street a certain fact of life. If the Department of Corrections is growing to the extent that it is I ask her whether that is the fault of a Government that has been in office for 22 months or of the previous Government that had been in office for 108 months prior to that. It was that previous Government that left the legacy of the growing numbers for the department to deal with. In fact soon after I got the opportunity to sit around John Key’s Cabinet table we were shown a graph that showed the legacy of the spiralling numbers of prisoners left by the previous Government which we are now dealing with. We have already managed the numbers down and we are looking to manage them down further. But that legacy of the previous Government sits in front of this Government right now. 
Right across the public services that New Zealanders value the big issue is getting New Zealand to grow faster. Getting New Zealand to grow faster is how we will afford those services. The Government has a massive economic growth agenda that is unfolding as we speak— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable Minister but the discussion and yelling across the Chamber is not acceptable. Let us concentrate on the debate. If members want to interject on the member speaking then that is fine but this other dialogue is not called for. 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. It is all right; I know the other side has been under a bit of pressure lately. 
The economic growth agenda is very very important not just to this Government but to the country. It is all about getting New Zealand to grow faster and this Government has an agenda that is unfolding day by day. Personal tax reform will take place on 1 October this year when most New Zealanders will be paying a top personal tax rate of 17.5c in the dollar. That is a magnificent achievement and it will encourage people to work hard get ahead and keep more of their own money. 
In the new highways area which is an area I happen to know a little about we have projects around the country that are growing quickly. The Kopu Bridge in the Coromandel has just marked 1 year’s progress and the Victoria Park tunnel which many Aucklanders drive past every day is growing rapidly. Shortly Nikki Kaye’s birdcage will be shifted from one side to the other to get the tunnel done. Last week I was able to announce the bringing forward of the Tauranga Eastern Link by about 7 years as a result of tolling—it has been brought forward by about 7 years. The link is a 23-kilometre four-lane highway and it was the subject of a press release this Government made on 29 July last week as we progressed our economic growth agenda. 
Today just to pick another random example the Minister of Finance and the Minister of State Services are out there saying that we are going to have a very close look at the policy expenditure of the Government which has ballooned out hugely over the last many years. In looking at Mr English and Mr Ryall I am confident that they will have a very close look at the policy purchasing process of Government because part of our economic growth agenda is keeping Government expenditure under control. It is only by keeping Government expenditure under control that we can keep the pressure off interest rates. Lower interest rates allow the economy to grow. 
There are a whole range of things. There is the science investment that we announced in the Budget. It is a very important investment and this Government is very serious about the country’s investment in science and innovation. 
The small matter of employment law reform is very important. It was announced by the Prime Minister just a couple of weeks ago at a conference in Auckland. It is a very important yet reasonable and moderate reform of employment law and it will achieve a huge amount in terms of giving employers the flexibility and if you like the confidence to employ new workers. That is already having an effect in the workforce. I suspect it will be quite helpful for the Labour Party when it comes to hiring a replacement in Te Atatu. I think the employment law reforms are big positive steps forward in our economic growth agenda. 
We are also putting more money into tourism—I say that in picking another random one from the list. More money for tourism was announced this year and that is very good for New Zealand’s very important tourism industry. We are also lowering company taxes to 28c in the dollar from the current 30c in the dollar. That is a good contribution to the economic growth agenda. 
We looked at some of the issues around productive land in the South Island and said that we had to do something about removing the logjams for irrigation in Canterbury. We had to make some calls there as we had some issues with the battle between regional councils—and frankly within regional councils—about coming up with a water policy for Canterbury. That is very important as it is a big productive part of the New Zealand economy so we have taken the steps that the other side acknowledged they should have taken. I think it was Trevor Mallard who came out after we had made the change and said that they had been going to do that. It took them only 9 years to think about it; it hadn’t happened. But that is a very important part of the economic growth agenda. 
Aquaculture is very important for the growth of the New Zealand economy. The reality is that under the previous Government we had a moratorium on aquaculture and as the Minister of Fisheries has pointed out Labour’s step forward from there was to extend the moratorium a bit longer. Those were the issues. There was a situation in aquaculture where the industry was frozen. We have unfrozen it and we are moving forward. 
Ultra-fast broadband is another issue. I was pleased to come down to the House and speak now because we have just made a press release today to say that the final refined proposals have been received by Crown Fibre Holdings in order to deliver ultra-fast broadband. The company has received proposals from a total of 15 parties. A number of the original respondents have formed new consortia or indicated a willingness to do so and the company is now in the process of crunching through those bids. The process is contestable which is very exciting because it will get the best price for the Government and the best price for taxpayers and it will give ultra-fast broadband right around the country to 75 percent of homes as soon as it possibly can. I think that that is very exciting because it will help growth. Once we have given that opportunity to people they can work from their own homes and increase the size of their businesses. Most important they can communicate with the wider world and that will allow them to achieve more. 
We can move on to things like trade negotiations. We have Tim Groser and Murray McCully out around the world for two reasons. The first is that it keeps them out of here; the second is that they are advancing our trade negotiations agenda. They are working very very hard at advancing that trade negotiations agenda because they know that New Zealand is a country of traders and that the only way we can get ahead in the world is to trade more. Interestingly the trade statistics on that are out and they say that we are trading more since the new Government came along. The statistics say that exports are increasing. Just the other day merchandised trade data for June showed a 6.8 percent increase in export values over the June quarter and we have a quarterly trade surplus of $389 million. That is the largest since September 2001 which was about when the previous Government lost interest in the tradable economy. We have been working to grow exports and trade negotiations are just one part of that. 
If I can I will also touch on export education because that is all part of the trade exercise. We have now had 2 years of year-on-year growth in international student numbers in this country so that is a 7 percent rise in the number of fee-paying international students for the first 4 months of this year compared with last year. I was able to announce that last week. That increase was on top of a 6 percent increase for the year before. So there we are—we are growing the international education sector. That does a number of things: firstly it brings income into the country which is very important. Again something that the previous crowd forgot about was that we actually have to earn our way in the world. The second thing it does is that it brings income into institutions which is also important. Of course lots of crocodile tears are being shed on that side of the House for institutions but those members do not work to help institutions increase their revenue streams. 
This is all good progress and it is part of the Government’s economic growth agenda that will see this economy turn round. I am excited to be a part of Budget 2010 because it will help us to close those gaps with Australia and with the wider world. That is what this Government is all about. 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to follow Mr Joyce who started his speech by saying that the agenda of the Government was unfolding day by day. I will tell members that the way I see it is that the Government wants to build more prisons. The Minister of Corrections said that here in the House. Those members think that that is success. Not only will they build more prisons but also they will have them in private ownership. That is what the Government’s agenda is. It has also indicated that it will privatise newly built schools. Mr Joyce said that he will build more roads. Well the only roads that he is building are the ones around the cities. The people in rural New Zealand who create the wealth know that their money is being taken to fund Mr Joyce’s city roads. The only agenda that is going on here is that National is putting more money towards its mates who funded its campaigns. That is the simple fact of the matter. National’s mates will build the prisons build the schools and build the roads. 
What those members want is higher unemployment and lower wages. I ask whether members know that that is the economic agenda that National is rolling out. We have seen higher levels of unemployment and declining wages. That is not good news for New Zealand. When will the National Government wake up to that reality? Mr Joyce had the stupidity to say literally 3 minutes ago that lower interest rates allow the economy to grow. I tell Mr Joyce to wake up. The official cash rate has just been put up and it is likely to go up further and further. The inflationary pressures that this Government has brought to the economy through the rise in GST and the emissions trading scheme is likely to drive up interest rates further. That means that the only thought that Mr Joyce brought to this House is that lower interest rates allow the economy to grow but he has it wrong. 
I must speak on behalf of the rural economy. I picked up a paper today and the heading was “Does the ‘farmer’s government’ give a damn?”. It could read: “Does the ‘farmer’s Government’ have a clue?” because it is the same thing. Rural folk up and down this country are asking what this Government is up to. They voted in National as it has been called the “farmers’ Government” for many many years. They voted National back in. They did that because they were promised that the emissions trading scheme would be scuttled—no emissions trading scheme. The farmers up and down this country thought that National would scupper the emissions trading scheme. Why? Because National campaigned against it. Because it ranted and raved against climate change and the emissions trading scheme the farmers understandably thought that National would scupper it. National also went up and down the country saying that it absolutely opposed any increase in taxes. Maybe that is true except that it has put up taxes as GST has gone up. It said that it would cut bureaucracy and cut costs but it has not. If the step change that it was advocating was a step down then National should have been upfront about it. For most workers in the country its economic agenda is a step down. 
At least with Labour under Helen Clark we had clear and consistent leadership. Do members know what farmers are saying up and down this country? Mr Guy knows this. They are saying that we have confused and contradictory leadership from National. They do not know whether their Government gives a damn. Those are the facts and all those members over there know that because they are getting that feedback. The reality—and we were able to expose it today—is if that is one’s plan for building the recovery and for an economic step change little wonder their leadership is confused and contradictory. That is the fact. People have seen U-turns on so many issues now that National cannot tell a U-turn from a circle. I am guessing that National will go round and round again and again. 
Let us go back to the emissions trading scheme. Contrary to what farmers and rural folk thought would happen National passed a dumbed-down emissions trading scheme. It is a Clayton’s emissions trading scheme that many of us think will be ineffective. It will not drive behaviour change but that is what we should be attempting to do. Across the globe the view is that we are emitting too much and we should reduce that. Does the emissions trading scheme passed by the National Government against the wishes and expectations of rural New Zealand do that? No it does not. The question is where to now. 
Amy Adams 
: What’s your position? 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR 
: I ask Amy Adams what her farming constituents say to her. I am guessing that they are asking the same question: “What is our Government doing for us?”. They know that the National Government is confused and contradictory. I ask where to now. I ask what the plan is for a step change in economic recovery. There is no plan. The rural sector though that scuppering the emissions trading scheme would be a step up. Well it is not and they know it is a step down. It is a step down not just for rural folk but also for every taxpayer who will pay the cost and subsidise the ongoing behaviour of emissions across the industry including farming. 
National in Opposition campaigned that it would reduce costs and bureaucracy. The one thing that it has done that is out there for everyone to see is increase every single cost on the farming industries and the rural and primary sectors for everything other than the cost of finance because it put up GST. GST has gone up. Every single cost for any farmer or any primary producer will go up. That is aside from the increase in interest rates and the resultant high dollar that they will have to suffer. Many in the sheep and beef industry are suffering. They have their backs to the wall. Many in the pipfruit industry are suffering. Many wine growers in the wine industry have their backs to the wall. They had expectations that their National Government would deliver some assistance but it has not. It does not have a plan. It has a Minister of Agriculture who refuses to intervene. He will appoint taskforce after taskforce but get nowhere and do nothing. I understand that his mate Dr Murray Horn has just resigned from the Wool Industry Taskforce. He walked out. He got his big fat check and he has gone and done a runner. I ask what will happen with the wool industry if the Minister refuses to intervene and show some leadership. He does not because there is no leadership from John Key there is no leadership from his ministerial colleagues and there is no leadership from National because its members do not know where they are going. They have no plan. We have said that we need to look at the area of monetary policy again because it is failing the export sectors in this country. 
KPMG did an extensive report on primary industries. It said some glaringly obvious facts. Unless we spend more on research and development and unless we have higher skills in the primary sectors this economy is ruined because the primary sector still generates over 65 percent of our export earnings. If we do not get it right there there will be no money for anything else. The National Government might rely on public-private partnerships to build its prisons and schools but in the end it has to generate wealth and it has to do it through the rural sector. Mr Joyce was praising the broadband initiative. What a joke! The Labour Government committed $48 million to that initiative and the extra money is coming from a levy on everyone else using broadband in this country—another tax. It is another tax that he refuses to acknowledge. 
The National Government’s plan has simply been to increase GST increase costs and do nothing to show leadership direction or vision. It is a sad sad day. All it has done is cut polytechs cut adult and community education and cut the skill base from the rural sectors. It is restricting the opportunities to encourage people into the primary sectors and that means that down the track this country will suffer dearly. It took the $700 million that we had set aside for research and development and used it to pay for tax cuts. Instead of a research and development tax credit it reintroduced a system of grants that is a bureaucratic nightmare. 
CRAIG FOSS (National—Tukituki) 
: 
 Mr Goff is a nice man but he just cannot win at the next election—so said the Hon Chris Carter just last week and once or twice over the weekend. I think the Hon David Cunliffe thinks that Mr Goff is a nice man but he just cannot win at the next election. I tell members who missed it that Mr Cunliffe gave a speech on the letter “T” earlier on. He is the last person who should give a speech on the letter “T” and he is on very very slippery ground if he tries it. I will not go any further. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Interjections are OK but I ask members to lower the tone. I am having difficulty hearing the member who is on his feet. 
CRAIG FOSS 
: I think Mr Parker thinks that Mr Goff is a very nice man but he just cannot win at the next election. It is very interesting to watch the arm wrestle between the Hon David Parker and Mr Cunliffe for the finance portfolio. Did members note that the finance question today was in the name of Mr Parker? Did members note that on  
Q+A 
 a while ago Mr Goff did not endorse Mr Cunliffe? He endorsed Mr Parker Mr Mallard and Maryan Street as finance people but he conveniently forgot Mr Cunliffe. 
The factions are obvious to us now. The Hon Bill English talked about it earlier. The copybook has been followed to the letter by members on the other side of the Chamber; we have been there and done that and they are starting to follow it through. But I wonder who the various factions are supporting. What about the feminist faction? I think that it thinks that Mr Goff is a nice man but he just cannot win at the next election. I reckon it will be backing Maryan Street. I do not know what member the rainbow faction is backing. Will it be backing its own member? I think the rainbow faction thinks that Mr Goff is a nice man but he will not win at the next election. It is pretty obvious that the lefty faction over there the union side thinks that Mr Little is the man. He is not even in caucus or Parliament yet. It is pretty obvious that he thinks that Mr Goff is a nice man but he cannot win at the next election. 
What about the righty faction? I think this is where Mr Goff’s support comes from although there are not too many sensible people over there. But truth be told I think that the righty faction—and even the Hon Phil Goff himself when looks in the mirror—thinks that he is a nice man but he probably cannot win at the next election. What about the Maori faction? I am sure that the Hon Parekura Horomia would back the Hon Shane Jones. That faction also thinks that Mr Goff is a nice man but he probably cannot win at the next election. I understand that Mr Jones has joined the blue team so he should be sitting over here anyway. 
Many Labour candidates out there have been selected and will work hard at the next election but I want to tell them something. In 2001 when I was selected National was polling at around 33 percent. Some issues spilled out into the public arena then it all broke loose. There was infighting there were speeches at conferences and there were leaks from caucus. It all turned to custard. As the record shows National did not perform very well at all at the election; we ended up with something like 22 percent on the party vote. The copybook is being followed to the letter by the other side so far. So far we are seeing it and I am interested to hear other speakers talk about the factions and whom they are supporting. As we all know—and it is repeated time and time again by the Hon Chris Carter—Mr Goff is a nice man but he cannot win at the next election. 
This is a celebration. The third reading of the Appropriation (2010/11 Estimates) Bill is an absolute celebration. This is the third reading of the Budget the estimates and the reports back. This is the most fundamental tax reform we have seen in 25 years. It took 25 years to get this kind of tax reform through this House and into this country. We have been waiting 25 years; the hardest were the last 9 years of the previous Government. We have made a $4 billion investment in New Zealand families. It is a $4 billion investment in freedom of choice about how families spend their own money whether they pay off their mortgage which does not attract GST save those funds at a 28c tax rate or choose to spend it. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: And GST wipes it out. 
CRAIG FOSS 
: That is part of the tax switch; the member opposite is quite right. Balance and fairness are back. By the way members on that side have forgotten to talk about the compensation part of GST. If we recall Labour increased GST from 10 percent to 12.5 percent without any compensation whatsoever and now it is crying poor. Well it is a funny old game. 
For 9 long years the tax take increased. Fiscal drag pumped up by profligate and relentless spending by the previous Government pulled 20 percent of the New Zealand population’s PAYE payers into the top marginal tax rate. Labour promised 5 percent in 1999; it got it to 20. Funnily enough Labour members are talking that 5 percent again. Members should keep an eye on them. We know from previous speeches that they want to bring in a capital gains tax and they want to do something about loss attributing qualifying companies but they did not do anything about them for 9 long years as the property boom absolutely took those things up. Members should watch them. 
They talk about plans. Let us talk about plans of the recent past. Let us talk about plans versus action. What happened to the knowledge wave? Do members remember the knowledge wave? We were to be in the top half of the OECD. What happened? We slipped down under the Labour Government. We slipped down under its so-called plan. Do members remember closing the gaps? There were more poor and more reports from the UN and now we are dealing with that legacy. Do members remember carbon neutral? There were 50000 hectares of deforestation as a result of that plan. What happened to economic transformation? We went from a robust economy to a total disaster. To be fair Labour transformed the economy—to a pile of custard. An example is the KiwiRail purchase which we had to take on and write off. There are plenty of examples. Do members remember the classic example of Sovereign Yachts? It was part of the Labour Government’s economic development. When speakers over there start going on about plans versus action I am more than happy to line up what we have achieved in 20 months from this particular Budget with what the crowd over there achieved in 9 years. 
They get up and talk about monetary policy solutions. The Hon Damien O’Connor is going where other economists fear to tread I believe. Many many experts have studied this issue and have not come up with anything different but Mr Cunliffe Mr Parker Ms Street and Mr O’Connor are apparently going to do something that central bankers around the world have failed to do even after years and years of examining and studying monetary policy. It will be interesting. I always note that Labour did in fact sign off and agree to no changes to monetary policy in the inquiry that Dr Cullen under its watch put in place at the Finance and Expenditure Committee in 2008. They all agreed. I cannot work it out. I am also surprised once again and saddened that the Labour Party if it was ever to reclaim the Treasury benches is going to rip up the cycleway. It is so disappointing. I challenge members to get up and say that they support the cycleway and that they will not rip it up. That is the rhetoric that is coming from the other side. 
The Government’s economic agenda is rolling out and it is rolling out fast. We have the most fundamental personal tax reform in 25 years. We have new highways such as the Hawke’s Bay Expressway southern extension. We have resource management reforms—supermarkets are getting approvals in 4 months; under the previous Government it took 12 years. In ultra-fast broadband we are investing $1.5 billion over 10 years. We have national standards in literacy and numeracy—to be fair to the Hon Chris Carter his printing was very legible so he probably did pretty well in those. National has been sorting out Canterbury irrigation whereas after 9 years Labour had no plans whatsoever. But we got in did the job and started the charge towards a more productive New Zealand. In trade negotiations Mr Groser is working very very hard around the world and so is Mr McCully. We have a welfare focus that works. 
On employment law reform we still do not know where the other side stands particularly on the issue of buying back the fourth week. Andrew Little who wants to be in Parliament is pulling all the strings. He has said that he does not want that; the Hon Phil Goff has said that he does want it. Please could we have some clarity from the other side? This legislation is a celebration. It is an absolute pleasure to be speaking to this legislation about a Budget and estimates that bring in some discipline some transparency and the most fundamental tax reform New Zealand has seen in over 25 years. 
AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) 
: 
 As the previous speaker Craig Foss just said it is a pleasure to take a call in this estimates and appropriations debate. It is a useful time actually to stop and look back at the 2008 election when this National-led Government under John Key came to power. When New Zealanders elected us as they did overwhelmingly in 2008 to lead this country through the recession they did it on a platform of aspiration and ambition. We did not get mired in the mud-slinging and negative campaigning from members on the other side of the House. We stood up—John Key stood up and our members stood up—and said we thought that New Zealand could do better than it had been doing. We had high hopes for New Zealand and we offered to New Zealanders a positive vision for a way forward and a package of economic growth that could lead them into the future. That package was the key to our plan because we knew that in order to be ambitious for New Zealand and to deliver more for New Zealanders we had to address the issue of economic growth. That was what had been holding this country back for so long. 
Let us take a moment to go over the issue of economic growth because from listening to some of this debate this afternoon it is very clear to me that members on the opposite side of the House neither know what it looks like and what it means nor have any clue whatsoever about how to deliver it. So let us have a look at it for a minute. Economic growth is important because it means creating jobs. That is what it means in a real sense. It means more Kiwis being in work. It means having higher incomes; it means lifting the incomes of New Zealand families. That means that they can get ahead under their own steam and are not reliant on handouts from the State so they are not caught up in the culture of entitlement and of asking what the Government is providing for them. No we say people should work hard get ahead and accept responsibility for their own destiny and we will back them. That is what economic growth means to us. 
Economic growth means getting this country back to having Government surpluses. Why is that important? When we get this economy back to showing Government surpluses it will mean that we have choices. We will have choices about how to deliver the sorts of public services that New Zealanders deserve. We will have choices about how to deliver the best in education the best in health— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I am sorry to interrupt the member. I have mentioned before that barracking across the benches is unacceptable. Interjections are fine but they should be interjections about what the member is saying at the time. I ask members to please calm it down. 
AMY ADAMS 
: I was talking about the fact that when we get this economy back to showing surpluses we will have choices about what we can deliver. That means that we can deliver to the people of New Zealand the sorts of public services that they are entitled to expect—the sorts of education health law and order and other things that we want for all of our citizens. In order to do that we have to get the economy into surplus. 
Under the Budget that Bill English has delivered in 2010 we will now be returning to surpluses; they are predicted for 2016. That is 3 years ahead of the predictions that we had just last year and considerably better than the decade of deficits that the previous Labour Government left us as its legacy. This Government understands that we have to earn money before we spend it. It is a pretty simple lesson. Most Kiwi families get it and most businesses get it but Labour never understood that money has to be earned before it is spent. That Government just kept on spending it. As a country New Zealand had been living beyond its means for far far too long. We cannot continue to just assume that money will come from a magic ATM in the sky. 
We understand that Governments have no money. There is no such thing as Government money. The money that we spend is taxpayers’ money: the hard-earned money of New Zealanders who contribute to this country and its prosperity. We understand that if we do not back those people those workers and those businesses—every man woman and child who is working hard to get this country ahead—then we will never prosper as a country. That is a fundamental truth that Labour does not get. Spending was the only thing that the previous Labour Government was ever any good at. 
National has always been seen as the party that people turn to when they want to have sensible economic management and that is exactly what New Zealanders wanted in 2008. That was exactly what they were asking for and that is why they delivered to this John Key - led National Government the strong overwhelming mandate that they did. We understood that recovery and economic growth were going to come from addressing the imbalances that had been hamstringing our economy for so long—the imbalances that meant that under Labour’s watch no net new jobs had been created in agriculture or manufacturing since 2002. For the Labour members now to cry crocodile tears when they had presided over an economy where no net new jobs were created in agriculture and manufacturing—the backbone of our economy—for the last 6 years of their Government is an absolute tragedy. It is an absolute shame and a farce. 
We knew that in order to get growth we would have to rein in expenditure. A country cannot keep spending more than it earns; we had to get a handle on expenditure. We had to better manage our balance sheets which showed $217 billion of Government assets. If we do not manage our assets far more prudently this country will never recover. We had to ensure that there was better value for money. It is not good enough to simply throw money into a health system that saw expenditure double under Labour yet the amount of elective surgery per capita fell. That is what that previous Government did: it put twice the amount of money into the health system but outputs fell. Labour thought that if it just kept throwing money into the pit without any sort of value-for-money assessment then that had to be good. Well that might have been fine if we had had money to throw around but that Government was spending more than it had. That simply was not sustainable. If we are to get growth in this economy we have to encourage our export sector. We have to get behind our farmers we have to get behind our manufacturers and we have to get behind our innovative New Zealanders who are out there working hard. That is what this Government is focused on; that is what Budget 2010 is all about. 
We understand that growth is a partnership between the Government and the private sector because Governments do not create jobs actually. Governments do not create jobs; businesses create jobs. The Government does not pay taxes; New Zealanders pay taxes. Governments have to support businesses. We have to support Kiwis: we have to help them to invest and to grow and we have to not make their lives harder and harder. Faced with the situation that was in front of us we knew that no single solution would magic away our problems. But we know from the debate in this House that Labour has spent the last 20 months waiting for a bill to come on to the Order Paper entitled “The Solution to All Our Problems Bill” because that must have the answers. Those members have not seen it so they have figured it out that there is no plan. But do members know what that tells me? It tells me that they simply do not understand what economic growth is and what delivers that growth. They have no idea of how to roll out a strong economy for this country. Every time they say in this House that there is no plan all that tells me is that they do not get it. They do not have a clue; they would not recognise a growth agenda if it jumped up and bit them. That tells us that if they were in charge of this country right now we would be continuing the downward spiral that they put us on in their 9 years in office. 
There are many elements to our economic plan. In 20 months the sheer volume of what this Government has delivered in order to turn this economy round is staggering. If we just focus on the six main points we can see that we have the biggest tax reform in 25 years which is designed to encourage hard work discourage consumption and back New Zealanders who want to get ahead. We have one of the biggest infrastructure packages that New Zealand has seen and we have been starving for infrastructure growth in this country. Ten billion dollars will be spent on roads alone and $1.5 billion on broadband with another $300 million on rural broadband. We see better smarter public services being consistently rolled out by this Government and there is better value for money in our spending as well. We see a focus on lifting education standards. We actually say it is not good enough that 20 percent of our kids cannot read and write. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Appropriation (2010/11 Estimates) Bill be now read a third time and the Imprest Supply (Second for 2010/11) Bill be now read a second time. 
Ayes 68 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 5; United Future 1. 
Noes 53 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Progressive 1. 
Appropriation (2010/11 Estimates) Bill read a third time.Imprest Supply (Second for 2010/11) Bill read a second time. 
Imprest Supply (Second for 2010/11) Bill 
Third Reading 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 I move  
That the Imprest Supply (Second for 2010/11) Bill be now read a third time 
. 
Bill read a third time. 
Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill 
First Reading 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House) 
: 
 I move  
That the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
 At the appropriate time it is my intention to move that the bill be referred to the Electoral Legislation Committee which has been established to consider two other bills that this bill relates to and that the committee be asked to report back on this bill no later than 12 November 2010. For reasons that I will explain later in my speech it is essential that the bill is passed before 1 January 2011. 
This is a short bill that provides a definition for the term “funding entitlements for parliamentary purposes” for the purpose of clarifying the principal duties of the Parliamentary Service in terms of who or what is funded by the Parliamentary Service. This takes the interim definition in the Parliamentary Service (Continuation of Interim Meaning of Funding for Parliamentary Purposes) Act 2009 as the starting point for the proposed permanent definition which will become part of the Parliamentary Service Act 2000. Some new elements are also being proposed in this bill which I will explain in greater detail shortly. 
I think it is worthwhile to remind the House of the history of the interim definition. The Auditor-General’s report on advertising expenditure during the 2005 general election concluded that some of the expenses met by the vote from the Parliamentary Service appropriation were in fact election expenses and should not have been paid by Parliamentary Service. Following the release of the Controller and Auditor-General’s report there was a need to establish and define what “parliamentary purposes” are and in particular what is meant by electioneering when considering communications by members and parliamentary parties. Concern was also expressed that although the Controller and Auditor-General’s report focused on advertising expenditure it had implications for all expenditure under Vote Parliamentary Service appropriations. The Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Act 2006 was subsequently introduced to give clarity to the phrase “funding entitlements for parliamentary purposes”. This is an important term for defining the elements or entitlements that members and parties receive under the Parliamentary Service Act 2000 and the Civil List Act 1979. The definition specifies that publicity is within the scope of funding entitlements for parliamentary purposes unless it includes explicit electioneering—that is publicity material that explicitly seeks votes donations or party membership. 
The interim definition established in the 2000 Act has been subsequently rolled over in 2007 and 2009 in what is currently the Parliamentary Service (Continuation of Interim Meaning of Funding for Parliamentary Purposes) Act 2009. Because the current interim definition expires on 31 December 2010 it is essential that this bill be passed by that date. The interim definition provides a brightline test with very clear guidance about what is prohibited. This is generally considered to be satisfactory because it has stood the test of time. It has been maintained through three interim statutes that have been in place for a number of years. The bill builds on what is the interim definition for reasons of consistency which I shall also explain later in greater detail. It has proven to be administratively practical by the Parliamentary Service since its introduction in 2006. There has not been a need to require major changes in members’ and parties’ practices which would have been a consequence of the Auditor-General’s approach. It is clear about the publicity material that can be funded using parliamentary funds. 
I think it is worth noting at this point that the bill has a number of connections to two electoral bills that have already appeared before the House namely the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill and the Electoral Referendum Bill. As my colleague the Hon Nathan Guy said in the House on 4 May in regard to the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill this is an important bill that has cross-party consensus in developing electoral law. This is also true of this bill and at this time I wish to thank all parties on the Parliamentary Service Commission for their involvement in developing the policies that have led to the preparation of this bill. 
Generally speaking the bill maintains the legislative framework that has been in place since legislation was passed in 2006 and preserves the convention observed by members before 2006 which was that parliamentary publicity entitlements should not be used for electioneering purposes. It is entirely reasonable to treat referenda in the same way as elections as to most people they are very similar activities. The bill does this by establishing a rule to prevent members of Parliament and parliamentary parties from using parliamentary funds for any advertisement that explicitly supports voting for a particular way in a referendum. The other most notable feature of the bill is the rule to prevent MPs and parliamentary parties from using parliamentary funding for any persuasive election publicity during the regulated period of a general election or referendum publicity where a regulated period is imposed in a Government-initiated referendum. Members will have to fund this type of publicity by other means. This provision demonstrates how the Government with the consensus of other parties in this House has used the electoral finance review process to address issues of concern. During 2009 the Government released an issues paper as part of the electoral finance review process that questioned whether the rules were sufficiently clear that Parliamentary Service funding cannot be used for election purposes. 
As I have already observed the Government has openly raised issues relevant to this bill in the electoral finance review and it has been a cooperative process across the House. With the cooperation of other parties on the Parliamentary Service Commission we have sought to develop enduring solutions by building on rules that were enacted in 2006 with an aim of achieving greater clarity. The Parliamentary Service Commission’s work will be picked up by the Electoral Legislation Committee which because it has already considered the electoral bills that this bill is related to is well placed to give prompt consideration to the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill so it can be passed before the current interim Act expires. I commend this bill to the House. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Labour) 
: 
 Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the first reading of the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill. Never before in the history of any consideration of parliamentary legislation has such Mugabe-style legislation been defended in such a pedestrian fashion as we have just heard from the Leader of the House the Hon Gerry Brownlee. [ 
Interruption 
] The Hon David Carter says to be charitable and Michael Woodhouse who is a new member has a bewildered look on his face which is not all that different from the look he has at question time actually but I am assuming it is bewildered now. My description of this legislation as “Mugabe-style” is not my own personal view; I will be voting in support of this bill as will my Labour colleagues. The description of this definition of funding entitlements for parliamentary purposes as “Mugabe-style” is a direct quote from Gerry Brownlee who tonight is the Minister in charge of introducing this legislation to the House. This bill rolls over what was an interim definition of parliamentary purposes which just a matter of a few months ago was so bad that it was not to be simply opposed by the National Party in Opposition but it was to be elevated to such a level of Dr Evil status as to be Mugabe-like. Yet I never heard once during the Leader of the House’s contribution any sort of graceful jumping down off the horse in that respect as to how all of a sudden he now has insights that have changed his view as to how this legislation is not Mugabe-style but rather is enforcing and reinforcing our democratic style in New Zealand. 
I say to the Government that tonight the Labour Party will do a terrible evil hopeless duplicitous thing: we will maintain a consistent position. I know that the Tories over there at the mere thought of a consistent position are falling off their benches. It is like one of those new vampire TV seasons where a bit of daylight falling on them sees them melt. But we will vote the same way that we voted in Government. We will stand on the same definition that we believed in when we were the Government and we will back this legislation as a result of that. 
Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman 
: What a lack of imagination. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Jonathan Coleman is busy over there squawking away from the third row which originally I thought was not a high enough place for him but the last 18 months have made me absolutely convinced of that view but he has to know why. He voted against this legislation when he was in Opposition and said that it was a terrible thing. I know that my colleagues have found all sorts of quotes from Opposition members from that time so let me— 
Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman 
: There are new facts. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: And what are those new facts I ask Dr Coleman? 
Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman 
: I haven’t got a speaking slot. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: You know being a member of Cabinet in New Zealand is such a limiting experience. He does not have a speaking slot so he cannot tell us what are the new facts or the new information that led to a change in this whole area. 
Hon David Carter 
: It’s easy. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: David Carter says that it is easy. I ask what it is. 
Hon David Carter 
: You’re on that side and we’re on this side. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Oh I thank the member for saying that. The Hansard reporter has recorded it and I can respond to it so it is now on the record that National members say that on legislation like this it depends on what side of the House one sits on as to what the definition of “parliamentary purposes” should be. You know there is nothing more reliable than a Tory in that respect and I thank the honourable member across the House for that. 
Hon Member 
: You’re wishing you were one really. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Oh no I do not wish that I was one of the National members because I cannot believe the language that we heard. I respect the Leader of the House on a number of levels but I wish that there could have been some explanation as to why the Mugabe-style legislation after his careful diligent consideration of the legislation turned out to be exactly the same as Labour’s legislation and all of a sudden it is no longer Mugabe-style. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: I’m not an intransigent man. I move. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Well I know that the member has become quite skilled at the U-turn in recent times but I would have thought there would be a little more Kirkcaldie and Stains class about this rather than the Farmers version that we saw tonight in respect of this legislation. 
Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman 
: They don’t like farmers over there. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Farmers Trading store—where the member gets all his best suits. 
The other point that needs to be raised is with regard to Bill English who I hoped would be taking a call tonight because this is the sort of legislation he should be opposing on conscience grounds. I am not sure whether it is a party vote but on conscience grounds he should oppose this because of what happened when he was the Leader of the Opposition. We heard a remarkably incisive insightful and revealing speech during the third reading of the Appropriation Bill today. All the Minister of Finance’s personal disappointments defeats and anger were channelled through that speech. If anyone who is observing the debate tonight wants to know about political disappointments and setbacks then he or she ought to read that speech. It is rich material. 
I am grateful to Mr English for the way in which he gives these speeches from time to time. But when he was the Leader of the Opposition most of the 2002 election campaign was funded through the Parliamentary Service. So National members opposite tonight who previously opposed this definition and are now in support of it need to reflect on how this point was driven through by Mr English when he was in charge. When we hear speeches from him about fiscal prudence wasteful expenditure and all those sorts of matters they need to know that there is a veritable pot-pourri of examples from Mr English whether it is Parliamentary Service spending or Ministerial Services spending on which he really should not be lecturing the rest of the House. His colleagues would do well to advise him on that point. 
The Leader of the House has spelt out what this legislation does. I have not gone over that ground again because as I said— 
Tim Macindoe 
: You haven’t talked about it at all. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Well Mr Macindoe interjects but the point if he had been listening at the beginning is that Labour’s position is consistent. 
Tim Macindoe 
: You haven’t got any point at all. That’s your consistent point. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: The consistent point is that the definition in this bill which I doubt the member has read is the same one that this party has supported has brought before Parliament and has voted on and on which it has faced ridicule from the Opposition including David Carter who was once a front-bencher. David Carter was once the finance spokesman for the National Party. He was once at No. 3 in the party. It is hard to know that from his work rate today I know. We see him once every sitting session but when he does come along we remember that he was once a senior man in the National Party. In those days National members used to get up and rail against legislation of this type. We are in support of it. We are in support of the brightline test—always have been. We are in support of the definitions that sit in the bill—always have been. We are looking forward to the consultation that the Government says it will have through the select committee process. 
None of this is new but it would be too disappointing just to sit here and not point out some of the irony that comes along. I know that irony goes alongside life; it is part of the natural human condition. Anger is not which is why Bill English always surprises me so much. But I would have thought that it would be good manners when legislation like this is going through for members opposite to say: “Look we have now had a chance to think about it.” and they could have invented three or four things. I am sure that the Ministry of Justice could find three or four— 
Tim Macindoe 
: Sir Humphrey would be proud of this effort Darren. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Well “Sir Humphrey” is Wayne Mapp so I would be very careful about that. That side of the House is littered with Jim Hackers and Humphrey Applebys. In fact as I look at the member more I see that he reflects that kind of personality in every single respect. I am not sure that he has had so many interjections as he has tonight. I am being so generous to him in responding. In fact tonight the member achieves his  
Hansard 
 world record. He will be wanting to go on the Westminster scholarship to London for 6 weeks on the back of that achievement pretty soon I am sure. 
Labour will support the first reading of this legislation. We will send it off to a select committee and see it go through. It is important that this happen. In fact when the interim definition was put through both sides of the political divide—the Government and the Opposition—did say that we had to get beyond an interim definition and work out a new definition. I am glad that the imagination creativity class and genius of Gerry Brownlee has seen the interim definition become the permanent one with no difference whatsoever. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: We were held back by the Opposition. They couldn’t let go. They had to hold on. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: It is true that the Government was held back by the Opposition but not in this term; it was during the last one. That is what happened when we saw this legislation go through previously. 
If we can get some permanent settlement on these matters then I think it will be useful because so many things have been said by members across both sides of the House on this issue over the years. It will provide a proper and sensible resolution to the matter. I am just grateful for the fact that this Government has an Opposition that is far more willing to cooperate in a sensible way on matters like this rather than to quote the immortal words of the Hon David Carter: “When we are sitting on one side of the House we will say one thing. When we are sitting on the other side we will say the other.” That can only be reminiscent of a policy that was to be a step change with our economic performance with Australia. When one is on this side of the House it is so easy to define what the difference is with regard to the gap between New Zealand and Australia. One just gets up and say: “It is in big trouble and we are going to sort it out.” and when one is on that side of the House one is left debating statistical series courtesy of Statistics New Zealand where one is not quite sure whether it is the average wage the median wage the average income the purchase price parity and all the other things that those members say and one has eight or nine different series of statistics that one has to quote. But when one is over here it all seems so easy. 
In a spirit of generosity towards the Government we say that we are with the Government on this. We support it. We think the Government has done a great job on it and we just hope that when the accrued accounts of the Parliamentary Service come out we find that the xerox machine that has helped this legislation go from Labour to National has not been put on our budget. 
CHRIS TREMAIN (National—Napier) 
: 
 The only remarks about the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill in the commentary state that it provides a meaning of the term “funding entitlements for parliamentary purposes” for the Parliamentary Service Act 2000. It then goes on to state—very quietly I might add—“Following the Controller and Auditor-General’s 2006 report on his inquiry into advertising expenditure incurred by the Parliamentary Service in the 3 months before the 2005 General Election …”. It just quietly mentions that an inquiry was done into election spending in 2005. It would be remiss of me if I did not remind the public of how we got into that position and a little bit about that review. 
Members may recall a piece of marketing literature distributed during the 3-month regulated period prior to the 2005 election which had the parliamentary crest attached to it and was therefore paid for by the New Zealand taxpayer. What was written on it went something like this: “ ‘My Commitments to You’ 1. No interest on student loans for New Zealand based graduates 2. 7500 extra cataract operations and 10000 extra major joint operations in the next term 3. Final date for lodging historical Treaty claims by 1 September 2008 and commit to finish all settlements by 2020 4. Increase maximum rates rebate to $500 and increase income eligibility thresholds 5. $1000 kick start for everyone joining KiwiSaver … 6. 5000 extra Modern Apprentices 7. 250 extra community police on the streets”. That was the Labour pledge card paid for by the Kiwi taxpayer prior to the 2005 election. 
The cost of that promotion was $446000; an additional investment of some $7500 per electorate—$7500 per electorate. It was part of a wider taxpayer-funded campaign in the 3-month period prior to the 2005 general election of $800000 which approximated to an additional spend of $13000 per electorate. I was told time and time again as a new candidate in that election that $20000 was the maximum spend in an electorate. The pledge card went way beyond that. 
The pledge card was blatant electioneering designed to solicit votes from Kiwis by promising to do a range of things in the next term of Government. Let us take the 7500 extra cataract operations in the next term. That was clearly a promotion designed to benefit that party in the election campaign of 2005. It was pure and simple electioneering. It broke the rules it leveraged taxpayer money to provide an unfair advantage and it resulted in legislation being passed following the election to retrospectively approve the spend. It was indeed one of the very low points of the last term of Government. I am proud that this bill seeks to prevent that type of rort from happening again. This is a good thing this is a very good thing and I recommend this bill to the House. 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) 
: 
 It is delicious irony is it not? The emperor with no clothes came to the House tonight as the first speaker on the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill. He was full of gravitas with no emotion and no hysteria at all about this fundamentally good bill before us tonight. But he was exposed in his speech by saying that the difference between then and now is that we are on this side of the House. We will never let National members forget that. 
I want to say some other things. Of course Labour members support this bill; Darren Hughes has laid out our position. It is about defining clear common-sense rules around parliamentary spending in campaigns and in referendums. So of course we support it. 
I mention too that we love to see National entrenching this position in this bill tonight. We will try to stop doing what National did when we were in Government when we wanted to get a constructive set of rules working to find something that was enduring for the future. I will mention a couple of other things that National members railed against when they were in Opposition. Not just for days but for weeks and weeks they built up hysteria about rorts in electoral spending. On this issue Nick Smith said: “I know of no time in my 17 years when I have seen a bill that will bring this Parliament into as much disrepute as the bill before us.” It is exactly the same issue; the same wording that has come through tonight. He also said it was a rort. Judith Collins said that it was a disgrace. Anne Tolley had the line: she said it was a rort and an absolute disgrace for democracy in New Zealand. Tony Ryall came to the House and said: “It should matter to the lower benches of the Labour Party because they may be in a future Parliament and they will not want a future Government to jackboot over their rights as an Opposition as this Government is jackbooting over the rights of all New Zealanders with this attack on the democratic values that most New Zealanders hold dear.” 
That was the National members when they were in Opposition. They attacked our position then and it remains fundamentally unchanged. Of course we will support this bill tonight; we have absolutely no problem with supporting this bill. This was our position—it always was our position—and we will be cooperative. We were promised that there would be wide consultation on this; we have not had wide consultation on it at all. We worked constructively on the electoral finance review when it was undertaken and we look forward to this bill going to the Electoral Legislation Committee where we will be constructive. But we hope that the Government allows a decent period of time so that consultation happens at the select committee. 
I support this bill mainly because it is sensible. I welcome the entrenchment of a change of position by National. It is funny how when Labour members are on this side of the House and National members are on that side of the House they change the rhetoric that goes with bills before us. But we will support it. 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 I will take a short call on behalf of my colleague Metiria Turei. Given the state of my voice I am thankful that it will be a short call. 
The Green Party will support the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill being referred to the select committee because we believe that it is crucial that spending for parliamentary purposes be aligned with electoral finance law. Fortunately as the Leader of the House has said the Electoral Legislation Committee is currently considering electoral finance laws. The committee should be able to consider this legislation alongside electoral finance law legislation. 
I shall make a few remarks about the definition of “electioneering”. Overall the provisions are not controversial given that they cement and only slightly extend the existing rules. The extension primarily concerns the use of parliamentary spending in a referendum by adding to the definition of “electioneering” any communication that explicitly “supports voting for one of the answers to the precise question to be put to voters in an indicative referendum initiated under the Citizens Initiated Referenda Act 1993; or supports voting for one of the responses to be put to electors in a government initiated referendum:”. “Electioneering” is also defined to mean “a referendum advertisement published during the regulated period in relation to a government initiated referendum.” Those are sensible extensions that are consistent and rational. 
Additionally the bill raises the issue of spending generally in referenda and election campaigns. Although it is quite right in the current context that parliamentary funds are not spent on electioneering it is also crucial—if we are to have fair elections and fair referenda—that there should be caps on spending by both political parties and third parties that campaign. This is a live issue that has been raised a great deal by submitters to the Electoral Legislation Committee. The Green Party supports the view that those caps are necessary because without such caps it is entirely possible that a referendum outcome or an election outcome could be based on deepness of pockets as opposed to arguments and logic. Elections and especially Government referenda must be contested in the fairest possible environment and caps on spending are essential to achieve that. 
I will make a few remarks on MP expenses. The provision in this bill that excludes participation in the official inter-parliamentary travel programme from funding entitlements for parliamentary purposes means that the regular members’ expenses disclosure will not include these costs. We think that is a sensible step to take. 
The Green Party is proud to have led Parliament in the disclosure of MPs’ expenses. We announced in June 2009 that Green Party MPs would regularly release our accommodation and travel spending details. As a result of our first release of that information in June 2009 the Prime Minister followed us with an announcement that he and the Speaker would work on a proposal to release that same information for all MPs in July. As a result of our setting the agenda on the process for transparency Parliament has followed and we are proud of that achievement. 
There is no doubt that more could and should be done in this area. We were very pleased with the  
Report of the Fourth Triennial Parliamentary Appropriations Review 
 released last month. The authors agreed with the Green Party that we need to have an independent review of all MPs’ and Ministers’ allowances so that we can construct a system for the use of public money that meets 21st century public expectations and builds confidence among the public in their elected representatives. Because we have not had such a review we are seeing the release of information and changes to the fringes of the system that are not fully transparent or principled. An independent review is an absolute necessity to prepare Parliament for future demands for transparency and accountability. Good government and healthy politics must be at the core of the institution of Parliament. The Green Party will stand firm to promote and protect them. Some small steps have been taken but more are necessary. The Green Party will continue to play a part in leading that change. Thank you. 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I am happy to take a very brief call on the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill to outline of course Labour’s support for this legislation and the principles contained within it. We have consistently supported this legislation since 2006 when the Auditor-General raised the issues that he did. Labour’s position on this has not changed unlike the Government’s. 
I was interested however to see that Chris Tremain decided to introduce into the debate the issue of the pledge card. Labour was disappointed with the Auditor-General’s decision about the pledge card and we stumped up and paid that money back. But I will tell the House that one thing people knew about the Labour Party pledge card was that we would keep the promises that were on it. 
I have here a pledge card that was distributed at the last election. Four of the pledges have already been broken and by my count at least three more are at risk. Out of a total of 11 pledges National has already broken four and there are at least three more that it is thinking about breaking. Steven Joyce is thinking about breaking National’s pledge on interest-free student loans. He has been musing out loud about how unaffordable they are. National has already broken its pledge on tax cuts. It has already broken its pledge on front-line services. It has already broken its education pledge. It has already broken its pledges on superannuation. 
One thing we knew about the Labour pledge card was that when Helen Clark signed her name to it and said that the Labour Government was going to deliver on it we actually were going to deliver on it whereas National’s pledge card stated: “If National is elected to lead the next Government I personally guarantee that we will: …”. Whose name is on the bottom of that piece of paper personally guaranteeing all those promises that have been broken? It is John Key’s. His signature is at the bottom of the National pledge card but those promises have not been kept. 
Labour has consistently supported the position that is outlined in this legislation. Labour has consistently supported that unlike National. Gerry Brownlee described it as “utterly disgraceful”. This very legislation being introduced to the House now was— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: The same. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: It was exactly the same legislation and Gerry Brownlee thought it was utterly disgraceful. Nick Smith stood in this House and said of the same legislation: “I know of no time in my 17 years when I have seen a bill that will bring this Parliament into as much disrepute as the bill before us.” That was Nick Smith’s position on this legislation. He was one of Bill English’s right-hand men. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Numbers man. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: That is right. He was the field marshal and Bill English’s numbers man. 
It is ironic that he thought this legislation was going to bring Parliament into disrepute when the 2002 National Party election campaign presided over by Bill English was funded entirely by the taxpayer. Do we remember the billboards up and down the country? They showed Bill English in front of the beach saying: “No special deals. The beaches are for everyone.” I wonder whether National’s position on that has changed in the last few months as well like all of the promises on its pledge card. Those words— 
Hon David Parker 
: Who paid for the billboard? 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: I ask Mr English who paid for the billboard. 
Hon Bill English 
: I don’t remember. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: He does not remember. The billboards were all over the country; they said: “No special deals. The beaches are for everyone.”—and Bill English cannot remember who paid for them. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: I will give the member a hint: it had the parliamentary crest on it. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: They had the parliamentary crest on them. The taxpayer paid for them. 
We know that not just because they had the parliamentary crest on them but because we know that the National Party had no money. We know that it had no money because when Don Brash rolled Bill English he stood up in the caucus and read out a letter that said that National had no money and that was why he needed to replace Bill English as the National Party leader. All these years later Bill English is still simmering with resentment and we saw that this afternoon in the appropriations debate when he canvassed all of that bitter history of Don Brash rolling him. 
Of course we know what happened to Don Brash in the end.  
The Hollow Men 
 came along. Nicky Hager came along and ruined it for Don Brash with a bit of help from people on the side. I wonder who may well have been involved in that. A few people on the other side of the House have never stood up and denied that they were involved in leaking the information to Nicky Hager. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Ask Bill about the emails. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Well one could ask Mr English about the emails. Suddenly he is very quiet again. He is keeping his lips firmly sealed. Bill English has never denied that he had anything to do with the leaking of the emails. He has never stood in the House and said that he had nothing to do with it. I wonder why that could be. 
I will come back to this bill that we are debating in the House today. Judith Collins described this bill as being “such a disgrace”. I wonder whether she will vote for this bill in a few moments. Anne Tolley the Minister of Education whom we know we can believe because she is very consistent in the things that she says said: “This bill is a rort. It is an absolute disgrace for democracy in New Zealand.” That was the position of the Minister of Education when this bill first came before Parliament. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Like lambs to the slaughter. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Like lambs to the slaughter. Gerry Brownlee just a few short moments ago said this legislation had “stood the test of time”. The legislation that Anne Tolley thought was a disgrace for democracy Gerry Brownlee thinks has stood the test of time. David Carter of course gave that very enlightening observation that it is Mugabe-style legislation when National is in Opposition but it is perfectly legitimate now that National is in Government. 
At least Labour has some consistency in our position here. We supported this legislation when it was first introduced. We supported the interim definition of funding for parliamentary purposes. Gerry Brownlee said the Government needed to find a more enduring solution to that interim definition. We now have it and it is exactly the same; National has just changed the word “interim” to “permanent”. But Labour has consistently supported it. 
Finally I remind the House of what Tony Ryall said about this legislation. He said: “It should matter to the lower benches of the Labour Party because they may be in a future Parliament and they will not want a future Government to jackboot over their rights as an Opposition …”—to jackboot over their rights. So by his own definition Tony Ryall and National are jackbooting over the rights of the Labour Opposition with the legislation they have brought before the House. 
Finally—I know it is my second “finally” but there is always time for one more—Chris Tremain talked about spending limits when he talked about the 2005 general election campaign. Perhaps we could rewind the tape and go back to the little issue that was National’s GST problem. It spent all that extra money on television advertising but it forgot to pay the GST on it so National exceeded its own spending limits. It broke the law by spending more money on television advertising than it was allowed to because it forgot that it had to pay GST. 
I wonder whether the people at home who are paying more GST every time they go to the supermarket could simply say when they got to the checkout counter that they had forgotten about the GST and ask for it to be taken off the bill and sent to Bill English for him to pay. It will not matter that they have exceeded their budget; they can keep on spending because they forgot about the GST. That is what the National Party did in 2005 when it wanted to spend more than it was legally entitled to. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: They never paid it back. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: They never ever paid it back. The Labour Party paid back the money owing for the pledge card but the taxpayers are still waiting for the GST money from National’s 2005 election advertising. They are still waiting for the National Party to stump up and pay the money. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: What are you shaking your head for “Cue Ball”? 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: David Bennett is shaking his head and I agree with him: it is an absolute disgrace and I am pleased to see that David Bennett who is on the backbenches of the National Party thinks it is a disgrace as well. 
I am very pleased to see the interim definition that Gerry Brownlee thought was “Mugabe-style” legislation now becoming permanent because it is a sensible solution and that is why Labour will be voting in favour of it. 
JOHN BOSCAWEN (ACT) 
: 
 I had not planned to take a call in this debate on the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill. I told the National whip that I would not be speaking. However I do not believe that the comments from Chris Hipkins who has just resumed his seat can go without being responded to. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: It’s still not too late. 
JOHN BOSCAWEN 
: No it is not too late and I want to respond to Mr Hipkins’ comments but before I do let me comment briefly on the contribution of Kevin Hague. Kevin said he was speaking on behalf of his co-leader Metiria Turei. Metiria serves with me as a member of the Electoral Legislation Committee and the Green Party has advocated that there should be a cap on the coming referendum on the possible change of the electoral system. The evidence that the committee has heard is that many organisations are interested in the outcome of that coming referendum and want to contribute to the public debate on it. To suggest that we should see some sort of cap is totally impractical because many organisations have made submissions on the referendum and many organisations should have the right to express their views. 
For example we have four different electoral systems up for grabs if you like in the coming referendum. Who is to say he or she has the God-given right to promote one particular viewpoint? There may be half a dozen different organisations that want to promote a pro-MMP campaign and there may be three or four organisations that want to promote a pro - first-past-the-post campaign. When it comes to imposing limits what do we do? Do we say we will allow $500000 to promote each type of electoral system and if there are five organisations wanting to run a campaign they should have $100000 each and if there are two they should have $250000 each? It simply is not practical to have a limit on that referendum because unlike a citizens initiated referendum where we have one organisation promoting a referendum and a spending limit within which it must make its case to the people there could be any number of organisations wanting to express a view and influence the outcome of that referendum. 
However let me come back to the comments of Chris Hipkins. He criticised the National Party for overspending on television advertising in the 2005 general election. I think National had an allowance of $900000 and spent $1 million on TV advertising and then it said that in its calculations it had forgotten to allow for GST. National said that it could spend only $900000 but had spent a million and it had broken the law. Someone listening to the debate this evening would think the Labour Party was the paragon of democracy standing up for free speech and democracy. Very few people in this country will be aware that it is illegal for a political party to go out and buy broadcasting time other than what is given to it by the organisation responsible for overseeing elections. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: That’s National’s position as well. 
JOHN BOSCAWEN 
: That is the National position. So we currently have a law under which it is illegal for the ACT Party the Green Party and the Maori Party to purchase broadcasting time and try to compete with the two largest parties in this Parliament. It is illegal for us to compete with the Labour Party and the National Party. Those two larger parties get something like $900000 or $1 million for broadcasting. The allocation for the Green Party at the last election was around about $200000 and the Maori Party and the ACT Party were given $100000. The law of New Zealand makes it illegal for the ACT Party to purchase additional time with its own money. We do not ask for the taxpayer to pay for it. We would like to raise our own money to try to compete on an equal footing with both the Labour Party and the National Party and the law denies it. 
We have a bill going through the Electoral Legislation Committee right now that could change that law but I am told that although the National Party would support that change the Labour Party and the Green Party will not. I am told that the Minister of Justice would be happy to amend the legislation to provide an equal chance for all of the political parties in this country to raise their own money and enable them to compete at the next election on an equal footing but the Labour Party and the Green Party are opposed to it. So for members on the other side of the House to stand up and have the gall to suggest that they support a free and democratic society when they know full well— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Talk to your mates then. 
JOHN BOSCAWEN 
: Well let me ask Labour members whether if the ACT Party were to introduce amendments to that legislation to provide for all parties in this Parliament to campaign on an equal basis they would support it. The situation is that at the last election the two largest parties in this Parliament were given by the taxpayer $900000 each to purchase broadcasting—radio and television time—and the ACT Party was given $100000 the Maori Party $100000 and the Green Party $200000. We are denied the chance to raise our own money to compete. When I first met Tariana Turia prior to the 2008 election I recall her telling me that the Maori Party was significantly disadvantaged. It wanted to purchase radio broadcasting time on Maori radio and was denied the chance to do it. If it could have raised the funds it could not spend the money. Let me repeat for the Labour Party that if it is prepared to support an amendment to the legislation I am prepared to go to the Maori Party and seek support— 
Hon David Parker 
: No we are not. 
JOHN BOSCAWEN 
: You are not prepared to support it. 
Hon David Parker 
: Because it would be wrong. 
JOHN BOSCAWEN 
: It would be wrong. We have just heard from Mr Parker that he thinks it is right for the Labour Party to be able to spend $900000 on broadcasting time for the National Party to spend $900000 on broadcasting time and for the smaller parties in this Parliament to be denied the chance to compete on an equal footing. I am not surprised that Mr Parker says Labour opposes that because I asked that question of Mr Little when he appeared on behalf of the Council of Trade Unions. I asked him why the Labour Party was opposed and whether he thought that was reasonable and he said he thought it was. He said it was perfectly sensible for both the Labour and National parties to have $900000 to spend on broadcasting time while smaller parties in this Parliament are denied the chance to compete on an equal footing. That tells us something about the principles of the two largest parties in this Parliament. Thank you very much. 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I am very happy to respond to that speech by John Boscawen because the member who has just spoken confuses the principle of freedom of expression with the right to buy an election outcome. I say to Mr Boscawen that the ACT Party is on 2 percent and the allocation that the party receives of the public moneys that go into broadcasting is already disproportionately high. The member’s party already receives money at a level that is disproportionately high. 
The underlying issue that John Boscawen complains about is that there is any limit on broadcasting expenditure and I am quite happy to stand in this House and defend the status quo. It is a stark choice between the style of our elections and of those that take place in the United States where money talks money works and money buys an election outcome. ACT Party members can spend 24 hours a day putting their total effort into an election outcome. They are completely free to express themselves to try to convince every other person. What ACT cannot do is disproportionately use its wealthier status to buy an election outcome in a way that exercises influence disproportionate to the pathetic 2 percent that it is at in the polls. 
I revert to the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill. The bill maintains the brightline test. It effectively says that except for the 3-month election period where no public moneys can go into an advertisement the things that we do as politicians to promote ourselves as politicians are allowed. It acknowledges that we are effectively trying to encourage people to support us. That is what politicians do: we try to advocate for causes just as John Boscawen was doing in advocating for a cause that he believes in—and he is perfectly entitled to do that. We are all entitled to try to influence people as to how they will vote at the next election. That is what we do every day in this House and that is why in the end the Government has been forced to come back and say it might have been strident in its criticisms previously when this legislation was passed but when one looks at it one cannot have anything other than a brightline test because nothing else works. 
So this legislation says one cannot have taxpayers’ funds going into advertisements and things that encourage people during the 3 months prior to an election but outside of that we can use the money that we have to run this Parliament and to pay for telephones and the publications that we put out in a way that promotes the things that we stand for. That is absolutely intrinsic to the process of politics and one cannot have a functioning democracy if politicians cannot do that. That is why despite the rhetoric that we had from the National Party when it was in Opposition which described this legislation in very extreme terms—and we have heard other members describe how they used the descriptions “Mugabe-style legislation” “utterly disgraceful” and “a rort”—the reality is that this legislation is good legislation. It stops parliamentary parties in the 3 months prior to an election using any parliamentary funds for advertising purposes and it also stops us at any time directly asking people to vote for us. But it does enable us to go about the business that politicians have to go about which is to try to show why the policies that our party stands for are better than the policies that the parties that we oppose stand for. That is why the Labour Party has been consistent in its support of the brightline test and it is pleased to see that other parties in Parliament have now reached the same position. 
Bill read a first time. 
Hon DAVID CARTER (Minister of Agriculture)  
on behalf of the Leader of the House 
: 
 I move  
That the Electoral Legislation Committee consider the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill 
 that the committee report finally to the House on or before 12 November 2010 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions) and during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House despite Standing Orders 187 and 190(1)(b) and (c). 
Motion agreed to. 
Third Readings 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister for Infrastructure) 
: 
 I move  
That the Utilities Access Bill the Infrastructure (Amendments Relating to Utilities Access) Bill the New Zealand Railways Corporation Amendment Bill and the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill be now read a third time 
. These four bills formerly comprised the Infrastructure Bill and represent a significant step forward in facilitating infrastructure. 
These bills cover three areas. The first and second bills improve the arrangements for managing access by utility operators—such as electricity gas telecommunications and water operators—to road and rail corridors. The current arrangements are inconsistent across utilities which creates uncertainty disputes and inefficiencies. That leads to higher costs for operators and local authorities. The third bill amends the New Zealand Railways Corporation Act to remove some of the statutory restrictions that affect the running of the Railways Corporation’s business and to bring the entity’s governance arrangements more in line with the Crown Entities Act. This is directly relevant to the ongoing operation of KiwiRail. The fourth bill is a repeal of the Affordable Housing Enabling Territorial Authorities Act 2008 retaining an amended prohibition on restrictive covenants affecting social housing. 
The Utilities Access Bill establishes a framework for a national code of practice that governs how utility operators and corridor managers coordinate their activities. To enable industry participants to develop and take ownership of the code the bill allows anyone to prepare a code but the code must meet certain requirements before the responsible Minister can approve it. The code must have broad agreement between stakeholders and must include operational and dispute resolution processes. A code approved by the Minister under this legislation will be deemed to be a regulation. The approach the bill takes is that there is no requirement for a code but if industry participants see value in having a code one can be developed. 
The Infrastructure (Amendments Relating to Utilities Access) Bill amends the Telecommunications Act the Electricity Act the Gas Act and the Local Government Act 1974. The bill provides for consistent provisions across the Acts around reasonable conditions of access to corridors allocation of costs when utility operators are required to move assets and time periods for notification and response. The Government has a particular interest in the passage of this bill as it contemplates the roll-out of broadband around the country. Amendments to the Railways Act and the Government Roading Powers Act provide time frames for responding to requests for access to rail corridors and motorways and require corridor managers to publish criteria on which they will base decisions to grant access. 
The New Zealand Railways Corporation Amendment Bill brings many of the provisions of the New Zealand Railways Corporation Act in line with the Crown Entities Act. The changes proposed in the bill include normalising the appointment and dismissal of directors changing to a simple majority the number of directors who can call a meeting the power to appoint a deputy chairperson and streamlining arrangements for changes to the Railways Corporation’s capital. It is probably the most important of the changes suggested given the need for KiwiRail to access considerable capital and the Government’s commitment to provide some of it. The bill also removes the limit on how much the Railways Corporation can expend in 1 year and permits the corporation to effect insurance cover for a director or employee. It brings the corporation’s ability to grant easements and impose conditions on the rail corridor more in line with the powers of other companies. 
The Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill removes a potential impairment to increasing the housing supply which we believe is a vital issue in determining housing affordability. At the same time it retains an amended prohibition on restrictive covenants affecting social housing. The original Act was intended to provide local authorities with regulatory tools to address problems of housing affordability. In fact Local Government New Zealand and territorial authorities who made submissions on the bill suggested that rather than improving affordability it would increase the cost of housing in the current market. The building sector also raised concerns about increased complexities and delays as a result of the Act. That is why we are repealing it. Moves to encourage the building of new housing need to ensure that regulatory and other costs are contained and opportunities for increases in supply are enhanced. The repeal will assist in this regard. It will also be assisted by the Government’s thorough review of the Building Act and the recent change in building consent processes which by some estimates will reduce the costs of a mid-priced house by around $20000. 
The bill provides for a modified version of the prohibition relating to certain restrictive covenants and that will be included as an amendment to the Property Law Act. This addresses growing concern about the use of covenants to exclude social housing when new subdivisions are set up which unfairly discriminates against some of our most vulnerable people. 
The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee received submissions from a wide range of organisations interested in the Infrastructure Bill. The majority of the submissions focused on the proposed changes to arrangements for access to transport corridors. Most submissions were very supportive of the aims of what are now the first two bills. They offered constructive suggestions and the provisions of these two bills were accordingly amended. Currently utilities operators have no right of access to the rail corridor. The amendments to the Railways Act in this legislation recognise that the corridor is underutilised and that the current Act does not go far enough towards enabling greater use of the rail corridor by utilities. 
In summary these four bills will contribute to a smoother pathway for infrastructure development in New Zealand. They address a number of issues related to enhancing infrastructure investment enabling better operation of rail infrastructure and taking a step in the direction of cleaning up the regulatory tangle that has prevented the development of affordable housing. 
I thank those who have been involved in developing this legislation including the Opposition for its support and for the work that Labour began while it was in Government. I think that it recognised the same problem: in a country where the investment in infrastructure was picking up we needed to take the opportunity to clear up some of the regulatory fog that our local bodies our Government agencies and our infrastructure businesses have been working in. 
These bills have had constructive consideration in both the select committee and the House. Although there is cross-party support for the first three bills I recognise that there is not cross-party support for the bill related to affordable housing. That just reflects a difference of view. Labour believes that legislating for affordable housing might work when all the evidence pushes in the opposite direction. Housing affordability is gradually on the improve but it will take a number of further changes in the regulatory environment to ensure that affordable housing again comes within the reach of those who are on average pay in New Zealand. I commend these four bills to the House. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Labour) 
: 
 The speech made by the member who has just resumed his seat the Hon Bill English was full of passion and vigour. It was an exciting speech from the man in charge of managing New Zealand’s economy. Bill English is a man who is determined to see a step change in the New Zealand economy so he delivered that speech with a real rigour and vigour that I am sure had people absolutely on the edge of their seats as they listened to this Government talk about the importance it places on infrastructure. 
I want to pick up on what the Minister for Infrastructure said in that the Labour Opposition will be supporting the third readings of the Utilities Access Bill the Infrastructure (Amendments Relating to Utilities Access) Bill and the New Zealand Railways Corporation Amendment Bill. But we will be opposing the third reading of the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill. We certainly give notice of that. We are in opposition to that fourth bill and we would like the division to be put separately so that we can give our support to the Government on the first three bills but vote against the fourth bill at the appropriate time when the question is put. 
This Government is a Government without a plan. We see the lack of commitment to actually doing things as compared with the slogans the rhetoric and the great uplifting speeches that took place before the election—before the more difficult work of running a country once the rubber hits the road. We were told that infrastructure was so critical to the future of the country—and Labour agrees with that—that National would have a real focus on it. That is why it is enormously surprising to me that 22 months after the last general election we finally have tonight the third readings of these infrastructure bills. 
Infrastructure was to be such a critical part of the Government’s step change for its economic programme. What did the Government make the Governor-General say in the Speech from the Throne? Oh yes—that it was going to “turbocharge” the New Zealand economy. That was before the eager new backbenchers found out that there was no plan to do that. There was only ever one plan. The one plan was to make John Key the Prime Minister. That involved saying anything. It involved saying things like: “We will close the wage gap with Australia.” and “We will have no cuts to front-line services.”—things that we see every day are not happening in New Zealand! 
Moana Mackey 
: “We won’t increase GST.” 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Oh yes: “We won’t increase GST.” None of those things were going to take place in our country and apparently no one had anything to fear from the nice Mr Key as he in the words of the Minister for Infrastructure bounced from cloud to cloud. Apparently we had nothing to fear from a National Government but it turns out there is no plan. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the fact that the Infrastructure Bill languished right through the term of this Parliament. 
Hon Sir Roger Douglas 
: What about your plan? 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: I am coming to that. I tell that member to stay tuned. He can send a text message to his nurse and tell his nurse not to come and collect him straight away. If he stays for a few minutes longer he will be able to hear what Labour’s plan is. I see that the mobile van is ready to take him back to the Malvina Major Retirement Village here in Wellington and we wish the honourable member well for the night as he goes off for his cocoa. 
I simply say that 22 months after the general election we see Mr English that great workhorse the man who thinks he is the Bill Birch of this National Government. I compare his ambitions for New Zealand today with what they were 20 years ago when he came to this place when he assumed that the Prime Ministership was his for the taking—hence the bitter speech in the third readings after question time today. It was a very incisive and revealing speech about what drives Mr English. Whenever he is asked to speak about the Government and about politics the things that come to his mind first and foremost were revealed in that particular speech. I enjoy his speeches because they are an open window into his heart on these matters. 
So 22 months after the election we get the third readings of these bills. It is a year since the first reading of the original bill—the Infrastructure Bill. The Government said that infrastructure was very important and that this legislation was necessary. In fact Mr English congratulated himself at the end of the speech he just gave by saying that National is not like the previous Government. It does not believe that legislation is the answer and he said it would run a tight ship on this: the bills it brought in would be absolutely necessary. 
We could be generous and accept National’s narrative on this but I certainly do not because even on that measure Mr English has failed with this legislation as he has taken so long to do it. I think that delay has been a re-emphasis of the fact that although National said it would deliver a brighter future for New Zealand and be ambitious for New Zealand the truth is that when the rubber hits the road this Government does not a plan to turn any of the rhetoric or slogans into daily reality in the lives of ordinary Kiwis in our country. 
There is no connection between the operationalising of Government policy and the soaring—well not really soaring because I realise that for the Prime Minister sometimes English seems like a second language. The slogans that have been tested so thoroughly by Cosby/Textor are not always the ones that turn up on the floor of the House as policy. 
I can trust the record of the previous Government. It did make a serious commitment to infrastructure. I know that this Government pays itself a huge amount of credit for its roading budget but it needs to recall 1999 when National left office. Does Mr Bennett know how much National was spending every year on the State highway programme? 
David Bennett 
: You didn’t actually spend it though did you? 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: I am talking about the 1999 Government—it was a National Government. I am sorry to shock the member but in our country in 1999 National led the Government. I am asking that member as a member of that party—although not of the Government at the time—what the annual expenditure on State highways was. 
David Bennett 
: I’ll tell you next up. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: He has no idea. That is all right. Every now and then I have hope that David Bennett will live up to the great promise he has in himself but I will wait until next year. I will try again next year. 
The former National Government spent $850 million a year on roading in 1999. By the time Labour left Government that figure had more than doubled to $1.9 billion a year. There was a massive increase in road spending from 1999 when David Carter first left the ministry exhausted after 12 months as the “Associate Minister of Food Fibre Biosecurity and Border Patrol” or whatever the Jenny Shipley PC portfolio name was. How embarrassing it would be to have that on one’s business card! But he did. Then he had 9 years’ sabbatical. What we see from David Carter now is the rested refreshed re-energised uplifted version. Imagine if he had not had those 9 years in Opposition to relax before the work effort that he puts in today! 
We saw a doubling of the road budget during the years of the previous Labour Government. We were very much committed to that. The truth is that New Zealand’s infrastructure was about to fall over back in those days. Auckland was totally gridlocked. I see Steven Joyce who has great tickets on himself get up in Parliament all the time and pay tribute to the National Government for some road opening 6 months ahead of time or something or other as if it is some miracle. 
Moana Mackey 
: For the fourth time. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Often we get the Kopu Bridge announced for the fifth or sixth time. Actually the length of paper associated with the press releases almost covers the entire bridge by now. The reality is that these are projects that were started by the previous Labour Government. That is a good thing because I tell members— 
Hon David Carter 
: Yeah right! 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: He says “Yeah right!”. I ask him when Victoria Park was started. 
Hon David Carter 
: Dunno. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: He does not know. 
Hon David Carter 
: What about the southern motorway? 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Oh the southern motorway. I am very happy to talk about the southern motorway. 
Hon David Carter 
: You put it off for 10 years. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: No the southern motorway is a great example of the fact that Labour had those roads in order and ready to go. 
Hon David Carter 
: Oh yeah! 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Out of the seven roads of national significance that National members say they are so proud of six of them were Labour projects. The only one that was not a Labour project was the Puhoi to Wellsford “Holiday Highway” where they are having to spend hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars looking after— 
Hon David Carter 
: All talk. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: I ask David Carter this: how many roads were opened in the early part of the previous Labour Government’s term where all the credit belonged to National? Zero none zip zilch not a single road—not one. 
I know that new National members are critical of Maurice Williamson. They ask what he really does. Maurice Williamson is hyperactive today compared with when he was the Minister of Transport in the 1990s. Nothing ever happened when Maurice Williamson was the Minister of Transport. 
Our criticisms relate to the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill and Moana Mackey will go over that in great detail. I will close by saying that the big disappointment for Labour in this legislation is rail. This Government could not be any less committed to rail. We see many different examples of its lack of commitment to rail where it has really gone as my colleague the Hon David W Parker would say off the tracks. That was almost a David Letterman line which John Key could use during question time. I guess we will have to wait until he gets back from Vanuatu for that. 
In terms of rail this Government has limited vision. All around the world as countries confront moving passengers in metropolitan centres and moving freight across country they are using more and more rail. This Government is not committed to doing that. The next speaker will be David Bennett who when in Opposition was in favour of a passenger service from Hamilton to Auckland. Now that he is in Government he has 101 reasons why it should not happen. Let me give him a little hint: it ain’t going to take him to the Cabinet so he may as well stick up for his constituents and make sure that the promise he gave for rail happens. This legislation does not do enough for rail. It was 22 months in the making and it really is time that National got on with a plan. 
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 That speech from Labour was a load of rubbish. It was from one of the members who rate themselves so highly Darren Hughes. He should spend more time getting his facts right than his appearance right and then he might be in order. He said that Labour was “in order and ready to go”—“in order and ready to go”. That sums up the Labour Government when it came to transport. It did not actually fund transport. It had all of these plans it said it was going to build these projects but it never allocated any money for them and it never built them. So the member was quite right when he said projects were “in order and ready to go” because they were not funded. It was just a pie-in-the-sky promise that that member and his party made. 
I remember the first term that I was here. We went to Long Swamp that bit of road from Auckland to Hamilton that major bit of construction. Annette King was there cutting the ribbon. She was cutting the ribbon and saying a great Labour Government had built that road. But it was actually started under the previous National Government in 1999. Those projects were started under National. They were completed by the previous Government but they were started by us. That member is completely incorrect in the way that he represented the facts of the past generation of infrastructure build in this country. 
If members look at the future of infrastructure they will see that the State highway network will get $10.7 billion in the next 10 years from this Government—$10.7 billion from this Government. The national grid will get $3.3 billion over the next 5 years—$3.3 billion over the next 5 years. Urban broadband will get another $1.5 billion over the next 10 years. New schools and buildings will be allocated $2.7 billion over the next 5 years. We are spending a total of $7.5 billion over 5 years. Labour members are completely incorrect when they say that we are not investing in infrastructure. We have a plan and we have delivered on a plan. It is not “in order and ready to go”; it is hitting the road now. It is being delivered. The money has been allocated and people are seeing the delivery of those services. As David Carter said there is the southern motorway in that great city of Christchurch. We see the great news about what is happening in Tauranga. We see the Waikato Expressway. We see the completion of the ring route in Auckland. We see a huge investment in rail that was not done by the previous Government which pretended it was a supporter of rail. But when it actually had the chance it did not do anything for rail. Now it is up to us to build a rail network in Auckland 
Labour is a party “in order and ready to go”—contrary to all public opinion and reports in the last week. But those members are all rhetoric. They do not deliver. This legislation is part of our Government delivering infrastructure for this country. We support it being passed through the House. 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 Unfortunately it seems to be my lot in life to follow on from David Bennett in this House. I think it is the most extraordinary thing for a member of the National Government to stand up and say that it is very committed to rail and that Labour never was. I ask who bought back the lines who bought back KiwiRail and who put money into the rebuilding of lines like the Gisborne to Napier rail line. Who now wants to turn it into a cycleway? It is Mr Bennett’s Government. I am going to say something nice about the Hon David Carter before he has to go to his next important meeting and that is that David Bennett could take some lessons from David Carter on how to run a select committee. For all the hassles that we give Mr Carter the fact is that he was a very very good select committee chair. I think that the member David Bennett who is the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee could perhaps learn a few things from Mr Carter in that regard. 
I want to talk about what was Part 4 of the Infrastructure Bill and is now the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill. The repeal of this Act was hidden away in the Infrastructure Bill and it should not have been. The repeal of affordable housing legislation has no place in an infrastructure bill. If the Government wanted to repeal it it should have put it up in its own right as a repeal bill allowed New Zealanders to know what was happening and allowed them to submit on it. It did not do that. I think that that is a shame. I thank the clerk of the committee and all the select committee staff for all of the work they did to try to ensure that everyone who might be interested in the repeal of this legislation had the opportunity to comment. But I have no doubt that there would be many other people out there who would also have enjoyed the opportunity to comment had they known to look in an infrastructure bill that was working towards bringing together the operations of utility operators for the repeal of affordable housing legislation. It is reasonable to think that they would have enjoyed that opportunity. 
The second thing I want to say is that this just backs up the fact that when it comes to affordable housing in New Zealand this Government has no plan—no plan at all. When the Minister of Housing gave his speech he said that affordable housing was improving so it was not as much of an issue as previously. Well in the latest statistics housing affordability at the very best estimate is back to where it was in July 2008. In July 2008 the Hon Phil Heatley said that it was a disaster and it was a catastrophic event that needed to be addressed. The fact that we have gone back to that point which National used to think was terrible apparently now means that we do not have to do anything about affordable housing. I think that that is a dreadful contradiction in the position of this National Government. We need a mix of tools for affordable housing because there is no one reason why housing is unaffordable. There are many many different reasons so the responses will also be many and varied. This power was one of those tools that I believe would have been useful. As I have said time and time again Labour would have supported this legislation going back to a select committee to be looked at again if the Government thought that it could be improved on. We would have absolutely supported that. 
The 2005 New Zealand Housing Strategy acknowledged that territorial authorities could have more regulatory powers because they do everywhere else in the world. The Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act intended to allow territorial authorities to require developers to include affordable housing in their developments or to contribute money land or houses or a mix of those to affordable housing. In return territorial authorities could have provided incentives. They could have offset some of the costs if they wanted to they could have reduced development contributions or they could have had rates remissions rates postponements or any other kind of financial assistance. It would have been up to the local authorities to determine how they actioned that. A territorial authority could have put together a housing affordability policy so that it was clear to developers what was expected from them in that region. It has to be said that some local authorities had specifically asked for this kind of regulation-making power; that is why the legislation was drafted and passed into law. 
At the same time it needs to be acknowledged that some of the local authorities were concerned that they would not have the expertise or the resources—absolutely. Part of the process is discovering where those gaps are. Local government will always be part of the solution for housing affordability. We cannot do it without it. It is actually impossible for central government to do this without a partnership with local government because it controls the zoning of land and a lot of the supply issues. We have to do it together because it is important that we find out where those gaps are. In saying that we made sure that it was not compulsory. This was something that local authorities could use if they wanted to; some had said they were interested and others had said they were not. It would have been very interesting to see who took it up and who did not. It would have gone a long way towards addressing those gaps as we said before. 
It was important that we started to get our local authorities thinking about housing affordability in conjunction with the work that central government was doing as well. Members should remember that the kinds of regulation-making powers that we gave local authorities are very common overseas. In fact in some places it is expected that if for example someone wants to do a large commercial development—say a shopping mall; this is common in some of the states in America—they require that workers’ housing be built and that the infrastructure around workers’ housing be built. In many communities and many countries around the world it is just naturally assumed that it is fair that developers contribute something back to the local community through the regulation-making powers of the territorial authority. 
We were told that one of the reasons the Act was going to be repealed was that it was developed during a time of significant development activity and now that activity is not there we do not need it any more. Once again that just shows us that the Government has no economic plan. Apparently we do not need powers for local authorities to use during times of high development activity probably because the Government does not think we are going to have times of high development activity any more. There is no economic plan. There is no plan for regional New Zealand and there is no plan for our big cities. 
The fact is that Labour is not quite as pessimistic as the Government. We have a plan and we will be putting that plan out there at the next election. Part of that plan is that we want to see development going on in areas that are appropriate. We want to see affordable housing as part of that plan. We see housing as infrastructure. The fact that this Act is being repealed shows that this Government does not think housing is infrastructure. If we look across the Tasman to Australia—the Government used to be obsessed with doing that but it does not like the comparison now—we see that Australia sees housing as core infrastructure. A huge part of its stimulus package which is still ongoing is social and affordable housing. It is residential housing for its citizens. That is the kind of thing that this Government should be looking at. In Auckland we are thousands and thousands of houses short every single year. In Manurewa for example for every 14 families who move to Manurewa one house is being built. That is not sustainable yet this Government is doing absolutely nothing about it except repealing legislation that is designed to assist local authorities and getting rid of programmes like shared equity which is an absolutely integral part of the affordable housing mix in just about every other country around the world. 
We have no plan for affordable housing under this National-led Government. Its affordable housing plan was tax cuts and reform of the Resource Management Act. Do members know what officials told us about the Resource Management Act reforms during the select committee process? They said that the reforms will not address affordable housing. Affordable housing is not even part of the mix of the Resource Management Act reforms. In the tax cuts that this Government gave someone on the minimum wage gets $3 a week—$3 a week. That is meant to compensate for inflation GST increases rent increases cost of living increases and apparently affordable housing. I do not know how good this Government thinks low-income people are at budgeting. They are pretty good but they cannot stretch $3 a week as far as that. The tax cut that the members over there gave themselves could probably go a long way towards affordable housing but for the average Kiwi family it absolutely will not. 
I finish by speaking on restrictive covenants. The Minister of Infrastructure tried to make out that there were no changes in this area. That is actually not true. Significant changes were made in the area of restrictive covenants. The one I want to single out is that if a covenant restricts social housing it now has to be the primary purpose of the covenant for that to be illegal whereas under the Labour Government we said that if any purpose of the covenant was to restrict social housing then it was illegal. This Government has taken that out and it has opened up a huge loophole. It is like its 90-day law: as long as we do not say we are discriminating we can discriminate. All that someone has to do is make up a primary reason why there cannot be for example a house with disabled access a halfway house for prisoners or a home for mental health clients. As long as that person makes up a new primary purpose for that covenant it is OK. It is just like the 90-day bill: as long as we do not say we are discriminating we can discriminate. That is a real disappointment. 
GARETH HUGHES (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. I am happy to take a call tonight on this infrastructure legislation which is mostly common sense. I will talk about a couple of loves of mine: rugby and the Rugby World Cup. In less than 500 days the Rugby World Cup kicks off and it will be the biggest event that New Zealand has ever hosted. In terms of infrastructure it is an opportunity lost. It was a good chance for us to take advantage of and leverage from our natural assets to build our prosperity. It is a big deal because the Rugby World Cup is part of the Government’s five infrastructure priorities. I will touch on the legislation a little bit talk about housing and finish off with the Rugby World Cup. 
The Greens voted for the Infrastructure Bill in its first and second readings because on the whole it was mostly common sense. We supported it and we are glad the Minister for Infrastructure has split that bill into four parts because as I said in my second reading speech one of those parts is not like the others and that is the part on housing affordability. 
We are glad that Part 4 has now become the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill and tonight we will be opposing it. Part 1 now the Utilities Access Bill creates a framework through a consistent national code for access by utility operators to transport corridors. Part 2 now the Infrastructure (Amendments Relating to Utilities Access) Bill harmonises the notice provisions across all the Acts and requires territorial local authorities to pay for any amenity improvements when utilities are moved or upgraded. Part 3 now the New Zealand Railways Corporation Amendment Bill is common sense. It cleans up the New Zealand Railways Corporation Act and harmonises its management provisions with those in other State-owned enterprise legislation. 
I will touch briefly on Part 4 the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill. We voted for the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act in the House originally and I am glad to say that we will be opposing its repeal tonight. The Greens support the retention of clauses prohibiting restrictive covenants that aim to exclude social housing. However we are disappointed that the Government has decided to water down these provisions and remove the prohibition of restrictive covenants that aim to exclude affordable housing. As Moana Mackey said it is all right to discriminate as long as we say we are not discriminating. 
Housing affordability is a major issue in New Zealand with close to one in three New Zealanders spending 30 percent or more of their disposable income on housing. A few years back in 2007 Russel Norman said in the House that a number of fundamental factors were driving the housing affordability crisis in this country amongst which were foreign buyers perverse tax laws poor planning for Auckland’s growth and lack of supply of cheaper housing to rent and buy. But it seems this Government’s main initiative in this area is slashing the State housing budget growing the State house waiting list and selling State houses. This Government has failed to take decisive action and introduce a capital gains tax—but not on the family home—to help make housing more affordable. This Government is repealing the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act but is not proposing anything to help with the housing affordability crisis. 
Members will be aware that as well as being concerned about housing affordability the Greens are also concerned about the appallingly cold and damp rental properties in New Zealand. Of the 1.5 million homes in New Zealand more than 460000 are rentals. These are generally the coldest and the least efficient of New Zealand’s housing stock. The rentals are cold old uninsulated damp and mouldy and they are expensive to rent. They are expensive to heat and more than one-quarter of Kiwis spend more than 10 percent of their weekly income on heating. At the moment tenants—be they students grandparents or the poor—are suffering the heating costs the housing costs and the costs in general of our substandard housing. When we look at one of our biggest natural assets our homes we see that we must act. We have to get them up to a minimum warm healthy standard. 
In my second reading speech on the Infrastructure Bill I looked at the folly of kicking to touch $10.7 billion of our nation’s wealth on the roads of national significance. But tonight I will look at another of the infrastructure priorities for this Government—the Rugby World Cup. Imagine what it will be like. An estimated 60000 to 85000 visitors are expected to fly to New Zealand for the Rugby World Cup. They will arrive at Auckland Airport and look for the trains but there will not be any. Visitors will have to pile on to Auckland’s notoriously crowded motorways in minivans or taxis and they will experience what the congestion is like. 
Hopping off in downtown Auckland they will find there is no inner-city rail loop and they will discover that all of our transport systems are heavily car-reliant with hardly any public transport in towns and none in the smaller centres. Visitors noticing all the roadworks going on will figure out pretty fast what this Government’s infrastructure priority is. We heard Labour and National members before comparing who spent more on roads and motorways. Visitors will find new roads and motorways are being built in Auckland and Wellington. They will ask about trains but they will find that one tiny train line still serves the whole of Auckland and it still in 2011 runs on dirty old diesel power. 
Visitors will arrive in New Zealand to find that we are undergoing the fastest rate of native vegetation loss since colonial times. They will find that our rivers are unswimmable that we are considering converting dirty old lignite coal to fertiliser thanks to rampant dairy expansion and that our levels of greenhouse gas emissions are more than 25 percent above our levels in 1990. Whether visitors stay in hotels motels or rented holiday homes they are likely to be confronted—as our renters are—with cold damp accommodation. They will find that houses are probably uninsulated there is no such thing as double glazing and there are only a few solar hot water heaters around. Visitors will find that the light bulbs are mostly the old-fashioned wasteful incandescent ones which the Government phased out the phase-out of. 
Across the country visitors will find that every day 780 people are missing a game of rugby or missing a day of school or work as a result of being sick from their housing or they will find that 50 people a day are sick in hospital as a result of our housing. Visitors will feel stunned and cheated by the marketing slogan when they find that their expectation of a clean green New Zealand is shattered. That will have big ramifications for our economy. 
The Rugby World Cup could show up New Zealand as an international environmental embarrassment to an increasingly environmentally conscious global public. However it could show New Zealanders the urgent need for a raft of cost-effective job-producing green infrastructural investments. Looking to the past we see that we could have risen to the challenge and electrified Auckland’s rail network in time for the Rugby World Cup. We could have started a central business district rail loop in Auckland and we could have started the process to get a rail line to the Auckland Airport. We could have invested in our transport infrastructure so that people could get around faster more comfortably and with less oil and with more options and more jobs for Kiwis. We could have marketed ourselves with 100 percent green electricity production and other low-carbon solutions not just hollow ambitions like the New Zealand Energy Strategy. We could have had a green stadium at Mount Eden which would have made a great Rugby World Cup legacy. 
With less than 500 days until the Rugby World Cup we have missed the boat. We have missed the chance to invest wisely in sustainable future-proof infrastructure. Looking to the future we need to make sure the ball is not dropped on our “clean green” brand. Overfishing dirty dairying GE animals and the damming of the last of the wild rivers all move New Zealand closer to the “clean green” brand sin bin. This is especially important considering that the brand is already on the agenda of the likes of  
The Economist 
 the  
New York Times 
 and the  
Guardian 
. The worst outcome on waking up the day after the Rugby World Cup final would be a mess to clean up and nothing to show for the party. Kia ora. 
Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) 
: 
 I am pleased to speak to the third reading of the infrastructure legislation which is a part of the Government’s initiative to improve infrastructure that is vital to our economic future and part of our commitment to deregulation and the removal of red tape. The legislation is omnibus in that it comprises four bills covering three areas: changes to utilities’ access arrangements to transport corridors changes to the New Zealand Railways Corporation Act 1981 and the repeal of the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act 2008 with the retention of an amended restrictive covenants provision relating to social housing. 
The Government is focused on growing the economy and creating jobs with better infrastructure such as roads broadband rail and electricity networks. Jobs and growth are essential if New Zealanders and New Zealand are to get ahead. The development of infrastructure is essential to lifting New Zealand’s productivity and to improving future economic growth. 
This legislation effects National’s commitment to building a stronger economy that will provide growth for all New Zealanders and to providing the social infrastructure that New Zealanders need. The Government is spending $6 billion per year on infrastructure projects. Specifically in the most recent Budget there is a $500 million upgrade of Auckland rail and $250 million put aside for the wider rail network and rolling stock. There is $200 million put aside for the roll-out of ultra-fast broadband and there is $10.7 billion over 10 years put aside for State highways. 
State highways account for 50 percent of road use in New Zealand; therefore an advanced State highway system is essential to maintaining effective linkages throughout the country. The money that the Government has committed reflects how important infrastructure is to the Government’s wider economic policy programme and to New Zealand’s longer-term economic prospects. The Government’s $10.7 billion boost to State highway funding has provided a secure funding pipeline that gives contractors the confidence to continue to invest in people and machinery and to complete projects more quickly. High-calibre infrastructure matters because it supports productivity and economic competitiveness. An important spin-off from this commitment is the fact that in the global recession effective investment in productive infrastructure has supported many thousands of jobs around the country. 
This infrastructure legislation removes unnecessary barriers to infrastructure development and improves the consistency of regulatory arrangements. The first two bills improve arrangements for managing access by utility operators to transport corridors—roads railways and motorways. The first bill also establishes a framework for a national code of practice to govern how utility operators and corridor managers will coordinate their activities. The third bill amends the New Zealand Railways Corporation Act 1981 to remove some of the statutory restrictions that negatively affect the running of the New Zealand Railways Corporation’s business. The fourth bill repeals the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act 2008 while keeping an amended prohibition of restrictive covenants affecting social housing. Local authorities were concerned that that Act was complex costly and overly prescriptive. Although it was intended to provide local authorities with the regulatory tools to address the problems of housing affordability it has been viewed as a potential impairment to increasing the housing stock supply. 
The infrastructure legislation is about removing the barriers to infrastructure development which this Government sees as critical if New Zealand is to move forward economically. I commend this legislation to the House. 
CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour) 
: 
 Firstly I will speak on the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill. Labour remains opposed to changes to affordable housing laws. The fifth Labour Government passed the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act which this bill seeks to repeal. The Act provided the power for councils to levy developer contributions to provide for social and affordable housing for New Zealanders—something there is a great need for. The Act also provided for councils to use a range of incentives to facilitate those contributions. Labour accepts that the economic bubble has burst and that to date those powers have not been widely used by councils but we also have to acknowledge that officials have made it very clear that there has not been enough time for the powers to be implemented by the authorities. With all that in mind we strongly believe that the Act could be useful in the future and that it is typical of this short-sighted Government that it is now seeking to repeal it. 
Housing affordability remains a major issue in New Zealand. Almost one in three New Zealanders is now spending at least 30 percent of their disposable income on housing and many of us would have seen instances where the amount was actually more than one-third. That is unsustainable. As legislators it is our role to ensure that housing is affordable and accessible for all New Zealanders and I think it is pertinent—as Maryan Street brought up earlier in this argument—that one of the fundamental things we need to ensure that New Zealanders have access to is shelter. That was the previous Labour Government’s goal when it introduced the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act. The objective was to promote the provision of affordable housing to low and moderate income households and to encourage mixed communities in order to close the inequality gap in New Zealand. Perhaps—although I doubt it—the Government does have good intentions with this bill. Maybe it thinks that the current Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act is not working. But if that were the case why did the Government not refer the legislation to a select committee to consider possible amendments? We have seen all too often with this Government that it does not allow legislation to go to a select committee so that it does not even consider the possibilities. That would have been responsible governance. It would have been the action of a Government that cared about the long-term well-being of all New Zealanders and that cared about affordable housing for the many not the few. But this has not happened. Instead the Government has decided to repeal the Act without such consideration meaning that the tools we have to address the issue of housing affordability in New Zealand are further limited. 
Although Labour is opposed to this legislation we support the retention of clauses prohibiting restrictive covenants that aim to exclude social housing. Nevertheless we are disappointed because these provisions have been significantly watered down by the Government. For example its decision to make these provisions apply only if such discrimination is the principal purpose of the covenant creates a huge loophole in the law. We also wish to see the retention of clauses prohibiting restrictive covenants that aim to exclude affordable housing. Unfortunately for those New Zealanders who are spending too much of their income on housing the Government has neglected to retain these provisions. When the Infrastructure Bill was before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee there were various submissions from concerned parties in relation to the repeal of the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act. I would like to focus on one in particular from the National Council of Women. The council expressed its concern that the section on restrictive covenants no longer prohibited those who aim to exclude affordable housing. It pointed out that this change would adversely affect New Zealand women and their families. The majority of single parents are predominantly women. In addition a large number of retired women live alone as widows. Women’s incomes are already only 88 percent of men’s. Affordable housing is already out of reach for many New Zealanders particularly women and repealing the Act will just make that situation worse. We consider this legislation to be a step back on the path to affordable housing for all New Zealanders and will not be supporting it. 
Secondly I would like to speak to the Utilities Access Bill. My colleagues have already covered Labour’s position on broadband accessibility today and during the first and second readings of the Infrastructure Bill. I would like to talk about broadband accessibility from my experience being based in the Waitakere electorate. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: I thought you were in New Plymouth. 
CARMEL SEPULONI 
: I say to Mr Henare that I want to talk today about Henderson Valley School. This school is situated at the beautiful foothills of the Waitakere Ranges about 5 kilometres from the centre of Henderson. The school has a broadband connection on an ADSL line with an average download speed of 0.1 megabits per second. In other words it has painfully slow Internet. This means that only about six Internet users can be online at any one time. It also means that documents cannot always download and online video clips will not play. It makes the teachers’ jobs harder it makes the administrators’ jobs harder and it seriously restricts the use of e-learning at the school. I have spoken at length to the principal of Henderson Valley School about this issue and her main concern is that the students at the school are being disadvantaged by poor broadband connectivity. Although the teachers at the school continue to do a wonderful job e-learning is a valuable part of a primary school education and no New Zealand kid should be missing out. The experience of Henderson Valley School highlights a flaw in the Government’s broadband policy. Although the Minister for Communications and Information Technology likes to talk up ultra-fast broadband he is not coming even close to delivering on it. We just keep hearing talk but we do not see any action. All Henderson Valley School needs is a functional broadband connection and honestly that should not be too much to ask. 
Efficient telecommunications infrastructure is very important for economic development. This is one thing that National and Labour can both agree on. Another important aspect in broadband policy is its use as an educational tool. The days when a school could survive without computers are long gone. To give our kids the best possible start in life they need access to computers and broadband in schools. The focus needs to be on equitable access on making sure that all kids no matter where they go to school have access to broadband. So although Labour will be supporting the Utilities Access Bill I would like the Government to keep the kids of Henderson Valley School in mind when using this legislation to advance its broadband policy. Thank you. 
Hon TAU HENARE (National) 
: 
 Forty-four smoke-free days ago—I am up to 44 now—I raced along the north-western motorway and thankfully— 
H V Ross Robertson 
: Raced? Are you a boy racer Tau? 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: No actually it was in the back of an ambulance. I thought to myself on the way to Auckland City Hospital that thankfully we had a great motorway network to get me from my house to the emergency ward in quick time. 
In some ways I am grateful that I live in Auckland because we have the infrastructure there. We are going ahead at a great speed thanks to the Hon Steven Joyce. Unfortunately in the rural areas we still have a long way to go. The identification of roads of national significance by the Minister Mr Joyce say one thing to me and it is that if we are in trouble if we are in need of New Zealand’s health system then we can get to where we need to go—namely a hospital. 
Carmel Sepuloni 
: Which hospital did you go to? 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: I went to Auckland City Hospital. 
Carmel Sepuloni 
: Not Waitakere? 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: No not Waitakere Hospital. 
Carmel Sepuloni 
: Oh what happened? 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: I can tell Ms Sepuloni that the reason is that we do not have a 24-hour emergency department at Waitakere—not yet. At the end of the year we will. Again that is thanks to a great Minister of Health and an excellent local member Paula Bennett. 
Carmel Sepuloni 
: But didn’t members on that side oppose that hospital in the first place? 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: No no we did not. We did not oppose it. In fact many of us congratulated the Hon Annette King when she went ahead and built that hospital. Now years later we will finally get a 24-hour emergency operation. I am thankful that we have been able to step into the breach and offer those in west Auckland a 24-hour— 
Carmel Sepuloni 
: It would be great if that side can achieve one thing. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: It is interesting that the member pipes up. She talked about Henderson Valley. I am surprised that she even knows where Waitakere is because she is not from there. She was going to run for election down country but I think that seat has been taken by a “little” person—Andrew Little. 
Carmel Sepuloni 
: I wonder whether that member will be selected to run for Te Atatu. Will he be selected for Te Atatu or is someone else going to come along? 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Now we are talking about Te Atatu. Let us talk about Te Atatu. Let us pull the pin right now and have a by-election. Let us see who is ready and willing even with my new hardware—even with my new hardware. 
Gareth Hughes from the Green Party did a disservice to New Zealand tonight. He talked about the Rugby World Cup and how our rivers are unswimmable. Well he should ask the kids out in Te Atatu whether they like to swim in the creek. Yes they do. They are always there on a Saturday and Sunday. One can still catch parore one can still catch—if one is lucky—snapper and one can still catch kahawai. He went on about light bulbs in hotels for goodness’ sake! He talked dirty about our country. He said that we had a railway line that did not go anywhere. 
For goodness’ sake this is not Hong Kong. This is not Hong Kong. What does Gareth Hughes expect? Does he expect a fast railway from the airport to the bottom of town or an underground system as good as Hong Kong’s? I think not. There is not enough of us in this country to pay for it. That is a fact. With what our Minister of Transport has done within his budget we have been able to move along with our infrastructure at a great speed of knots. 
Talking about infrastructure I say how good it is to travel along the second Mangere Bridge. What used to take at least an hour from Te Atatu peninsula to the airport can now take 35 to 40 minutes and that is in peak-hour traffic. I congratulate the Minister on bringing this legislation to the House and I say what a privilege it was to serve on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee that saw this legislation through. Thank you very much. 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 Although it is true that I rarely agree with a word that comes out of Tau Henare the member who has just sat down it is also true that I would not wish his recent health episode on him or on anybody else. But I marvel at the way in which he is able to take that life-threatening situation and weave it into any discussion of legislation that is currently before the House. There is admirable— 
Hon Christopher Finlayson 
: Let’s see if he can do it on the Legislation Bill. 
Hon MARYAN STREET 
: I am sure that Mr Henare will find some tangential relevance to it. However I will speak to the part of the legislation that we are looking at at the moment that repeals the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act. I will say four things about infrastructure because this legislation originally presented itself as part of the Infrastructure Bill. 
It seems to me that if this Government was even halfway towards being serious about investing in infrastructure housing would be a prime objective for it. Housing clearly provides shelter. It provides more than that; it provides security. Where people are able to buy their own home it provides a sense of homeownership which gives a feeling of investment in a community. It provides security for communities as well as for families on their own. The possibility of moving towards affordable housing is diminished by the repeal of the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act. 
I say this not simply because that Act was my legislation when I was the Minister of Housing but because it is one of a series of tools in the tool kit to help to address the spiralling cost of housing that we saw happen in the 2000s—particularly from 2002 to 2007. That escalation of prices which was brought about in large part by an escalation in the value of land caused an inflation in house prices that led people to borrow on unrealistic terms on the basis of an inflated asset. We now see more mortgagee sales than ever before. We are still seeing housing affordability being out of the grasp of young families. We see more and more young families who would aspire to be first home owners but who are unable to realise that dream—a dream that has been fundamental and quite central to the Kiwi dream—and we see with the repeal of the Act one of the tools in the tool kit for combating housing affordability problems being taken away. 
More than that if this Government was serious about infrastructure it would realise that investment in housing has multifaceted benefits for our families our communities and our society. Jobs could be created if the Government was serious about tackling the problem of housing affordability. 
Under the previous Labour Government we were keen to release Crown land in order to build affordable houses. If the Government retained the value of the land but people could afford to buy the house then that was one way of getting people into homeownership which was what we proposed in 2008. I also announced in 2008 the shared equity scheme which allowed houses on the private market to be subsidised by the Government over a period of time. If the Government put in some money young families in particular who were able to afford to make some contribution would then be able to buy out the Government’s share over time as their circumstances improved. All of these efforts together provided a web a tool box of things that could help New Zealand families to achieve their dream of homeownership. 
Not only would an investment in housing and in the building of houses create jobs but also it would create education and training opportunities through apprenticeships. That is another area that has been let slide by this Government. It is not focusing on job creation. It is not focusing on the kinds of skills that our young people need in order to equip themselves to participate in society—in order to equip themselves to get a job. 
I will refer to some of the submissions that were made on the legislation in its original form. The Human Rights Commission stated that affordable housing was a critical component of having an adequate standard of living and that it regretted that the Act was being repealed without anything else being put in place to replace it. Age Concern stated that it wanted to register its “disapproval of what appears to be a process of ‘repeal by stealth’ ”—burying the repeal of the Act inside an Infrastructure Bill so that the consequences for affordable housing could be disguised or glossed over by this Government. Age Concern went on to state: “The Affordable Housing Act has been in force for just a year.”—hardly enough time to determine whether it was working—and “high housing costs relative to income are often associated with severe financial difficulty and can leave households with insufficient income to meet other basic needs such as food clothing transport medical care and education.” That is Age Concern looking perhaps at grandchildren who want to strike out and own their first home. 
The National Council of Women stated that it was concerned that a “previously laudable section” on restrictive covenants had been “watered down” in the revisions to the Property Law Act in the bill. The Auckland Regional Public Health Service stated that it was “premature to repeal the Affordable Housing … Act until there is clear evidence that the housing market is delivering substantially increased numbers of affordable homes.” The New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services said the decision to repeal the existing legislation was “based on an internal review conducted by the Housing New Zealand Corporation that has not been made public.” It said that was an “insufficient basis for repealing the whole Act”. 
Those organisations are not left-wingers. They are not people on the margins of society but they are groups who work with people who are on the margins of society. These people form the conscience of our society and this Government is choosing in repealing this Act to ignore that conscience. New Zealanders particularly young families will be worse off because of that. Thank you. 
ALLAN PEACHEY (National—Tamaki) 
: 
 I am thankful for the opportunity to draw to a close the debate of what was formerly the Infrastructure Bill. It is very very important legislation and we need to get it passed through this House so that the country can get on with lifting its national prosperity. 
This is a debating chamber and I want to address some of the issues raised by Opposition members. I was somewhat impressed with the young Green member Gareth Hughes when he spoke. He may not be so impressed when he looks at his  
Hansard  
in the morning but it seems to me that his speech was a ringing indictment of 9 years of failed Labour Government and I give the Green member credit for recognising that. He did not express it quite that way but I am sure that in the years to come when people look at his  
Hansard 
 they will see it for exactly what it was—a criticism of 9 years of failed Labour Government. 
It is also interesting to hear three Labour list members talking about housing. We know that Labour has lost it on housing; the people of New Zealand gave up on Labour a long time ago. Working people no longer see Labour as being their natural party of representation or as having any sorts of answers at all to the issues that New Zealand faces. It was interesting to listen to list member Miss Sepuloni trying to identify with Paula Bennett country—the Henderson Valley and Waitakere. Well I have a message for that member: “Forget it.” The Henderson Valley like other areas of Waitakere is Paula Bennett territory and will remain Paula Bennett territory for one very simple reason: the people there have stopped listening to Labour just as they stopped listening to Labour in Glen Innes which is part of my constituency of Tamaki. They no longer listen because they recognise that Labour no longer has solutions to their problems and that will be demonstrated very very clearly at the general election next year when Miss Bennett will clearly establish maintain and develop the dominance that she has out there in the west. It is great credit to her and a great credit to this Government. 
The development of infrastructure is essential to New Zealand if we are to lift our national productivity and improve and expand on our future economic growth and long-term prosperity. When we listen to Labour members and Green members we hear that they clearly have absolutely no interest at all in the future prosperity of New Zealand. They choose instead to cling to a few old-fashioned ideas. They are in disarray in Opposition just as they were in disarray in Government. The four bills that now make up this infrastructure legislation are essential for the future of New Zealand. Let us stop the talk let us get down to business and let us get this legislation passed so that New Zealand can move forward. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: This debate has concluded. I understand that some parties wish to vote against the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill so it is my intention to put that as one question and we will take the other three bills as one question. 
Utilities Access Bill Infrastructure (Amendments Relating to Utilities Access) Bill and New Zealand Railways Corporation Amendment Bill read a third time. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill be now read a third time. 
Ayes 68 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 5; United Future 1. 
Noes 53 
New Zealand Labour 42; Green Party 9; Progressive 1. 
Bill read a third time. 
Legislation Bill 
First Reading 
Debate resumed from 29 July. 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 When I was interrupted on the last day by the adjournment I was talking about the need to take care with this Legislation Bill and the need for the MPs on the Regulations Review Committee who will study it whom I do not imagine will be swamped with submitters to pay careful attention to Part 3 which addresses subordinate legislation disallowable instruments and incorporation of material by reference. Those are things that do not normally come in the direction of MPs on a day-to-day basis except those MPs who have had the privilege of working on that committee. 
The Regulations Review Committee scrutinises regulations that are made by the executive of the Government—that is Cabinet—and it is the only forum by which executive regulations are scrutinised. Normally of course legislation which might be a Government measure would be introduced to the House; we would have a debate on it it would be sent to a select committee and then the public would be invited to contribute submissions on it. Those views would be taken into account by members of Parliament and the legislation would very often be amended accordingly. 
But regulations are passed by Cabinet. They are given to the Governor-General for in this case his assent; an Order in Council is made a council of Cabinet Ministers meets with the Governor-General and the regulations are signed off. Those regulations can appear to be trivial but can have an enormous impact. 
The thing that is important is the level of scrutiny because something can be done that affects the lives of New Zealanders but is not exposed to the scrutiny of Parliament. The Regulations Review Committee and the ability to disallow regulations which is to contravene to—there is only one word for it—disallow or to stop those regulations from taking effect is the only mechanism that is available to the House in order to address what some MP might consider to be an unfairness or some kind of wrong against the citizens of this country. 
This legislation is a fundamental part of our democratic structure and make-up. In that respect it should be attended to with great care and great caution by the members of the select committee considering it. Thank you. 
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green) 
: 
 The stated purpose of the Legislation Bill as I understand it is to modernise and improve the law relating to legislation. It provides greater powers to make available reprint and correct legislation. It will also modernise the legal framework for subordinate legislation and the Parliamentary Counsel Office. It will create a system for revising and updating old legislation to make it easier to change archaic language and to make it more accessible. 
The revision system will come under the direction of the Attorney-General. Specifically it will allow revision to clarify the purpose of legislation. It will allow new overviews purpose sanctions and new titles to be added; Acts to be divided and combined; updates to monetary amounts; and amendments to be made to other legislation affected by revision. The revised legislation has to be in the form of a bill and contain explanation of why it is being revised. The revision needs to be certified by the president of the Law Commission the Solicitor-General a retired High Court judge nominated by the Attorney-General and the Chief Parliamentary Counsel. Changes to how the law is implemented are allowed only where it is expressly provided for in the revision bill. 
The Legislation Bill implements the majority of the legislative recommendations made by the Law Commission in its review in this area. A key recommendation that it does not implement is a streamlined parliamentary process to approve technical changes to legislation. 
The aim of the bill which is to modernise and improve legislation is a laudable one. Ensuring that legislation is accessible to the public is a fundamental aspect of democracy. The majority of these changes are technical and should be supported. The problematic part of the bill is perhaps the revision programme that will allow significant changes to the law and how it is to be applied without parliamentary oversight. This programme will be under the direction of the Attorney-General and although the bills will need to be signed off by a semi-independent panel that is not the same as having parliamentary democratic oversight. 
The Greens support the bill’s referral to the Regulations Review Committee but we may support it no further unless there is a process set up that will allow parliamentary oversight of the revisions bills. We could think for example potentially of the Regulations Review Committee or some other dedicated body to undertake the task. But parliamentary oversight of some kind we believe is still needed and we look forward to a committee discussion on the subject. 
SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga) 
: 
 John Armstrong one top political columnist and journalist in this country if not the foremost said of the Legislation Bill in the  
Weekend 
Herald 
 that it was one for “parliamentary geeks” and “possibly the most boring piece of legislation to come before the House in a long while”. Sadly that is probably true. Nevertheless this is even if dull a very worthy and significant bill in the sense that it does go fundamentally to the rule of law—that is law that rules us rather than others. I say that because if we go behind that I mean that we are presumed to know what the law is. It is a fundamental precept of criminal law that we should know what the law is—that is we should be able to find it get hold of it read it and understand it. 
That is not always the case and in fact quite often it has not been the case. Laws are in dusty old tomes in the libraries of the Auckland District Law Society the Wellington District Law Society but perhaps not in the Tauranga District Law Society— 
Amy Adams 
: Do you have a district law society? 
SIMON BRIDGES 
: Well there are not many books there so it is not a particularly good library. 
This bill modernises and improves the law relating to the publication availability reprinting revision and official versions of legislation so whilst the bill may be as John Armstrong says one of the most boring pieces of legislation before the House it nevertheless is a significant one that furthers the rule of law in our country. 
RAYMOND HUO (Labour) 
: 
 Whenever we open a newspaper—the  
New Zealand Herald 
 the  
Dominion Post 
 or any other daily or weekly newspaper—to seek information from its classified advertisements the first thing we do is go to its index page or pages. Online media such as TradeMe publish such indexes on their home pages. Surprisingly there is no such official index to our laws despite there being over 1100 Acts. Without looking at those index pages we would be looking for a needle in a haystack. 
There are over 1100 Acts and some of them are 100 years old written in old-fashioned English and full of legal jargon. That is the first aspect the Legislation Bill is seeking to address. The second aspect is that many Acts have been amended and patched up over many years. To borrow Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s language they contain some “dead wood” that “should be removed.” 
This bill attempts to modernise and improve the law relating to the publication availability reprinting revision and official versions of legislation and to bring the law together in a single piece of legislation. The bill implements aspects of the Government’s response to recommendations made in the reports of the Law Commission entitled  
Presentation of New Zealand Statute Law 
 and  
Review of the Statutes Drafting and Compilation Act 1920 
. I take this opportunity to thank Sir Geoffrey Palmer and the Law Commission for presenting such comprehensive reports which contain recommendations to make statute law easier to access and to make measurable progress in updating the statute book. The reports were written in conjunction with the Parliamentary Counsel Office and I congratulate the office on such a great initiative. 
There are at least four issues with the statute books. The first one is that there are Acts on the statute books that are totally obsolete. Sir Geoffrey cited two examples: the District Railways Purchasing Act 1885 and the New Zealand Institute of Journalists Act 1895. As a lawyer turned MP I do not think it is shameful for me to admit that I have never heard of those two Acts. 
The second issue is to borrow Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s language again that New Zealand’s statute law is in a “chaotic state”. There is no obvious order or logic in our statute books. The law on one topic can be scattered over several Acts. There is a rule for instance that contracts to sell books for delivery in the future must be put in writing and must contain the total price in red print. That provision is hidden in the Mercantile Law Act 1908 which is the last place anyone would think to look for it. 
The third issue is that there have been changes in drafting styles over the years and therefore it is sometimes very difficult to understand legislation purely from a linguistic perspective. The old and the new style together can make matters even more untidy and inconsistent. The fourth issue is that with redundant and obsolete provisions remaining in force there are inconsistencies between Acts which may give rise to difficult questions of interpretation. 
The Parliamentary Counsel Office identified two options in its regulatory impact statement. Option one is to make legislative changes so the Parliamentary Counsel Office would be required to have a revision programme and statutory fast-tracking procedure for enacting revision bills. Under this option the Parliamentary Counsel Office would be duty-bound to undertake a triennial programme of statutes law revision the contents of which would be settled by Cabinet. The Parliamentary Counsel Office would thus have statutory powers to alter the wording order and placement of the provisions that are subject to revision. 
As the regulatory impact statement explains when the revision bill is drafted it is submitted to a committee comprising the Chief Parliamentary Counsel the Solicitor-General the President of the Law Commission and a retired judge. The committee’s job would be to certify the bill and question whether the committee was satisfied that it had changed only the presentation of the law not its effect. I look forward to submissions and deliberation on this particular point. In particular I will be interested to know more details about how the committee is meant to function and how its members will be appointed. There are risks associated with this option as correctly identified by the Parliamentary Counsel Office. However as proposed by the Law Commission it would be more consistent with current constitutional understandings to achieve the changes to parliamentary procedure by making amendments to the Standing Orders rather than by making legislative changes. This would ensure that the changes have unanimous or near unanimous support from all or most parliamentary parties. 
Under option two a general reference to undertaking revision could be included in the Parliamentary Counsel Office’s statutory functions. The risk of this option is that without any statutory obligation to carry out revision the role for the Parliamentary Counsel Office to play may be too passive. The preferred option is to have statutory provision for a revision programme and a duty for the Parliamentary Counsel Office to draft a revision and to submit it to a certifying committee. The parliamentary procedures for the passage of revision bills are to be set out in the Standing Orders instead. 
So Labour supports this bill going to the Regulations Review Committee. At the select committee we will look closely at the regulations disallowance changes proposed in the bill as explained by the Hon Maryan Street who spoke earlier. We have some concerns about the impact the changes will have on the work of the committee given that its mandate is determined by the definition of “regulation” contained in Standing Order 3(1) which will have to be changed as a result of this legislation. 
In respect of clause 25 I share the concerns expressed by the Hon David Parker who spoke on this bill last week. Further I note that the previous Leader of the House and Attorney-General the Hon Dr Michael Cullen strongly believed that the Parliamentary Counsel Office should report to the Leader of the House not to the Attorney-General. This bill continues the practice of the Parliamentary Counsel Office reporting to the Attorney-General but we might want to take the chance at the select committee to reconsider this practice. 
The Law Commission consulted widely during the preparation of these reports. I thank the stakeholders involved and thank the Parliamentary Counsel Office for its commitment and wonderful work in taking the bill to its current status. This bill contains a lot of sensible provisions but it will require careful consideration by Parliament because it deals with important constitutional matters. Thank you. 
PAUL QUINN (National) 
: 
 I was going to canvass a wide range of matters regarding the Legislation Bill but unfortunately the speech of the previous speaker Raymond Huo crept into my speaking time. I could have showered the House with little anecdotes about how exciting this legislation is. Instead because my time has now come I stand only to support this legislation in its first reading. Thank you. 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I am very happy to take a call on the Legislation Bill. I guess it is a little ironic that we are debating this bill at a time when the New Zealand public is crying out to hear what the National Government’s plan is for a step change in the New Zealand economy. We are in Parliament debating a bill that will modernise and improve the law relating to the publication availability reprinting revision and official versions of legislation and will bring this law together in a single Act. The most important thing that the National Government wants to bring before the House at this particular time is legislation to modernise other legislation. While New Zealanders are signing up for the dole and when this Government’s plan to build recovery is announced on little more than a blank piece of paper printed from its website it wants to bring the Legislation Bill before the House. 
It is also ironic that this bill is in the name of the Attorney-General Christopher Finlayson. He was quite critical of the previous Labour Government for bringing forward legislation that he did not think was particularly serious. One example is the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 2). He said: “while this useless Government spends an enormous amount of time on minor pieces of legislation contained in the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 2) it does absolutely nothing with very important legislation that has languished … on the Order Paper”. That was Chris Finlayson. I looked at the Order Paper. We are debating this bill in his name when there is legislation here on domestic violence but the Government has done nothing about that. There is foreshore and seabed legislation on the Order Paper but the Government has not done anything on that. In fact it has been put on hold according to the Order Paper. Plenty of other bills on here could be progressed but the Government thinks that modernising the laws around legislation is more important. 
John Key said in 2008 that Labour “is out of ideas it is out of steam it is and out of puff. New Zealanders should stop looking to Labour; they should look to National because only one party has bold ideas.” The Legislation Bill is National’s new bold idea! The plan on building the recovery is a blank piece of paper and the most detail we have had out of National today is its Legislation Bill which it is bringing before Parliament at the moment. That is what John Key regards as bold ideas that will turbocharge the New Zealand economy and result in a step change for New Zealand businesses to get more people into work. Apparently it will all be achieved through the Legislation Bill which is National’s most important priority in the House at this particular time. 
The Labour Party supports this bill in its first reading because we think that it is relatively sensible. I do not intend to go through all the details. I am very privileged to be on the Regulations Review Committee. I thank my colleague the senior Opposition whip for giving me that opportunity—or maybe I do not; I am still reserving judgment. I am looking forward to scrutinising this legislation. I know that the Attorney-General is very keen for me to finish my speech but I am so excited about this bill because of the huge impact it will have by turbocharging the New Zealand economy and creating that step change that everybody is looking for! We will catch up with Australia because of the measures contained in this bill! I am not surprised that the Attorney-General cannot wait to get this bill voted on and passed through this House because it is so central to the Government’s agenda. He must be very proud; it is a very proud day for him to see this legislation brought before the House. Thank you very much. 
Bill read a first time.  
Bill referred to the Regulations Review Committee. 
The House adjourned at 10 p.m.