Mackey Moana: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Mackey Moana: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:660;Page:8974] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I cannot believe we have had so many 10-minute speeches from members of the Government. They clearly do not understand what the plan is either because not a single one of them has articulated it in his or her speech. To the member Cam Calder who spoke recently I would just say put down the thesaurus back away from the thesaurus. Can I say to National members that I think they need to stage an intervention get Parliamentary Service to remove the thesaurus function from Microsoft Word and I think that his speeches will be all the better for it. I will not say anything mean about Shane Ardern because I actually respect that member. It is a shame he is undervalued in his own caucus. He should be doing a lot more. He knows a lot more about agriculture than David Carter does and it is a real shame he is not given the respect he deserves by his own colleagues in his own caucus. 
All I want to say is where is the plan and I want the next National speaker to tell us what the plan is. From listening to the National members apparently the only problem we have in New Zealand is that we do not charge people enough for food. The biggest problem we have is we do not charge people enough for food. We do not charge people enough for services. We do not charge them enough for rates. We do not charge them enough for clothes for their children. The only answer this Government has to what is going on in our economy is to put up GST: to increase GST by 20 percent. It is a 20 percent increase in GST. I tell National members to wake up because they may still be partying on the top floor but people are suffering in this country. 
I was out at the protest earlier this afternoon for the cleaners who clean this building. How many National MPs bothered to turn up to support the cleaners who clean the Beehive and who clean the Parliament Buildings? Not a single one turned up. [ 
Interruption 
] They all have excuses why they could not be there. We met the woman who cleans John Key’s office. Cleaners get $12.55 an hour. Bill English thinks that the person who cleans his house should get $20 an hour. I say that for the cleaners who clean this place we should lead by example and they should not be getting $12.55 an hour. National MPs if they disagree with that should have had the guts to turn up and to tell those workers why they do not believe that the workers should be paid more than that for cleaning these parliamentary buildings. The Labour members and the Green Party members who were out there support those workers and we are proud to do so. 
It was interesting that the Prime Minister John Key said today that last year there had been a small contraction in jobs and that we should not be concerned because we are still below the OECD average when it comes to unemployment. Well that is pretty cold comfort to all those New Zealanders who lost their jobs last year who are continuing to lose their jobs this year—168000 New Zealanders—because our Government has no plan. In Australia across the Tasman they put billions and billions of dollars into their economic stimulus package to deal with the recession and guess what has happened to their unemployment? It has stopped rising and now it is going down. The National Government just thinks that is a coincidence and that Australia is just lucky maybe that that is the case. 
The fact is our Government has absolutely no plan for jobs and that has been reiterated by every single National MP who stood up and has been unable to say what the Government is doing in this area. Do members know what Tim Macindoe said yesterday? He said we just need to instil a work ethic. Well maybe Tim Macindoe should have gone and talked to those 3500 New Zealanders who queued for 150 supermarket jobs if he thinks that Kiwis do not have a work ethic and they do not want to work. The fact is the jobs are not there and our Government does not care. 
Our Government’s answer to people who do not have jobs—and Nicky Wagner can sneer at me because she does not like what I am saying and she should not like it because it is terrible and she should be ashamed—is that the Government will whack an increase in GST on top of the people for whom they are doing nothing to get them into work. That is National’s answer and if that is not what it is doing and if it wants to let us in on this great secret plan it has where apparently it will be revenue neutral so it will keep the same amount of revenue but everyone will be a winner—some people will pay less tax no one will pay more tax but everyone is going to win—we would be very interested. 
Nicky Wagner says yes that is the plan. Well I think that what has happened is that National wants to use national standards to dumb down numeracy in this country so that people will buy that economic argument. We can talk about national standards and I really want to mention this because every single National MP who has stood up and defended those standards has said that the schools in his or her electorate currently do not provide information to parents on how well their kids are doing. Katrina Shanks said it outright. Katrina Shanks said that the school that her kids go to does not do a good job in telling her how her kids are doing. 
Nikki Kaye said that none of the schools in Auckland Central—and I cannot wait for Jacinda Ardern to go around and visit those schools and tell them that she said this—do a good enough job at telling parents how their kids are doing. They are all doing a lousy job. That is what National says—they are all doing a lousy job. We look forward to going around to all our schools and making it clear that National MPs think their schools are doing a lousy job. That is what they have been saying. 
I will talk about housing. I am so pleased the Minister of Housing is in the House for my speech. I know he got pre-warning. He came down because he is looking for some more policy ideas. He has run out and he is hoping I might give him some ideas in my speech. I will not do that because I think he needs to learn to stand on his own two feet. He has run out of Labour legislation to pass now. He will have to do a little bit of thinking. Overall I think it will be character building for Mr Heatley. I am all about being here to support him so I am not going to give him some more Labour ideas to pass into National policy. 
I thought it was very interesting that the Prime Minister specifically mentioned the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill in his speech. I started to think that the only reason the Government has been putting off passing this legislation is so that they can still talk about the fact that it is doing something. There is no reason why that legislation should not have been passed before Christmas. It is Labour legislation. We support it. Minister Heatley took it on. He made it a little bit worse but it is still better than the status quo. The fact is that over Christmas we heard stories of boarding-house tenants who were asked to move out during the sevens rugby event in Wellington. They did not have the protection of the residential tenancy law. If Minister Heatley had had that legislation reported back from a select committee in September and passed it before Christmas that could not have happened. I think this Minister needs to explain where that bill has gone why he has not passed it and why he is refusing to give vulnerable boarding-house tenants the full protection of the law. What has Minister Heatley done in his first 15 months in Government? He has sold one State house to a tenant he created an Options and Advice Service which has done nothing except keep people off a waiting list— 
Hon Phil Heatley 
: Pretty much. That’s it pretty much. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Yes that is right. They do not get a needs assessment I say to the Minister. They get kicked out of the Housing New Zealand office and they end up in emergency accommodation. I am pleased the Minister has admitted that all this has done is keep people off the waiting list so that he can claim that the waiting lists have not increased. The fact is if every person had a needs-assessment he or she could have Options and Advice Service for those who are C and D category who are unlikely to get a house in the short term. But we had people who would have been A and B category turning up in emergency accommodation because they had been turned away by the Government’s Options and Advice Service from a State house that they would have qualified for. The Minister should know this and the fact that he is laughing is a little bit of a worry actually because these are our most vulnerable families whom the Minister does not seem to care about. What is very telling is that the Minister barely talked about housing in his speech. 
Hon Phil Heatley 
: I seek leave to table a statement in the House from the Hon Ruth Dyson that says that the C and D applicants will never be housed under a Labour Government. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I say to the member that the convention in this House is that when members wish to seek leave it is done at the end of a member’s speech. To do it during a member’s speech is disorderly and interrupts the flow of the member’s speech. That is not a Standing Order; it is just the colour of this House. I ask the member to respect that. I am not going to take the leave at this point. If the member wants to move it at the end of this member’s speech I will certainly entertain it at that point. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Well he has just upped his work rate for the year anyway with that point of order. I am pleased we were able to help out in that respect. Minister Heatley in his speech—after we heckled him enough so that he actually started talking about housing and vaguely kind of mentioned it in passing—said that he wants to achieve even more this year than he did last year. I say to the Minister that I think it would be physically impossible for him to do less this year than he did last year. That is a very very low bar to reach. 
I will briefly mention also research science and technology because this is an area that obviously I am very passionate about as well. I think this Government has a gall to stand up in this House and claim that it cares about science and it cares about innovation after it slashed the Budget last year. It slashed the Budget last year for science and for research and development. National members may be johnny-come-latelys to this whole science and innovation thing but it will take more than words to have a step change in this country. I do not believe that this Government has what it takes in order to achieve that. 
I will focus on the research and design tax credits because it is a really important point. Most other developed countries OECD countries have research and design tax credits so even if those members do not like them it makes sense to have them when everyone else has them. Otherwise we are automatically behind. We have lost research and development capacity overseas since the National Government cancelled the research and development tax credits last year. Why did it cancel them? Bill English said it was corporate welfare. But apparently it is not corporate welfare to subsidise jobs at McDonald’s which this Government is doing. Todd McClay said he knew that they were not being used for the purpose for which they were intended. How he knew that when they were applied for at the end of the tax year—and they were cancelled well before people had even put applications in—is beyond me.