Coffey TamatiTAMATI COFFEY (Labour—Waiariki): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o tēnei Whare rau rangatira mā te whānau whānui o Aotearoa te hunga whakarongo. [Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker distinguished colleagues New Zealanders and people who are tuned in.]Tēnā koutou tēnā koutou kia ora anō tātou katoa. This is actually the first Budget that I've got the pleasure of being able to stand and talk to and I do that with enthusiasm and passion because I've been fortunate enough to be able to have come off two weeks of recess where I've been out there pounding the pavements talking to voters in the Waiariki about exactly what the Budget is. I can understand there's a wee bit of confusion out there especially because they hear one message from our side they hear another message from that side and somewhere in the middle there they get a little confused. So there's nothing like a little bit of kanohi ki te kanohi to actually iron out some of those things and to talk about the things that are making a big impact for Māori and this Budget delivers in that.They were pleased to see me because there's been a severe lack of engagement over the last say nine years out there especially with regards to how we—the Government—are spending their taxpayer dollars. So I was pleased to get out there and talk about the fact that we as the Government are getting back to basics—real basics. We're talking about housing we're talking about jobs we're talking about education and we're talking about health. Because of that severe lack of investment in the last nine years we have come in on a very strong platform. On the campaign trail people were looking for us to actually deliver on outcomes for Māori and that's exactly what we've done.You see the previous Government oversaw a housing and homelessness crisis. Interestingly enough they are not prepared to admit that it was a crisis. They're more likely to refer to it as a wee bit of growing pains and a bit of a challenge that we needed to sort out. They thought the answer to the problem was that they would sell off our State houses. They thought that was a really good idea. They thought they would turn our economy from one where we looked after each other to one where we just looked after the few at the top.So because of all of those things what we did oversee was thousands of tamariki both Māori and Pākehā living in unacceptable levels of poverty. For that reason the public gave their votes to an alternative and that is us. That is the Government of today. That is us: the Labour Party with our coalition partner New Zealand First and with our confidence and supply partners the Green Party of Aotearoa. We campaigned on a new direction for New Zealanders a new direction for Māori and a new direction for the leadership of New Zealand too of which our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is doing a stunning job. Although she's off to do a few things at the moment—and you know we've all been on that journey too—she's made it very clear that she wants this to be a Government that brings back manaakitanga and kaitiakitanga and that's exactly what this Budget does.So let's break it down. These are the things that I went out there and I talked about over the last couple of weeks at the rugby clubs at the marae—talking to our whānau about what we're doing. There is $2 billion worth of investment over four years for the future of Māori. This year's Budget will deliver for our people and as I've said over the last few weeks this is really resonating with our voters out there. This Budget continues to improve the lives of our whānau. It continues to strengthen our communities around Aotearoa while rebuilding our core public services—things like health things like education—and all to provide a better future for our whānau and for our tamariki. We have allocated $58.5 million for Māori-specific funding with whānau development at the core which is going to improve outcomes for Māori.We're going to provide a boost to Māori whānau incomes with $1.2 billion allocated in the Families Package. Now when I went out there and I talked about the Families Package you'd be surprised just how many people had forgotten about it. It was released in December. We are paying for it this year in the Budget but it was worthy of slowing it down and really talking to our whānau out there about what exactly the Families Package was. So I got great pleasure in sharing with them that 384000 families were going to be lifted out of poverty with a hand up and a handout of $75 a week on average.We're talking about extending paid parental leave—at the moment 22 weeks this July and 26 weeks that'll be lifted to by July 2020. The Best Start payments as well were also a lift for all of those families out there especially grandparents who knew just how much the struggle was for their children to be able to bring kids up in this world. While house prices have gone through the roof wages haven't been keeping up so there's been a lot of concern about the impact of that on families. So you can imagine grandparents were stoked to be able to hear that this Government was actually going to be helping out our new families. They say that if you take care of baby in the first 1000 days of life you're setting that baby up for a future—a strong future—and that's exactly what that Best Start payment is geared towards.I would love to slow down just for a moment and talk about the winter energy payment because you would be surprised just how many people didn't know about it. When I went out there and I spoke about it they had no idea so I got great pleasure in standing there and talking to them about the winter energy payment which is $450 over the winter to help out with the cost of heating your house. Koroua kuia pakeke were all very excited about this because as we all know we've heard stories over the years about some of our elder members of society not actually wanting to turn the heater on because it's a little bit too expensive. So what do they do? They sit in their very cold houses they put on a jacket they go and put on a scarf maybe even a beanie as well just to try and keep themselves warm and to save on the cost of the heating. Well I got great pleasure in standing there and telling some of the older members of our society of our community that actually this year the Government is going to help them out with a winter energy payment so they can be warm.More than $700 million in funding in this Budget will have a high impact on Māori households around the country. So we are all about rebuilding core public services. We are all about manaakitanga and bringing that back to our people. That $2 billion of investment is on top of the $42 billion in spending over the next five years to rebuild and properly fund our infrastructure and our public services. Now to do that we've got to keep our country strong. We've got to be ready for the future challenges that our tamariki our mokopuna are going to face and that's very important—so many things that we could rave about in this Budget.I also got the pleasure of having meetings back home in Rotorua to talk to whānau there about what we're doing in terms of housing those people that don't have any houses. Our homelessness crisis is real. Rotorua boasts the statistic sadly of the second-highest rate of homelessness in the whole of New Zealand. It's not something that our people are very proud of back home so I got great pleasure in talking about the expansion of the Housing First policy and what that's going to do to be able to enable our people that have no houses—that have for whatever reason found themselves without a house over this very cold winter. We're going to start finding some solutions for them. We're going to build long-term solutions and not just short-term band-aid solutions to the homelessness problem. We've actually got the goal of ending homelessness—what an admirable goal that is. How about that? We're aiming to end homelessness and we're trying to do that through our Housing First programme so I was stoked to be able to go back and tell the community that we have a goal and it is to end homelessness.I was also quite happy to go back home and to talk about the Crown-Māori relations portfolio which has reared its head in this Budget for the first time and I'm proud of that. I've been to a couple of meetings—one in Rotorua one in Taupō—about the Crown-Māori relationship and lots of people are highly engaged in this particular portfolio looking for opportunities trying to understand what our steer is when it comes to Crown-Māori relations. There are a few themes that kept coming through quite strongly one being the relationship that Māori that iwi have with their local council. That was something that kept coming up again and again and again. I look forward actually to our Minister for Crown/Māori Relations feeding back to us giving us the report back on what exactly the feedback has been around the country and what we can do going forward especially as a Government.One more thing that I'd like to tick off just before I wrap up is the excitement that people had when I told them that this Government was going to raise the minimum wage—that we actually have taken it up to $16.50 an hour which is going to make 28000 Māori better off. We're looking to increase that even more over the coming years and I think that that is a signal that actually we're doing a good job. We're taking care of our people. We are indeed bringing manaakitanga back to our Government.