Kaye Nikki: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKaye Nikki: General Debate[Sitting date: 11 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10981. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon NIKKI KAYE (Minister for ACC): It is time that the Labour Party members apologised for what they have said and done regarding Chinese Kiwis and house buying in Auckland. I attended a meeting at the time when Phil Twyford made the comments that he did—when he racially profiled in Auckland. I attended a meeting of a whole lot of Chinese Kiwis. They were hurt and they were upset and they had every right to be hurt and upset. What I know in politics is that in respect of the people who lead New Zealand and get support it is when you actually tackle the real issues when you actually understand that they are sometimes more complicated and when you are actually truthful about what is really going on.So what happened? What we heard from Phil Twyford was that 39.5 percent of the houses being purchased were being purchased by people with foreign Chinese-sounding surnames. The reality—and we spent a lot of time working through an information regime to have a look at this—is that actually we may be dealing with possibly 2 to 3 percent. Even if you believe that data could be better it is 2 to 3 percent. It is time Phil Twyford stood up in this House and said to a whole lot of people who were offended that actually he was wrong. He was wrong and there are much more pressing issues in terms of housing for New Zealanders around supply around the issues of having special housing areas and around Resource Management Act reform which that side of the House is not supporting and which will make a greater difference to New Zealand than smearing a whole lot of Kiwis some of whom have lived here all their lives with the kind of half-baked information that Mr Twyford put up—another group of people who need an apology from Labour.We have heard a lot about tax and we have heard a lot about the Panama Papers. The reality is—again you learn in politics—that when people go on conspiracy hunts when they do not have proper data and when they have not thought through what they are actually looking at innocent people can be hurt. We have an inquiry into whether there are genuine things that we can do to improve our tax system and that is absolutely the right thing to be doing so any question by the Opposition that we are not doing something is absolutely false and not true. But when you take hacked information and you start Googling through it and other people’s names are then put on national television the reality is I think that New Zealanders can see what it is. They can actually see that the people who should be running the country are the people who are focused on big issues and initiatives.Yes there may be genuine issues around some of the tax stuff but actually again using half-baked data like with the Chinese surnames does not command the confidence of a country that you can run the country. What that is about is the Opposition members trying to get air time—trying to be able to get enough time on the national news to be able to raise their profile. But what they are actually doing is destroying their credibility because they are not being rational in terms of policy and they are not recognising that there are people who are collateral damage—whether it is Chinese Kiwis or whether it is other innocent Kiwis who have been brought through with this Panama situation.The next area that I want to tackle is what our Government has been doing this week. What was our Government doing last week? It has been focused on some of our most vulnerable Kiwis. People can see it. When I was doorknocking the other week what did people ask me about? They did not ask once—not one person asked me—about Chinese foreign surnames in Auckland or about the tax issues. What they asked me about were things like emergency housing. What they asked me about was what we are doing in terms of some of our most vulnerable and medicines.The reality is that this week has been a great week for the Government because we have announced real packages of support for those people. There is $39 million in terms of Pharmac and 3000 more emergency places in terms of housing. We have announced 1250 more teacher-aide support hours. That means that we are now up to 550000 more hours of teacher-aide support time. These are the issues that matter. I do believe it is time that the Labour Party members stepped up to the plate started to focus on policy stopped dragging people through the mud and apologised particularly to those Chinese Kiwis who were offended by Phil Twyford’s remarks.