Adams AmyHon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): It is an honour to take a call this afternoon in the general debate. I have often said in this House when I have taken calls that the measure by which any Government should be held to account is not the size of the cheque it can write. If that was the measure you would judge Governments very differently. The measure that we hold ourselves to is: are we making a difference for New Zealanders? That is the only measure that this side of the House came to this Parliament to address. How much money you can throw around does not indicate whether you are helping the country. The services that you deliver and the outcomes you are getting are what matters.That is why this Government very early in our term back in 2008 said: Actually we will hold ourselves to account. We are going to be very clear with New Zealand about what we think the Public Service can achieve and we are going to set very clear standards—not strategies not plans not consultative documents not shiny brochures not pledge cards but real measurable targets—about the things that New Zealanders care about." We have said to the country that this is what we are going to expect of ourselves this is what we will expect of the Public Service and this is what the country can measure us against in the time that we have been in Government. I want to take a moment to congratulate and reflect on the success of both of our education Ministers both Anne Tolley and more recently of course Hekia Parata whom I do want to pay tribute to in this House as one of the most diligent hard-working passionate and successful education Ministers.Did you know that as a result of the work we have done in education we now have 7000 students every year achieving NCEA who would not have previously achieved it? That is 7000 young New Zealanders every year who now have a chance to get on and build a career based on self-reliance. We are not purveyors of long-term dependence and misery. We want to build futures and giving 7000 more New Zealanders an education every year is doing exactly that.In the health space there are 50000 more elective surgeries every year under this Government. That is 50000 Kiwis every year getting new hips knees and joints replaced thanks to the work of this Government and all of this while we have turned around the books of the Government from an $18 billion deficit to now a $1.8 billion surplus. In terms of immunisations if you look at the young people of New Zealand we now have 93 percent of 8-month-old babies being fully immunised. What is really exciting is for a long time it was always kind of assumed that Māori and Pasifika rates would be far below the New Zealand European rates. No longer—actually the rates of immunisation of Māori and Pacific babies are at the same levels that they are for Pākehā New Zealanders at 93 percent. That is an all-time high in New Zealand.We have put 1125 more police staff into New Zealand towns into rural New Zealand into regional New Zealand and across New Zealand. They are going to be rolling out over the next 4 years so that 95 percent of us will live within 25 kilometres of a 24/7 police presence. You heard the Deputy Prime Minister today talk about the work we have been doing with the Ministry for Vulnerable Children and the Ministry of Social Development. We now have 57 percent fewer teenage mums on benefit. We are not saying that teenage mums cannot do a great job but we know it is much easier for them if they can have those children later in life. To give them the chance to get their education and to go ahead is a significant achievement. We heard also that the percentage of New Zealanders as a proportion of our population now on benefit is Ms Tolley I understand the lowest since 1997. That is incredible work of this Government.Now having achieved so many of those targets we have said: "OK we are going to refresh them." because we want to do more. The targets we have now set out are once more saying that as a Government we will absolutely manage the books carefully. We will absolutely respect every single dollar we take out of the pockets of hard-working New Zealanders and we will spend them as if they were our own focused only on the difference we can make for New Zealanders because changing lives is what it is about. That is what this Government is focused on and that is why today we have announced a $321 million package of investing earlier investing better to make even more difference in the lives of those New Zealanders who do have complex hard-to-reach needs who so often are not getting the sorts of outcomes we want for them. There are not many of them—it is a very small group—but we want them to succeed and we are a Government that will spend money to make a difference. That is what social investment is about. That is what you are seeing in the social investment budget and there is a lot more of it to come."