Debate on Prime Minister's Statement - 10th February, 2015

ACT Leader David Seymour

One of the benefits of being a younger member of the House is that sometimes you can learn a thing or two from some of the older members of the House, and from one, who may be the oldest of all, we got three very good questions.

What state is the country in? Well it is an interesting fact that if you look at the polling data across the world and you look at Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, and you ask the people in each country: “Is your country heading in the right direction or the wrong direction?”, New Zealand is the only one of the five where people persistently have said the country is heading in the right direction, for the last six years straight. When the member asks the question: “Are we heading in the right direction?”, the people have answered the question. Maybe he thinks they are stupid.

What he will find out—what he will find out if he stands in Northland—is that the people there have moved on too. That place has changed since the 1960s. If he stands there it will be a very sad political death. However, I have heard that he may be leaving me a couple of backbenchers in his will, so it may not be all bad.

Are we getting towards a fairer society? That is a question that I would like to address in this speech. The country is in a good state and we are heading in the right direction. I learnt this on the 175th anniversary of our nation’s founding, up at Waitangi just last week.

I probably speak for many New Zealanders when I say that I had stayed away all of my life because of the acrimonious pictures on the TV screen that put me off visiting Waitangi on the fifth and sixth of February. What a warm and pleasant experience. I had to say a prayer on a marae—almost two new experiences in one day.

What I found when I watched the TV at the end of that day was something astonishing and surprising. I thought Andrew Little had wanted to be the Prime Minister of New Zealand—I really did. All his behaviour up until that point had suggested that Andrew Little wanted to be the Prime Minister of New Zealand. We heard from the co-leader of the Green Party that he knew which side of apartheid he was on in 1981. But does Andrew Little know the answer to that question, or is he actually trying to bring it back right here in New Zealand?

Perhaps he agrees with Sir *Tīpene O’Regan, the normally sensible and respectable man, who said that Pākehā New Zealanders do not know their history. Well, let me remind Andrew Little, and anyone else who has any doubt, what some of our history is. Perhaps we should start maybe about 400 years ago when *Martin Luther challenged the *Inquisition and nailed his theses to the door of Rome. Perhaps we should talk about *William Wilberforce, who campaigned valiantly for years to end slavery in England, or *Abe Lincoln, who did it across the Atlantic, in the US. Perhaps we should talk about *Kate Sheppard, who said that women and men should both be able to vote equally here in New Zealand. Perhaps we could come forward a little way, to *Fran Wilde and Louisa Wall, who said that people should be treated equally before the law, regardless of their sexuality.

Our heritage and our history is the creation of a free and equal society where everybody is equal under law, and that is one of the greatest achievements any country has ever made. If Andrew Little really wants to be Prime Minister of New Zealand, he had better back-pedal quickly on the idea that we should be backing down on the wonderful achievements that our country has managed in becoming one of the most diverse, free, and harmonious societies that this world has ever seen.

When we come to the question of housing affordability, it is worth thinking how far we have come on that topic. The *Demographia index has been comparing median household incomes to median house prices every year for eight years. When they started doing it, Helen Clark used to say: “If only they would put some unaffordable European countries in, New Zealand’s housing affordability might look a little bit better.” Well, how far we have come that we now have a Government that accepts there is a housing affordability problem in New Zealand.

We have a Government that is actually addressing the root causes of housing unaffordability in New Zealand. What are those causes? If you study the phenomena, it is not the tax system. Sydney, Vancouver, and Los Angeles have much more unaffordable housing than us and they also have a capital gains tax.

It is not the banking system or the interest rates. Many, many markets across the United States and Canada all have the same banking system. They all have the same interest rates, but only some markets are deeply unaffordable.

We now have studies of the approach of hundreds of urban housing markets to urban planning. What do we discover? It is those that take on constrictive urban planning regimes, and say “thou shalt not build there”, that find themselves with a shortage of land on which you can build, and, as a result, a shortage of houses. It does not matter, as the Labour Party would have it, if the Government builds the houses because even builders working for the Government cannot build houses on no land.

The initiative that this Government will take up is cleaning up the Resource Management Act, taking out the vagaries, and making the Resource Management Act about science—science: physics, chemistry, and biology. The Resource Management Act should be about biodiversity. It should be about air, water, and soil. It should be about the physics of noise, of traffic, of shading. But it should not be about vague concepts that lead to ephemeral goals pursued by urban planners denying an entire generation of New Zealanders the opportunity to own a home.

How far we have come, that we are now reforming the root cause of housing unaffordability. I give the support of the ACT Party to National in reforming the Resource Management Act at its roots, at sections 5, 6, and 7, and focusing them on science rather than the kind of ephemera that we hear from the other side of the House. The first step towards building more houses is to free up land upon which to build them.

Another thing that happened over the last couple of months that I would like to add to the Prime Minister’s address is that a number of Partnership Schools have opened. I have got bad news for the Opposition. Boy, are they performing off the charts. The number of students enrolled is going through the roof. It is 440, up from 360 last year. The Post Primary Teachers’ Association is terrified of the ongoing success of these schools. [Heckling from Tracey Martin] The member there should go and visit, and see what they do for the kids who choose to attend those schools. But her ideology is more important than those kids getting skills, getting qualifications, getting jobs, and feeling good about themselves. That is why she is going to be staying over there.

You could visit any of the schools where the results are outstanding, in particular for the context of some of the challenges that they face. Next month we are going to see Sir Michael Jones and Willie Jackson opening Partnership Schools. This policy has momentum. It is diverse. It is unstoppable.

You wonder why the Labour Party is in so much trouble in this House. It is because the ACT Party is now doing its job for it. We are delivering what Peter Fraser promised as education Minister in 1949. I know it is hard, Tracey Martin, but you need to accept this. If the member really cares about delivering the promise that every child will develop to the full extent of their powers by our education system, then we must be able to let in new methods.

I actually agree with one of the things that *Eleanor Catton said. She said that when you have success, too many people are there to beat up on you unless they can collectivise it for themselves. Imagine a world in which the approach of the teachers' union, in which the approach of the Opposition, and in which the approach of even Tracey Martin was such that we admired people who have taken risks, gone out on a limb, been creative, and enrolled their kids, in order to find ways to address one of New Zealand’s most urgent problems.

Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a country where Eleanor Catton’s concern of tall poppy syndrome was addressed and we could actually try new things to make kids’ lives better without such negative wailing from all over the Chamber. But, unfortunately, we fight on, and I am very proud to do so with my colleagues from the Māori Party, from United Future, and from the National Party.

We are going to deal to the Resource Management Act, because when you see that child poverty rises from 130,000 to 285,000 as soon as you include the figures for housing affordability—or the effect that has on family budgets—then you know the number one thing we can do for child poverty is expand the supply of housing for New Zealand families, and have we not come a long way in addressing that?

We know that we are coming into a world and a century when the premium on skills will be larger than it has been at any previous time, and it is going to be more important than ever that all New Zealanders have the skills. We are unleashing social entrepreneurship in order to achieve that goal. Thank you.

ends

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