Brownlee GerryHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): Let me start by first acknowledging those who've got difficulties with their homes with their farms and with their broader communities as a result of Cyclone Gabrielle. I was up in that part of the country last week and I know that it is a very difficult time for a lot of people. It is also very challenging to try and get those people back into some degree of normality in their lives. From this side of the House we will be watching that for some time to come and we will offer whatever assistance we can where it's reasonable.But I want to today rise in support of the amendment to the motion moved by Christopher Luxon. I do though want to start by congratulating the Prime Minister Chris Hipkins on his new elevation wish best wishes to those Ministers who are now departing from the ministries and congratulations to the new Ministers who have come in.It raises the interesting point made by so many speakers from the other side of the House about the newness of this regime that has now taken over as Government. I see my friend over there: the Hon Rino Tirikatene who was yesterday extremely excited in talking about his portfolios as if trade was some kind of a new thing that's only just been discovered by him and talking about how wonderful the Government is—the new Government"—"the new Government" apparently is going to take New Zealand forward. Well I think the only thing that's new about this regime is the nameplates on the doors of Ministers; nothing much more. Everything seems to be staying exactly the same.Now if you go through all of the aspects of change that the current Government have made there's very very little. A whole lot of stuff quietly swept to one side kept warm to slumber in the hope that when they get re-elected they might be able—or if they get re-elected—they might be able to breathe new life into it.But in reality the big template thing that they've got rid of is the merger between Radio New Zealand and TVNZ. Let's face it: that was a $370 million utter folly. That would have been the cost had it gone through. But instead they were just quietly today saying that the $16.5 million that they spent preparing for that merger is money well spent—the Prime Minister told the House that today. It was reiterated many times by Mr Robertson on previous occasions: money well spent! But what have we got for it? Absolutely nothing.And then of course there was this long denial from the Government that we had a problem getting children to attend school regularly with 60 out of every 100 children in our schools not regularly attending—six out of 10; 60 out of a 100; 600 out of 1000 students not regularly attending schools in this country. So suddenly the answer is: "Oh well we better bring in truancy officers." And we find today that they're not going to be people that go out there and find out what's going on in the household that's preventing that child from coming to school; they're going to be desk-bound people looking at screens who are going to send out presumably tick-box sort of questionnaires of schools to say why they're not there.We get a sense of that by the new Minister of Education in the House today part of the brand new Government coming into the House today and saying that actually the number of unaccounted absences is falling; not saying that the number of absences is falling but simply that there is a stat somewhere that says we can account for why they're not there. Well we know they're not there because they're not turning up. I think that all we're getting is the usual sort of Labour Party approach to things: find a way of sending out a questionnaire find a new set of stats refer it to a committee and ask some consultants to have a little bit of a look at it and give some advice about how best to deal with it.When it comes to consultants we've heard this week the phenomenal figure for what was spent on consultants in the last 12 months: over $440 million—$440 million; an extraordinary amount. One might wonder where all that's gone. Well I've already talked about the $16.7 million spent on the now defunct merger. There's also the $20.7 billion spent on the Income Insurance Scheme—and I'll come back to that in a few minutes.And then we hear confirmation in the House today: $72 million—$72 million—on consultants to merge the health systems across the country. You'd ask yourself: what sort of healthcare did that deliver? Nothing. All we've got this week from the outgoing chair of that new huge national bureaucracy in health is an indication of how terrible everything is inside that organisation and what an utter mess that particular reform appears to be in.You could lay that alongside the polytech merger where we know that there's been hundreds of millions of dollars merged into this new super-entity and it's a mess with its issues over chief executives issues over unquantified spending—you name it; it's all there: a mess and at a huge cost.And then I think you get to a point where some of the confidence that anyone might have that this new Government was going to do something that was different—actually do something which the Ardern Government was famous for not doing; brilliant at being able to state the problem brilliant at being able to articulate the concern about the problem brilliant at setting up a committee setting up an inquiry setting up some other sort of investigative body but utterly hopeless at doing anything that might make a difference. I'd ask them to point to anything that would refute that particular suggestion.Even when it comes down to something like the cost of living that's wrecking the lives of so many New Zealanders at the moment—where we know that interest rates are racing through the ceiling we see that rents have risen by $150 a week in a very short period of time—all the Government can say is: "Not our fault; it's happening all over the world." Yet we know that this wasteful spending this extra billion dollars a week that the Government are spending—$52 billion a year more than was the case just a few years back—is part of the problem. When a Government decides it can spend better than people who are looking after their own money then we know that we're going to end up with unnecessary amounts of inflation.If we want to know exactly what it means for the household this Government's taxation rises—even though they've said "No new taxes." and all the rest of it—Anna Lorck: Well you want to tax the rich—you want to tax the rich.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: —their tax take has risen by $17000 a year per household. And they've got the audacity over there to criticise us on tax—the audacity to criticise us on tax—when they've taken $17000 a year out of New Zealand households averaged across the whole lot.There are five things that are always at play in an election. That is: the economy you could call that cost of living; it's housing; it's health; it's education; and it's law and order. All of those are in a very messy state at the present time. Just look at as I said before rising interest rates; massive increases in rental income; huge rate rises for property owners across the country; the threat of extra water charges for whatever might end up under the Government's now shelved shoved aside but kept warm three waters project. So that is a massive contributor to that cost of living. It is a massive contributor to the housing problem we have in the country at the moment where we have four times as many people on State house waiting lists now than we had three four or five years ago. We've also got 4000 families right now living in temporary accommodation across the country abandoned by the Government—abandoned by the Government—with no particular answers.And then of course—we've just covered education with the extraordinary truancy rates that are going on and I know that subsequent speakers are going to talk more about the law and order crisis that we've got in this country and the Prime Minister could only say today well when he was police Minister the numbers of ram raids dropped. Why aren't all ram raids dropping? Why aren't we being tougher on those people who decide that they're going to live outside the law in this country? And why are we doing this constant hand-holding of criminals who have no intention of contributing in any positive way to the outcomes of this country?There are so many areas where this Government could and should be held to account; other speakers will do it. But as I come to the end of my contribution I simply say that Mr Luxon's amendment to the motion is spot on."