text stringlengths 0 8.04k |
|---|
Jan Tinetti: What actions is the Government taking to encourage State schools to get their projects under way with funding from the New Zealand Upgrade Programme? |
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The Ministry of Education has already contacted every State school in the country about the funding that is available to them. Their property advisers have been working with them to look at their current property plans and look at what they can add to or accelerate from those programmes. We have alre... |
Question No. 9—Regional Economic Development |
9. JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First) to the Minister for Regional Economic Development: What recent Provincial Growth Fund announcements has he made? |
Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Regional Economic Development): Consistent with being the most historically pro-infrastructure Government of the century, 47 Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) projects have been announced: over $200 million to aid the cause of expanding rail into an important province in New Zealand; aiding the... |
Jenny Marcroft: What other PGF announcements have been made this year? |
Hon SHANE JONES: I speak very briefly of the opening— |
SPEAKER: Chance would be a fine thing, but carry on. |
Hon SHANE JONES: Sorry, I speak very modestly of the opening of the Te Rau Aroha whare taonga Te Whaka Maumahara, offering testimony to the ethic of service, otherwise known as the Māori Battalion museum; the National Party MPs from the South Island have privately communicated to me over their joy with the Kaikōura ann... |
Hon Dr Nick Smith: Why are dole numbers going up—23,000 more on the dole? |
Hon SHANE JONES: —down at the level of the earthy interests of New Zealand society, not the big end of town, which crippled the vision of the last Government. I have also been advised that in the event further assistance is needed in projects in Nelson, under no circumstances associate them with Nick Smith. |
Jenny Marcroft: How have these announcements been received in the regions? |
SPEAKER: Briefly. |
Hon SHANE JONES: Great friends of mine, the Federated Farmers—their president Mr William Beetham has welcomed the Wairarapa water investment, noting some of our largest companies and employers are under threat going forward as they were failed in their ambitions in the previous nine years—and the Kia Kaha programme and... |
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can the Minister report to the House as to how many times he's been knocked over by National Party MPs trying to get to the openings of these projects? |
SPEAKER: Order! Order! I think we'll just leave that there. I think he's not responsible for being knocked over. |
Question No. 10—Transport |
10. CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South) to the Minister of Transport: Does he stand by his statement on 7 December 2017, "But I want to make it clear that it is not the role of the Minister of Transport to prioritise particular roading projects", and have any roading projects in the transport component of the New Zealan... |
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance) on behalf of the Minister of Transport: Yes, I stand by my statement in the context it was given. In answer to the second part of the question, all of the roading projects in the New Zealand Upgrade Programme are a priority for this Government. That's why we funded them. |
Chris Bishop: Was the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission involved in the selection of the projects to prioritise, and, if so, how? |
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Minister, the main responsibility for the identification of projects was, as you would expect, with the New Zealand Transport Agency. As the Minister said, in the House yesterday, he had conversations with the Minister of Finance around the projects. I would have to get back to the... |
Chris Bishop: When did Auckland Transport find out about the transport projects selected as part of the Upgrade Programme? |
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Minister, the member will have to put that question down in writing to give him a specific time and date. |
Chris Bishop: Why is the South Island receiving less than 5 percent of the nearly $7 billion committed to transport projects in the Upgrade Programme? |
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Minister, the Upgrade Programme represents additional spending on top of the already impressive rate of spending through the National Land Transport Fund of around $3.5 billion in the South Island. I know that in the Canterbury community, where some concerns have been raised, $1.5 ... |
Chris Bishop: Did the Government consider prioritising the East-West Link project in Auckland as part of the New Zealand Upgrade Programme, and when will the Government announce a decision on that important project? |
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Minister, that was not a project that was included in the considerations. Obviously, it remains a project on the books. The concern that this Government has previously had is that that was going to be, per kilometre, one of the most expensive roads in the world. That project, obvio... |
Chris Bishop: Why should New Zealanders have any confidence in the ability of the Government to actually deliver these projects, when Ministers in the Government have spent years criticising the projects they say they are now prioritising? |
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Minister, there is one very important reason why New Zealanders can have confidence in the projects in the New Zealand Upgrade Programme: we've actually funded them. |
SPEAKER: Question No. 11, Marja Lubeck. [Interruption] And I just will say to the member that now we have one member from north of Auckland being relatively quiet, there's not a need for another one to replace him. |
Question No. 11—Building and Construction |
11. MARJA LUBECK (Labour) to the Minister for Building and Construction: What recent information, if any, has she seen about a growing construction workforce? |
Hon JENNY SALESA (Minister for Building and Construction): Building the homes, schools, roads, rail, and hospitals that New Zealand needs requires a growing construction workforce. It's great that this coalition Government's work, together with industry, is delivering a growing construction workforce. From the figures ... |
Marja Lubeck: What Government policies have helped with this increase? |
Hon JENNY SALESA: We've achieved this record construction workforce by working with industry through the Construction Sector Accord, as well as through the Construction Skills Action Plan. This includes making trade training fees free for the first two years, raising the standard of trades in our schools through the Pr... |
Marja Lubeck: How is the construction workforce growing more diverse? |
Hon JENNY SALESA: We are recruiting more women, more Māori, more Pacific, as well as more Asian New Zealanders. In just two years, 1,000 more Māori have joined the construction industry, an additional 2,700 more women are in construction, and 600 more Pacific and 2,800 more Asian New Zealanders are working in construct... |
Question No. 12—Housing (Public Housing) |
12. SIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki) to the Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing): Can he confirm that almost 14,500 New Zealanders are currently waiting for a State house, and that the waiting list is more than double what it was when National left office? |
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House) on behalf of the Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing): Yes. The Government has always been clear that it is going to take some time to reverse the damage that nine years of neglect caused. Five thousand State houses were removed from the State housing list under the las... |
Simon O'Connor: Can the Minister once again confirm to the House that a large number of those new builds were actually started, consented, or contracted by the former Government? |
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Some of those were at various stages under the previous Government, as would have been the case when the previous Government took office back in 2009. Had they sustained a rate of progress of building new houses during that time, we would not have had a waiting list. Unfortunately, they took the view... |
Hon Stuart Nash: Has the Minister seen reports that in the city of Napier, under the previous Government, over 140 State housing units were torn down and not one replaced? |
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes, I can confirm that example. There are other examples—for example, in Trentham, where hundreds of State houses were demolished and replaced by the land being sold to private developers, so further State houses were not built on that. There are examples of that all over the country. |
Simon O'Connor: Is he able to confirm that if the number of people waiting for a State house is increasing and the wait times for such houses is over 3½ months, then, by definition, things are getting worse under this Government? |
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The waiting lists are increasing. That is an unavoidable fact, and the fact is that we do not have enough houses to accommodate those people. Our Government is working as fast as we can to build additional houses, but what we will never do is what the last National Government did when it purged peopl... |
Simon O'Connor: Is the Government proposing to make New Zealanders who are having to live in motels still pay 25 percent of their income towards it because the Government is running out of money, after a 440 percent increase in emergency housing expenditure? |
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: No. It is because we don't want to create a situation where people in emergency housing are better off financially than people who are actually paying rent in normal houses or in transitional houses. |
Simon O'Connor: Is it still the Government's intention that "no one should have to live in a car", and, if so, why is the Government including an exemption in their Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Bill for people who do live in cars? |
SPEAKER: Order! That's not an area the Minister is responsible for. |
DEBATE ON PRIME MINISTER'S STATEMENT |
Debate resumed from 12 February. |
Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti): Now, two years ago the Government of these three parties set out an ambitious programme to tackle the long-term challenges that had been neglected for years, and we've made great progress on addressing those issues. I'm just going to rattle through a f... |
I want everybody to just cast their minds back even further, though, to 5 February 2017. That was the last Waitangi Day that the previous Government was in charge of organising. If anyone has forgotten, let me describe the chaos, the mayhem, the bedlam, that ensued at that occasion at the pōwhiri. There were people han... |
Now, we have to, as politicians, take responsibility for the part that we played in creating that bedlam and that mayhem. It's because the whole show was about the politicians. There's some parties in this Parliament that actually love the bedlam, that love the mayhem, because then they could rail against Māori and the... |
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Excuse me—"Madam". |
Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Sorry, Madam Speaker. So we made it a flashpoint because we as politicians made Waitangi about us, and we should not be the largest part of what goes on at Waitangi; we should be the smallest part. |
Hon Gerry Brownlee: Shouldn't be there at all. |
Hon KELVIN DAVIS: And there we go. That comes from Gerry Brownlee, and that is an indication of the disdain that the National Party has towards Māori. It's absolutely disgusting. |
The other emblem of this disdain that the National Party shows is that their spokesperson for the Māori-Crown relationship is the Hon Dr Nick Smith. Now, what on earth possessed Simon Bridges to name the Hon Dr Nick Smith, as if he's an expert on Māori-Crown relations? What is he doing? What has he done? What's his con... |
Let me just take you through the week of peace and calm and national unity from last week. It started off on the Sunday, when the Hon Shane Jones, in his modest way—and he's already described what he did, in question time—made announcements around helping Māori to create productivity on their land. The Hon Nanaia Mahut... |
Then we roll on to Monday. We all moved from the Bay of Islands—sorry; when I say "we all", no one from the National Party turned up. We all rolled over to the north of Hokianga, where we unveiled a statue to Te Whaea o Te Motu, Dame Whina Cooper, where we acknowledged our Māori heroes who have done so much for our peo... |
Roll on to Tuesday. I'm going to just come back to Tuesday, because that was the day of the pōwhiri—the infamous Simon Bridges pōwhiri. |
Wednesday: Wednesday morning I was told that the opening of Te Rau Aroha museum was going to be a quiet dawn service. When I walked out of the hotel at 4 o'clock in the morning, there was a line of traffic stretching from Paihia right up to the Treaty grounds a couple of kilometres long. This was not going to be a quie... |
I stood at the back of that queue in the darkness, and I estimated there were 2,000 people there—2,000 people at that dawn service. |
Nicola Willis: I was there. |
Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Nicky Willis says she was there, so she can actually validate what I've just said. |
Then we come to 10 o'clock at the public opening of this ceremony—10 o'clock; the exact same time Simon Bridges calls a press conference to announce that he's leaving. Now, why on earth would Simon Bridges call a press conference to announce that he's leaving Waitangi, when no one cared that he was there in the first p... |
Then we come to Waitangi Day itself: 2,000 people attended the dawn karakia, and then there was no Simon Bridges there. Then, when we went out to the Prime Minister's breakfast, again 2,000 people lined up at that barbecue. There were half a dozen people who didn't line up at the barbecue—they were the National Party M... |
But let me go back to the Tuesday morning—to the pōwhiri. We put a lot of effort into making sure that the mayhem, the bedlam, of three years earlier didn't reoccur. We put a lot of effort into saying it doesn't matter who the speaker is, but we're all going to stand up as a Parliament and support that speaker. We made... |
What I've said throughout the three years that we've been organising the Waitangi Days is that we must uphold the mana and the dignity of Ngāpuhi, the local people. Everybody—everybody—bar one did it. For the first time in my life I am glad that there is a Māori who could not understand Māori. It's sad to say. The boll... |
Hon Louise Upston: Oh, rubbish. |
Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Rubbish? Somebody who doesn't speak Māori is saying rubbish. Oh, no; that's right. That was the other impressive thing we've done: we've given all the MPs that are there headsets so they can have a simultaneous translation. This is how inclusive we are. Let me tell you now, when the MPs get things tog... |
We spoke about the bridge. We spoke about the bridge that Māori have had to cross since Europeans have been here, the bridge that means that Māori can cross from the Māori world into the European world. We've learnt the language, we've learnt the customs, we've learnt the tikanga, and it's almost always been one-way tr... |
So this is my question for Simon Bridges, who in his tone-deaf speech believes that he's a statesman and that he has got some sort of mana and kudos. I'll tell you what, he's so uncomfortable in his Māori skin he seeks affirmation from non-Māori. That's where he gets his affirmation. In the meantime, he tramples on the... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.