Woods Megan: Address in ReplyText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Address in Reply[Sitting date: 22 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:136. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram):Why is that man not still leader of the National Party after an address like that from Parliament’s own master of irony? Clearly Bill English has spent the last few months hoping against hope that Labour would wipe out his record of 20.93 percent. Sorry to not oblige—you are still the biggest loser.It is an honour to be delivering my first contribution to this 51st Parliament. Like other speakers before me I would like to congratulate you Mr Deputy Speaker and your fellow Speakers on your appointment to your roles. And I would like to welcome new members to this House as other speakers before me have done as well. As someone who entered this House in the last intake it is good not to be the fresh intake now but to have entered the fourth form rather than the third form.Carmel Sepuloni: It’s the naughty year.Dr MEGAN WOODS: The naughty year I am told by my colleague Carmel Sepuloni. I would like to wish my colleagues well who in only a few short moments will give their maiden speeches to this House. That is a special occurrence and I welcome their families and their friends who have travelled to be with them as they do this today. I like every other member of this House feel it is a privilege to be here and to represent the people of Wigram and their views their aspirations and their dreams in this important place. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the voters of Wigram and to thank my remarkable team of volunteers and supporters who helped return me to this House. I will be for ever in their debt.So we have noticed that it is another term in Opposition and that we have got a job to do that we need to oppose and we need to propose. We need to show New Zealanders how New Zealand could be different under a Labour Government. We have a programme of work ahead of us to achieve that. But most important it is our job on the Opposition benches to hold the Government to account to not allow this Government to slide out from the problems that it has created. This is a Government that has to take responsibility for what it has put in place and the problems that are flowing from that.We will take the debate to the Government throughout the next 3 years on all fronts because this is our job and this is a Government that has already shown us that it needs to be held to account. We can see that the Prime Minister is already leading us to a seemingly predetermined outcome regarding the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. We can see that privatisation is back and badder than ever on National’s agenda. National has plans to sell off billions of dollars of State houses but was the electorate told about this before the election? No it certainly was not. On this side of the House this is an event that we fear.We know what we are going to see in our electorate offices as the housing shortage intensifies and people are not able to afford housing. I have piles of cases sitting in my electorate office of people who cannot afford a house to live in and that is simply not acceptable. We know that employment relations are going to be under attack from this Government. They are a priority for Government. Smoko breaks will be gone—the cup of tea taken away by two men who famously sat down over a cup of tea in the gearing-up to the last Parliament. We have a Government that is intent on curbing workers’ rights. We can see that the vulnerable in terms of housing and child poverty are something that has to be addressed. We are going to keep the Prime Minister to his word on this. We want to know how he is going to address the issue of poverty. From campaigning and doorknocking over the last 18 months or so I have seen too much poverty in my electorate. I have seen poverty and I have smelt poverty and we simply must find solutions to it.We will also be holding the Prime Minister and the Government to account on the words spoken yesterday around his continued commitment to my home city Christchurch where he gave a continuing commitment “to stand beside the people of Canterbury as good progress is made on the earthquake rebuild. The rebuild will continue to occupy a great deal of Government attention in this term of Parliament. Big strides will be made this term on anchor projects and horizontal infrastructure.” Roading is important. No one denies that anchor projects are vitally important. But I implore this Government to prioritise before anything else putting a roof over Cantabrians’ heads. A rebuilt city a just and fair city that people want to live in is going to make housing its citizens a key priority. We have made clear our desire to work with the Government to make sure that we can have the very best rebuilt city that we can have. We hope that moving the function of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority into the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet is not going to be just a bureaucratic shifting of deckchairs. We want to see real change on the ground for the people whom we represent.We will also be holding the Government to account as more abuses of power are unravelled over the coming months. As John Armstrong noted in his column this morning—in unstartling news to be fair—John Key made no mention of Dirty Politics in the Speech from the Throne yesterday. It was not one of the things he wanted to put up there in terms of the good news stories rolling out yesterday. This is a Government that is hoping that its recent electoral win will have pushed that out of the limelight but this cannot be the case. There are serious and important questions that must be addressed. We have the evidence. We have all seen the documents. We know what has happened. We do know that there are men and women of honour at higher levels of the Beehive and in the National Party who will be appalled at what they have seen coming out from some members of their administration and their Government. This is not the way they want to govern and it is not the way they want to wield power.No one in National has yet expressed the regret that you would expect over some of the disgraceful displays that we have seen in recent weeks. We heard in this House today during question time the Prime Minister splitting hairs over whether or not he was wearing his prime ministerial hat when he discussed with a blogger the mother of a West Coast person whom the blogger called feral. One of the things that causes me outrage about this is that I have not heard the outrage from National Party members and particularly Canterbury National Party members about the fact that Cantabrians were called scum who should be left there to rot.Carmel Sepuloni: Shame!Dr MEGAN WOODS: This is a shame. This is simply not the way we can do politics in this country. This is not what it is about. This is not about the fact that we have attacks on academic freedom that we have attacks on anyone who wants to stand up and challenge the Government. Anyone out there who wants to challenge the Government should be very very afraid. They have come for the West Coasters. They have come for Cantabrians. Who is next on the list?We on this side of the House are not going to stand by and watch that happen. We are elected to hold the Government to account and we will hold the Government to account on its abusive power. It is our job to stand up for the people whom we represent and people who want to challenge this Government. That is something we will not resile from in this Parliament. There is much for us to hold this Government to account for over this term. That is something that as a loyal Opposition we will execute to the best our abilities. We look forward to doing that throughout the course of this 51st Parliament.