Post-Cabinet Press Conference: Monday, 31 July 2023

All right, good afternoon, everyone. I’ll start with the latest update on the recovery from the North Island weather events earlier this year. In this year’s Budget, we established a $6 billion National Resilience Plan to support building infrastructure that’s more resilient to the impacts of climate change. We need to ensure that transport infrastructure is rebuilt quickly following the recent weather events, but also that they’re built in resilient ways, as increasingly severe weather events are likely to continue to hit New Zealand in the future. Connecting our communities is critical to getting our regions back on their feet again, so the latest instalment of Government funding that we’ve announced today will be focused on roads. We’re releasing a further $567 million that will go to Waka Kotahi for immediate works on State highways in Tairāwhiti, Wairoa, Hawke’s Bay, Coromandel, and Northland. The funding includes $257 million for works on the East Coast and Wairoa, $150 million for Hawke’s Bay, $76 million for Coromandel, $44 million for Northland, and up to $40 million for minor resilience works nationwide. These investments are on top of the $525 million that was already provided to Waka Kotahi in the immediate aftermath of the cyclone.

Now that almost all of the road links have been restored in cyclone- and flood-affected areas, many of those roads need to be made safer and more resilient, so we need more permanent solutions in place—where Bailey bridges were put in to reopen crossings, for example. This extra funding will replace or strengthen and rebuild damaged bridges. It’ll also improve the road surface on major stretches of road where pot-holes and cracks were left after the weather events; that’s made travel slow and frustrating for locals.

In addition to the funding for State highways, the Government’s already made a significant contribution to local road repairs, which normally would be the responsibility of the local government. This amounts to $210 million since February. The Government’s been working tirelessly with the agencies, councils, and communities to recover and rebuild after this year’s devastating weather events and will continue to support the affected communities as we build back better. Over time, the plan will also address the severe infrastructure deficits that have for decades held New Zealand back.

Finally, the Government today has welcomed an agreement by the Hawke’s Bay mayors and the regional council chair to take to their councils a package including sharing the cost of buying out high-risk residential properties in that region. The priority areas of the overall package will be addressing category 3 property buyouts, flood protection, and urgent roading and bridge repairs. It’s another significant step in the cyclone recovery process. In the next step of the process, the councils will be asked to ratify the agreement and consult with their communities as appropriate. As part of the package, the Government’s also agreed to a contribution to flood protection projects that give some certainty for owners of properties that have been assessed as category 2 and to enhance the resilience of the Hawke’s Bay region.

I do want to acknowledge at this point that leaving a home and a community is not an easy decision, but for some people the opportunity to start afresh without the fear of future flooding or landslides is the right choice. Councils will be working closely with individual property owners to determine the details of each individual offer.

In other regions, negotiations with Auckland and Tairāwhiti on cost-sharing agreements are progressing well, and we’re hopeful that we’ll have agreements for them to consider and ratify shortly.

Alongside these negotiations, the Crown is working through a process and a support package for the affected Māori land and the communities in affected regions. Funding for this work will sit outside the cost-sharing agreements that are being entered into with councils. Happy to open up for questions.

Let’s Get Wellington Moving is a transport initiative that was launched, I think, in about 2015 under the last Government. I think many Wellingtonians—and I am a Wellingtonian—would feel that perhaps we haven’t made as much progress through Let’s Get Wellington Moving as many in the region would like to see, so it is something that we’ll be looking closely at.

I think with the big sort of transport initiatives that are covered under the Let’s Get Wellington Moving umbrella, there is always a debate to be had around cost share with the local council. And so that is one of the things that we’ll need to work through carefully, but, yes, I would like to see more progress.

I’m not making any announcements on it today.

I’m not making announcements on Let’s Get Wellington Moving today, but I am acknowledging I don’t think it has delivered what it was set up to deliver in 2015.

No.

Well, I mean, ultimately, if you were to take a proposal, say, that abandons Let’s Get Wellington Moving and goes with building new tunnels and so on through Government building, the question then remains: what happens to the cost-sharing arrangements that have been entered into there? Would they still apply? Those are issues that, ultimately, the people making those proposals would need to work through. Anything that we do in the Let’s Get Wellington Moving space will answer those questions at the time that we make any announcements, which I’m not doing today.

I’ve been looking closely at transport stuff, and you can expect to see more on that. I’m not making announcements on that today, though.

As I said, I never took that off the table in terms of the, you know—I think I’ve actually answered questions on this already and said that I want to see more progress in Wellington on transport projects.

What’s that?

Well, I’ve only had the job a few months—or six months.

No, I don’t believe so.

Well, no, what I’m saying is Let’s Get Wellington Moving, at this point, doesn’t seem to have been able to reach agreement on the major infrastructure and roading projects required in the region.

So, I mean, I guess we’re into an interesting period. There are two different things here: one is the Government policy and the other is the Labour Party policy. And whilst we are currently the Government, of course, what we put out before the electorate as the Labour Party in the election campaign may not marry up exactly with Government decisions. So we have to work our way through that, and you’ll see us do that in the next little while.

So there is the Government policy statement, which every Government has to do every three years. Some of what we’re talking about in transport, of course, extends beyond three years. Those are the sorts of things that parties put in their manifestos rather than necessarily would be reflected in the Government policy statement.

It will be a mix of in the Government policy statement and in the manifesto.

Yes.

We said that we would go into arbitration with the secondary school teachers in good faith. Obviously it’s a significant increase in the funding, you know, that will be required to meet that, so we’ll take the next day or two to consider that. We indicated in the agreed timetable that we would need to take a few days to consider it, and so we absolutely do that. We’ll have to think about how to fund that if we were to go ahead with the offer put forward through arbitration, and that will involve looking at where we can, you know, find the money in order to do that, because it’s not an insignificant sum of money.

Look, we need to take a few days to consider that, which is what we built in to the timetable. We will consider that, and that will include considerations of, if we went ahead with the recommendations that came out of arbitration, how we would pay for those.

As I’ve said, the timetable that we agreed was that we would take a few days to consider it, and we’ll do that.

No, there’s a statutory mechanism called a Government policy statement that—

Yes, indeed, but it generally covers a three-year window. Many of the projects that we talk about with transport have a much longer lead time than three years.

No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying the opposite, actually. There might be things that aren’t covered in the Government policy statement that would be covered in the manifesto commitment.

I’m not making any announcements on Let’s Get Wellington Moving today.

Ultimately we haven’t announced the cost split at this point, because that’s ultimately subject to ratification by the council, and so once that’s happened, then obviously we’ll share those details.

As I’ve indicated, we haven’t announced that yet.

Because ultimately it sits with the council. The council—you know, the Government’s negotiating with the councils in good faith. They need to have the opportunity to consider the offer that we’ve put to them.

Well, because there’ll be some councillors that haven’t even seen that yet, so we need to give them the opportunity to do that.

I said last week that it’d be in the next few weeks and I’ll stick to that.

No, not at all. Labour’s tax policy does sit within the context of our broader manifesto commitments, though, of course, as every party’s will, and I note that other parties haven’t released their tax policies yet either.

What’s that?

Well, they took a guess at what they think our tax policy might be, and I’m not going to get into speculation on it.

What’s that?

The Greens and the Māori Party aren’t the only other parties in Parliament.

Look, we’ll announce our tax policy in due course.

I haven’t delayed it. I’ve said that I’ll announce it in the next few weeks, and I’ll announce it in the next few weeks.

No.

Migrant exploitation is something the Government’s been looking very closely at. We have been focused much more on enforcement of migrant exploitation. I think that’s reflected in the statistics. We’ve actually been more proactively looking for it, because I don’t think migrant exploitation is acceptable. We have made some changes to various visa categories particularly where some of those visa categories were more prone to being exploited and we’ll continue to look at what more we can do in that space.

One of the reasons that we have an accredited employer visa is that you can withdraw accreditation where there’s any evidence that employers aren’t following the rules.

Look—

And the system was designed to flush out migrant exploitation, and so the fact that there are more complaints means that we’re in a position to do something about them, because we can withdraw an employer’s accreditation.

Obviously, the Government’s been looking closely at light rail in Auckland for some time. I’m not making any announcements on light rail in Auckland today, though.

I’m not saying that. I’m not making any announcements on light rail.

Well, Government policy on that has not changed.

I’m not announcing Labour Party policy for the next election today.

Oh, there’s been three years. There’ll be another manifesto for the coming election and I’m not announcing it today.

You can expect to hear more on that in the next few weeks.

I think the biggest concern about National’s policy today is that they don’t seem to know how much the roads that they are proposing to build are going to cost. They certainly don’t seem to have any idea of how they’re going to pay for them. In terms of the climate impact, that’s—you know, we’re trying to have a balanced transport policy, as a Government, that recognises that people do need to be able to get around, and roads are a part of the way people get around, but that we need to be reducing our overall emissions.

So first of all I want to acknowledge the massive achievements of the Football Ferns. They have done the whole country proud, they have gone further than any New Zealand team has gone in a football world cup before, they’ve inspired a whole generation, I think, of young women athletes, and I think that they can hold their heads high as a result of that. We should all be incredible proud of them, they’ve made history, and we should absolutely acknowledge that. In terms of the most appropriate way to recognise that, that’s not something that I’ve turned my mind to yet.

I think Palmerston North is a great city. I know a lot of people that live in Palmerston North; they really enjoy living there.

What I’m saying—I think everybody reads into the fact that I don’t, on any of these transport policy areas, that I’m not giving you a yes or a no or a black or a white answer on them, and it’s simply because I don’t have announcements to make on them. Until we do, Government policy remains Government policy, so the work on light rail is continuing to progress.

What’s that?

So, again, I want to note that there are differences between Government decisions and Labour Party decisions—

The final manifesto has not yet been signed off, no.

There’s work happening on the transport manifesto. It’s not finalised yet, no.

I think I’ll come back to my first comment on this, which is, I’m not announcing our transport policy today.

It’s not necessarily that I don’t know, it is that I’m not announcing it. Right—

I think at the end of the day we have to accept that there does need to be a link between the Ngauranga Gorge and the airport that is significantly more resilient than the one that we have at the moment is. That is going to involve some difficult decisions, and I think the idea that everybody is going to come together and somehow miraculously reach a consensus on that perhaps was a little unrealistic in 2015, and the intervening period from then till now has probably demonstrated that.

I wouldn’t necessarily go that far, to be honest. That’s a little bit pessimistic—

No, not necessarily, but clearly I think we need to see some more progress on that—on that particular bridge.

Well now you’re asking me to tell you what’s going to be in an announcement that I’m not making.

When I have something to announce, I’ll announce it.

I could do this all day if you want, but—

Yes.

Because it’s a good bill.

I haven’t got a number on that sorry, I wouldn’t want to put a number on it. I don’t have a number on it.

I think if you—I don’t have a number for that particular area but, if you look across the whole of the sort of the cyclone and flood – affected areas, I think we’ve previously had publicly a number in that category 3 of somewhere in the ballpark of—and these are very caveated numbers—but it could be, ballpark, somewhere around a billion dollars.

Like I said: we can keep going on this for hours if you like, but I’m not making any announcements on that today. The Government’s policy on this has not changed, so work is continuing.

I think we should acknowledge that in 2017 and in 2020 we had a significant in-take of new talent, and some of those MPs are just sort of starting to make their mark, and I think people are starting to see that. So those people do deserve the opportunity to continue to build on their parliamentary careers. The number of new MPs we get will ultimately be determined by the number of votes we get, and I’m out to get every single vote that I can.

In the case of—there are reasons for all of them, but, in the case of two of them, it’s a timing issue, in terms of when the nominations came in. In the case of Nanaia Mahuta, she made the decision that she wanted to opt out of the list process.

That’s a little more complex a question. The candidates in question didn’t ask to go on the list. They did not nominate for the list.

Look, I fully back both of them. I think they’ll both win the seats.

That’s a question for them.

That’s a question for them.

Because we generally don’t comment on the national security policies of other parties, other Governments, other countries.

Yeah, and I’m happy to comment on the relationship between New Zealand and Australia, in particular in the areas of defence, which is very strong, but their defence relationships with other countries is a matter for them.

That’s a question for them.

I think one of the things that Parliament as an institution has been grappling with in the entire time that I have been here is how best we support members of Parliament to do the job that they have in front of them, recognising the unique set of circumstances that we face. That is different to almost every other workplace in the country—that areas around mental health, resilience, professional support are quite different in this environment to any other environment, as well. I don’t think we’ve ever really nailed this to the extent that we need to. I still think there are gaps in the system, and I still think we need to keep working on that.

I mean, ultimately, I completely agree with the thrust of your question. I’ll have to go back and re-read the Debbie Francis review to see how much that’s reflected in there. But, no, it’s not going to be a one-size-fits-all mechanism; different people have different needs. I think the Francis Review was very focused particularly on the working environment for staff who are in this complex—quite rightly so—but actually there are some unique issues around members and around Ministers that also need to have some more consideration, and I think we need to make sure we are doing that too.

I didn’t get a nuclear briefing from Australia about it, if that’s what you’re asking.

Oh, in the last few days, I think. I don’t know—I don’t want to say that the New Zealand system didn’t know about, but I only found out about it in the last few days.

Like I said, it was in the last couple of days.

I think it’s important that we do consider the cultural appropriateness of all of the things that we’re doing in this space. The questions about the Debbie Francis report are probably more appropriately addressed to the Speaker, who is ultimately the sponsor of that report. But I do think that in any work that we do in this space, we need to make sure that we’re reflecting the diversity of cultures and backgrounds that we have here at Parliament.

Yes, absolutely; I think that, integrally, also needs to be there.

So I can only refer you back to the comments that the party president made—and I think that I made, as well—this morning. Neither of us approached Tāmati to ask him; I’m not saying that that doesn’t mean that there wouldn’t have been people within the party that might have said, “Hey, you should give this a go.” And I fully support him doing that; I think he’ll be a great advocate for the East Coast. He’s an experienced member of Parliament, he’s very charismatic, he’s very talented, he’s very competent, and I think he’s just the sort of person that the East Coast needs right at the moment.

Like I said, I can comment for myself and for the party president, and I wouldn’t want to say that there aren’t other people within the party organisation that didn’t go to him and say, “Hey, we think you should do this.”

I’m not proposing any changes to the Accredited Employer Work Visa right now. It is something that we’ve indicated from when we first launched it that we would keep it under review, though.

Migrant worker exploitation has never been OK. I think it’s more visible now than it’s been in the past, but it’s still never been OK. So any allegations that there’s been an increase in migrant worker exploitation is something, of course, the Government will take very seriously.

As I’ve indicated, one of the purposes of launching that visa was so that we had more tools to deal with migrant worker exploitation.

Well, that is one of the things that the Accredited Employer Work Visa is designed to achieve.

As I’ve indicated, the visa was launched in order to avoid migrant worker exploitation. When we launched it, we said that we would keep a close eye on it and we’ll keep it under review, and we’ll absolutely do that. OK, last couple of questions.

I’m not making any announcements on Auckland Light Rail today. Right, Tova— welcome back.

A sugar tax isn’t on the table.

I see what you did there; that was actually really clever. I’m not going to get into announcing our tax policy today.

I’ve given all of the answers I’m going to give on both of those topics today.

The planning is already under way for Auckland light rail. We’ve not made changes to that.

We’ve not made any changes as a Government to the work that’s currently under way around Auckland light rail.

Well, bearing in mind that the work that’s being done at the moment is to assess what the most desirable route and what the most desirable construction option is for Auckland light rail, we’ve not stopped that work; that work is continuing.

Got no answer on that one. OK, anything else?

I’m not making announcements on it today. One of the—

No, no. One of the bits that Auckland light rail are working on right now is the preferred route.

Sorry?

I’m not announcing any changes to tax policy today.

I’m not making any announcements or pronouncements on tax policy today.

I missed the first part of your question because of other noise in the room. Do you want to have another crack at it?

All political manifestos involve a series of trade-offs. You can’t do everything all at once, and so a manifesto, naturally, has to make some prioritisation decisions.

As I’ve indicated, they still don’t seem to be able to indicate how much they’re going to cost with any accuracy or how they’re going to pay for them, and I would have thought that was the biggest thing that they should really have been in a position to be able to answer when they announced their policy.

What’s that?

I don’t have anything philosophically against the roading projects that they’ve announced, but it’s a bit like Santa Clause coming and promising everything with, you know, no idea of how they’re going to pay for them. They really have to be a bit more upfront about how they’re going to pay for them and how much they’re going to cost. Some of the roading projects that—some of the costings that they’re relying on date back to the time that they were last in Government. If you look just over the last two years, the price of bitumen’s gone up 100 percent. They don’t seem to be allowing for that in their costings.

I’m not making announcements on that today.

I’m not making announcements on that today.

I haven’t had a personal conversation with him, no.

Well, like I said, I haven’t had a personal conversation with him. I’m sure I will. I’m sure I’ll see all of my caucus colleagues tomorrow, hopefully.

Not in the last 24 hours. OK. Thanks, everyone.