Woodhouse Michael: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoodhouse Michael: General Debate[Sitting date: 01 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:2803. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister of Immigration): Today is a very very good day for New Zealand families. There is an increase in the minimum wage the sixth in a row under this Government even in straitened times and this now means that those who are on the minimum wage have $5700 a year more in their income. Paid parental leave now goes up and I will be introducing measures to broaden and deepen the well of people who will benefit from paid parental leave from next year. There have been increases in superannuation and veterans’ support payments as announced by the Minister for Social Development one of many many more benefits still to come. The increase in the payment for GP visits for those under 13 will be coming in this year along with free breakfasts in schools and warmer drier homes. This Government cares for New Zealand families.But I want to touch briefly on the crime statistics that came out this morning. For the fifth year in a row data released today shows that recorded crime has dropped again. If we had continued on the trajectory we were on in 2009 there would have been 100000 more crimes. That is a reduction of 100000 victims and their families compared with where we were heading. There has been a 7.8 percent drop in Canterbury and a 9.4 percent drop in Waikato. There are concerning trends around sexual and family violence and it is very hard to discern between an increase in the incidence of reporting and an increase in the incidence of crime. And this is a very poignant backdrop to acknowledging that there are challenges in many ways in respect of that but I want to acknowledge the New Zealand Police for further reductions in reported crime.I want to touch today on the spirit of Anzac. The Cricket World Cup has come and gone. The din has died down. The Northland by-election is over and to the victor the spoils. We are going to go into an adjournment. During that adjournment we are going to have one of this country’s most poignant commemorations—the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings on 25 April 1915. It was my great honour as the then Minister of Veterans’ Affairs in 2014 to attend the 99th anniversary of Anzac Day at Gallipoli. It was a remarkable experience. The Dawn Service which commenced at around 5 a.m. was against the backdrop of what was exactly the weather on that day 99 years earlier. It was calm. It was sombre. It was completely incongruous to the sort of mayhem that must have faced New Zealand and Australian soldiers as they approached what is now known as Anzac Cove. The incongruous nature is due to the fact that we have been brought up with an image of Anzac Day and the Gallipoli campaign that is from grainy black and white and sepia photographs of a barren land and emaciated and injured and unwell soldiers dug into the side of mountains. But those who have been to Ҫanakkale in the Gallipoli Peninsula will know it is a beautiful place a peaceful place a place where thousands of Australians and New Zealanders lie buried and are looked after and looked over by the Turks who are now our friends—once our enemy.We are going to go into a commemoration that does not glorify war and indeed we should not but it does acknowledge the tremendous sacrifice that thousands of young men and women who went and never came home made for this country. I think we need to stop and reflect on that and on the theatres of war that are resplendent around this Chamber and just remember the heavy burden that we have to bear when we make decisions to send our young into harm’s way. Those challenges remain—Ron Mark: And sometimes you shouldn’t. Sometimes you should say no.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: That is right. Let us just remind ourselves that the same number of soldiers who will be deployed in Iraq to support freedom and to control a heinous threat to New Zealanders here and abroad died every 3 days on the Gallipoli Peninsula. I think we need to reflect on that and pay an appropriate tribute. I really look forward to the centenary commemorations.Debate interrupted.