Mooney JosephJOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise for my first speech in this new Parliament. Madam Speaker may I congratulate you on your elevation to a well-deserved role and also if I may take the liberty of congratulating you for winning the great electorate of the West Coast-Tasman the only general electorate in the country bigger than my own great electorate of Southland. Congratulations Madam Speaker. May I take this opportunity to congratulate every member of this House regardless of your political persuasion. The people of New Zealand have put you here to be a voice for them and it's a real sacred honour that we have. As others have said before me we look around and we see the memory of those who have gone before us and sometimes have made the ultimate sacrifice so we can have this Chamber we can have this democracy and we can have these discussions and these debates. We need to contest robustly with one another but there's also a collegial respect I think that we also develop in this place and so I look forward to working with all of you to ultimately work towards a better New Zealand which is what we are all here about.This is a new Government. New Zealand has chosen a change of direction a change of policy and we are here to deliver. This is a Government that is focused on action it is focused on results it is focused on delivery and we will deliver on what we have promised. I congratulate the new Prime Minister Christopher Luxon the Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and New Zealand First and David Seymour the leader of the ACT Party and the ACT Party members of Parliament who have all come together with differing ideologies and different promises we've made to our electorates. We've come to a comprehensive agreement—the first one of its kind in New Zealand's history—to deliver a comprehensive policy agenda for the people of New Zealand and I'm very excited to see this done because this country does have some major challenges that we need solved. I spent three years in the Opposition before this and I saw a Government that had a lot of I think well-intended—I think there was a lot of good intentions in terms of many of the things they were trying to do and there's the different lenses that we bring to the roles that we have in this place. But what I didn't see in many cases was delivery on those results and that is something that we actually have to get for New Zealand. So I think in many cases we agree on the ultimate outcome that we're trying to seek for the people of New Zealand but we have different ways of doing that. Now I speak for myself. I am someone who experienced severe poverty in the mid-1980s in New Zealand when we had high inflation. I know how much high inflation hurts poor people; I've experienced it myself. We need to solve that and we have made a commitment that we will refocus the Reserve Bank. We will narrow its focus to focus on inflation which is the real killer for the household budgets of people across New Zealand and it puts people into poverty. It puts children into poverty—children who do not have food on their table. Now it's absolutely critical that we solve it. We need to focus on small businesses and again inflation crushes small businesses more than most. The fair pay agreements is a well-intentioned idea but the reality is that the majority—97 percent in fact—of firms in New Zealand are small businesses. They are businesses that have 20 or less employees and this is what our country is made up of. There are about 546000 small businesses in this country and this well-intentioned but misguided aim to try and lift up the minimum wage—and I've talked to many many small businesses—makes it actually impossible for many of them to hire new young people to give them a chance. It puts them out of business in some cases because their margins are so small and if one has not been in business one does not know how tough it is to run a small business. I have built and run small businesses and I know how tough it is. Those margins are small. Small-business owners work long days and long nights they absolutely believe in their staff they sweat bullets for their staff and they mean everything. The business doesn't work for them; it's actually a family. These small businesses are families. They care deeply about them and so we want them to succeed. We're going to be focused on delivering an economy where they can succeed and we're going to celebrate aspiration—aspiration where people can set up their own business where they can provide employment. Those people can have good jobs and they can put food on the table for their children and that's one of the things that drew me to this place and drew me to being a member of the National Party because I know from my childhood that the Government doesn't solve all things for poor people—it really doesn't. What you need is for people to have a chance. They need to have a good education. They need to have a chance to get a good job or to build their own business and provide jobs for people to put food on the table so their kids can have that opportunity. The kids can see an opportunity for themselves to build that mana in their own family and in their own selves and this is something that our Government will be very relentlessly focused on. Now if I touch on education we have a relentless focus on actually making sure our kids can read and write and do science well. Unfortunately New Zealand has been going backwards. In fact the most recent PISA tests—the Programme for International Student Assessment—show that we have dropped back. In fact in reading and science our 15-year-olds are now a year behind where they were when testing first started. It takes a year longer for them to get up to standard. They're at the 14-year-old standard now our 15-year-olds so they're a year behind. In mathematics they're a year and a half behind where they were when testing first started. So this is actually a blight on our country. It's a blight on the opportunities for our young people to get ahead. It's a blight on the chance for them to build that opportunity for themselves and for those who follow them. It's absolutely critical and I hear in terms of our aspiration for Māori rangatahi—the biggest opportunity for so many of our young people our rangatahi is education. Again I speak for myself. I am someone who failed high school. I went out and I did every tough rough job you can talk about. I eventually made my way to university and I eventually got an honours degree in law and it's taken me to this place. I know how important education can be. I know the doors it can unlock. This is something we want to unlock for all of our people in New Zealand and that's why we're going to have an absolutely relentless focus on education in this House.When I hear the concerns expressed about Māori and the approach this Government is taking now let me just say that I know the Opposition has a role to take to criticise the Government to raise issues and to try and give themselves a chance to win back again but let's be responsible about the terminology we use here because this is a Government that is focused deeply on what it's going to deliver for Māori. Māori want jobs they want education for their children they want healthcare for their young people and for all of their whānau and they want homes for all of their people. These are the things that we need. This is what we want and we celebrate te reo Māori. Look let's just keep in mind that there have been some people who've felt left behind in the last three years and who have felt that things have been—Rachel Boyack: Why?JOSEPH MOONEY: Why? Co-governance. The previous Government without a mandate introduced co-governance provisions without discussing it with New Zealand. Now there's also: what does co-governance mean? What does co-governance mean? Does it mean that some will govern others without being electorally accountable for them? There are so many questions that hang in the air that need to be answered and that need to be discussed and we need to have a rational considered debate about this and discussion about this. Let's not shout at each other; let's have a kōrero with each other like we have on the marae. Let's discuss it with each other and let's be sensible and careful because the words we say reverberate across the nation and it affects the 5.2 million people who call this great country home. We're all passionate about this place. There's only a few of us who live here far from the rest of the world. We need to take care of each other. We need to belong together differently be proud of our differences and be proud that we have different lenses and points of view but let's work with each other. Let's have a respectful discussion with each other and let's not create fear where fear does not need to be had in the debates that we have. So let's have those careful discussions.I heard some discussion about climate change. I'm very pleased to say that my great colleague from the 2020 intake the Hon Simon Watts is our great Minister of Climate Change. As I say I heard criticism about oil and gas. Let's just keep this in perspective. We jumped a generation previously from coal in many cases straight to trying to find renewables which we didn't actually have and as a result we started importing record amounts of coal. Gas is used as a transition fuel across the world to transition away from coal which has a high-emissions profile. So we're actually about doing things sensibly. Again we're recognising that we need our energy in this country to look after our people to make sure that our elderly can turn on the heater for example and have their home warmed in the depths of winter. We're not the warmest country in most of the land but we need to do it in a sensible staged way that actually makes sense in our economy. So with that I'm pleased to be part of the Government that is going to deliver for New Zealanders and they've got an exciting three years ahead.