Post-Cabinet Press Conference: Monday, 31 March 2025

Kia ora and good afternoon, everyone. Look, it’s the start of another busy week in Parliament and you’re going to be hearing a lot this week about the moves that the Government will be making to ease the burden of red tape and regulation on Kiwi workplaces and particularly those in the building and construction sector, to help them get things built and also to bring down the cost of building for everyday Kiwis. And on that note, I’m really pleased to be joined today by Minister Brooke van Velden, our Workplace Relations and Safety Minister, who’s going to talk a little bit more about some of the decisions that Cabinet has taken on reforming our health and safety laws and regulations.

As you all know, I began this year with a commitment to unleash economic growth, and in my State of the Nation speech I said that this would influence every decision that I took this year. And the reason for that is very simple: a bigger economy of course means more jobs and higher wages and a better quality of life for all Kiwis. Last week I talked about how the economy is starting to turn the corner, and we know it’s still tough out there for many families and businesses but better times are ahead and I’m optimistic about the future.

But one of the big areas of concern out there right now is high grocery prices, which is why yesterday you heard Finance Minister Nicola Willis lay out our plans—as we committed to in the National and New Zealand First coalition agreement—to improve the competitiveness and address the lack of a third major grocery player. Make no mistake, we’re going to do everything that we can to disrupt the current supermarket duopoly so that Kiwis have more choice over where they can fill up their trolleys, because greater competition will ultimately lead to better grocery prices. We’re also going to hear from Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Scott Simpson very soon on our plans to update competition settings in the Commerce Act.

And another area where we’re bursting through the red tape is our plan, obviously, to replace the Resource Management Act as well. All of this will make it much easier to build houses and the critical infrastructure that we desperately need, and it’s been welcomed from everyone from farmers to homeowners to business people and everyone who’s trying to get stuff done in New Zealand.

And today we’re announcing the steps in our plans to reduce the regulatory burden that our health and safety laws and regulations have created. Many of us will be familiar with the piles of paperwork and the forests of warning signs that have invaded our offices and our staff rooms across the country, and those well-meaning regulations can often tie businesses and their employees in total knots, leaving them really unsure about what their actual legal obligations are, and all that confusion and uncertainty gets priced into the cost of doing business in New Zealand and ultimately affects our output. We want every New Zealander to feel safe on the job, but we also need coherent and common-sense rules that reflect the risks of different types of work. Clearly, being a frontline police officer is riskier than working in a coffee shop, and our rules should—frankly—reflect that, so we’re going to focus our resources on high-risk industries where interventions will make the most difference and free up our low-risk businesses from overzealous rules. And with that, I’ll hand over to Brooke to talk a little bit more about the Cabinet decisions that we’ve agreed to today.

Thank you, Prime Minister. Today I am delivering on an Act‒ National coalition agreement to reform New Zealand’s health and safety laws and regulations. Last year I travelled the country from Whangārei to Bluff, hearing directly from businesses, employers, workers and iwi about their experiences with the health and safety system. I had the privilege of talking to everyone from farmers to tradies to road workers.

There were a number of themes that came out of the roadshows and from public consultation, including that there is a lack of guidance on what is considered reasonably practicable and therefore what is needed to be deemed compliant; some regulations are overly complex and out of date, and the pace of change has been slow; there is a fear of WorkSafe arising from difficult engagements or inconsistent treatment; and New Zealanders really hate road cones.

I heard that while larger businesses may be able to afford to hire dedicated health and safety professionals, small businesses in particular can struggle to get the information they need to ensure they are compliant, and can also struggle with the costs of compliance. I also heard concerns that the scope of workplace health and safety obligations is creeping into unintended areas of life, from the proliferation of road cones to Santa parades. This is having a chilling effect on activities many would consider part of the Kiwi way of life.

Today I am pleased to announce the first tranche of the health and safety reforms Cabinet has agreed to. Today workers can be assured that their employers will prioritise the right actions to protect them from harm, and they know where their attention should be to keep themselves and their workmates safe. One of the first changes will be a carve-out for small, low-risk businesses from general Health and Safety at Work Act requirements. Health and safety obligations from these businesses will be limited to providing basic workplace facilities and only managing critical risk, such as risks that cause death or serious injury or illness. I know the struggle small businesses face in dealing with red tape and regulations, and this change will help them focus on what matters most. Under this change, for example, a small retail clothing shop would need only to meet minimum duties relating to first aid, emergency plans, and basic workplace facilities, but would not need to have a psychosocial workplace harm plan or policy, or need to warn staff to be careful when steaming garments.

Another change Cabinet has agreed to is to make critical risk the primary purpose of the Health and Safety at Work Act. This will reduce tick-box health and safety activities that do not protect workers from harm and give workers assurance that their workplaces are prioritising the right actions to protect them from workplace harm.

The reforms will also clarify the boundaries between the Health and Safety at Work Act and regulatory systems that already manage the same risks. These boundary issues have long been a source of over-compliance and confusion. For example, if a seismic risk assessment finds a school building meets the Building Act requirements, the school board should not think that the Health and Safety at Work Act requires them to close the building on seismic safety grounds.

And finally, these health and safety reforms could not be complete unless we do something about the road cones. I’ve travelled across the country to hear health and safety concerns, and at nearly every meeting someone raised the issue of a sea of road cones. My colleague, Minister Bishop, is overseeing the NZTA side, which involves bedding in the new temporary traffic management guide to achieve a more efficient and risk-based approach. On the WorkSafe side, I’m going to direct WorkSafe to confirm and provide guidance on instances of road cone over-compliance. There will be a hotline for the public to report on excessive road cone use they might find out in the wild. Having WorkSafe focus on this will be a culture shift for the agency, but it signifies the broader direction this Government is taking with the health and safety system.

This is just the start of the reform programme. I’ll be seeking Cabinet decisions on further issues in the coming months, which will include improvements to WorkSafe and to address sector specific pain points. Today what I’ve announced means less time, less money and less confusion around health and safety at work. Thank you, Prime Minister.

Thank you, Brooke. Well, listen, before we get into any questions—and I’ll break the questions up into those around the announcement for health and safety today and then we’ll get into general questions after that. But can I just say, Brooke, thank you very much. It’s good to see we’re bringing back common sense after health and safety, frankly, has gone mad.

But very quickly, this week we’re going to be considering some further stages of legislation: the Building (Overseas Building Products, Standards, and Certification Schemes) Amendment Bill, the Victims of Sexual Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill and the Privacy Amendment Bill. And with that, we’re happy to take your questions. If we can do health and safety-related questions first and then we’ll move to the general set.

I’ve had early conversations with WorkSafe about what we expect. There will be a 12-month pilot programme of reducing over-compliance for road cones. I’m expecting this to start in June. For now though, how the hotline will operate, we’re leaving to WorkSafe to work through those details. But I’m not releasing the phone number quite yet because of course, until the pilot programme is up and running, we don’t want people phoning in. But I expect the work to be undertaken by the investigators that already go into businesses up and down New Zealand, and they’ll be also focusing on road cones now.

Yeah, look, the—no, no, no. Look, I mean there’s a real issue here, which is that I think up until Simeon Brown actually asked the question, we didn’t actually know how much we were spending on road cones. You can drive around this country at different times of the day and you’ve got whole roads shut down, no one’s doing any work and the cones are, frankly, just clogging up the joint. So there is a real issue here. You know, Chris Bishop’s really taking it on board and getting NZTA to lead it. Brooke’s making sure that WorkSafe is actually aligned with that approach. We’re going to have more to say about it shortly but, you know, we—you know, it’s just symptomatic, frankly, of a—of a country where we’re just not getting things done or built. And just drive around on the weekends, you know, if we drive around on weekends we’ve got whole lanes shut down with cones everywhere, when it doesn’t need to be that way.

Sorry.

Yeah, happy to take that question.

Hang on, hang on.

It’ll be a lot less than the cost of the road cones, Claire.

The cost of the road cones pilot will be funded through baselines that WorkSafe already have, but what I would say is this is a really important work programme for WorkSafe. We know it’s got a range of factors here. There is unfortunately a feeling and a sense in the community that road workers are annoying, that the road cones themselves are annoying, but we do want to reduce harm and make sure that people working on construction sites and working on our roads are safe. But at the moment we’re seeing so many road cones that there’s a confusion as to the point of them.

Well, everybody sees a proliferation of road cones. I’ve talked to road workers—

Yeah. I’ve talked to road workers as part of my health and safety roadshow around the country, and they do get abuse.

Road workers’ comments on cones, not road workers themselves, sorry. They’re doing great work.

Yeah, they do get abuse from members of the public because there’s a confusion about why are people seeing so many road cones. Part of this is we want to reduce the cost to business in getting things built in our economy. This will deliver on that.

But secondly, it’s really important that people understand the purpose of a road cone is actually to keep themselves safe from a construction site, and it’s also to keep the workers safe.

Shaun, good question, [Inaudible].

Oh, there’s hundreds of millions of dollars. To be honest, actually, as I understand it—

Yeah, road cones, yeah. It’s unbelievable.

It is.

Like, you wouldn’t believe it but when you look at the—

No, no, no, that’s why—that’s why I’m going to get Chris Bishop to share with you actually what the numbers will be. But look, it’s quite a—you know, like, the reality is in Government we actually didn’t even collect or collate how much we actually spend on traffic management and road cones, and I know Simeon Brown put in, processes in place when he was Transport Minister to try and get a sense of that. But it literally is hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s a huge amount of money.

The cost of—actually, when you look at the projects, when we start to say we want to build a road or extend a road, and you look at the huge amount of cost associated with traffic management under these laws and these rules—and that’s what we’ve got to try and work our way through. And that’s why, you know, Chris Bishop’s looking at it from an NZTA point of view, saying, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on projects going forward— I’ve got to make sure that we’ve got that right-sized because it’s a hell of a lot of money that’s tied up in the total project cost.

But what Brooke’s talking about today is making sure that where we’ve got small, you know, small businesses—and let’s be clear, we’ve got 97 percent of New Zealand is small businesses—the reality is we’ve got some rather silly stuff going on. We’ve got, you know, signs that are actually there to warn you about hot water taps. We’ve got signs to say, “Please hold on to the handrail.” We actually would prefer those small businesses to be very, very focused on the critical risks that are going to cause serious injury, illness or death, rather than trying to do everything across a health and safety piece of legislation that’s really, you know, not focused on the right things or not risk adjusted.

This is blowing your mind, Thomas, I can see. There’s a week of articles on this.

I think let me—Chris Bishop’s away this week but I’ll get him to come back and explain to you how much we think we’re spending on it. I’ve just got to tell you it’s quite surprising and I don’t want to give you a number now. I think I could but I won’t, I’ll let him confirm that.

Yep, yep.

No, no. You guys are going—you’ll be amazed at it. No, you’ll be amazed at it.

I would expect all of the work programme will still continue. We have a focus currently at WorkSafe to focus on areas of significant harm in our manufacturing areas, our forestry and construction as well as agriculture. All of those activities will still continue. I have a lot of faith in our workplace inspectors continuing that work. But this is really about an overarching shift that I expect of WorkSafe over the next few years, working towards more upfront guidance. We know that people are over-complying, such as small businesses, because they’re afraid they’re not doing the right thing so they’re doing too much. And so we are making that small business carve-out so it’s really explicit what small businesses need to do. But in the case of the road cones, it’s the same problem.

No.

No, I actually have great faith that WorkSafe can do it all. But you’ll be very excited about other programmes of work that I’m going to be announcing further out this week. You know, this is just the first part of tranche 1, and I have announcements coming throughout the week on the rest of the policy programme.

But Thomas, you raise a good point, which is that for—if you think about machinery, you think about forestry, you know, we’ve actually had a very poor record historically over a number of decades around fatalities in the workplace environment. We’re saying we’ve got to continue with that work. We’ve got to make sure that that is a really safe environment. But what we’re talking about is the fact that we’ve got a huge number of our businesses, you know, real estate companies—you and I were talking about it earlier this morning. There’s a number of organised—you know, just, you know, think—go down your main street looking at your retail outlets, for example, and they are hit with the same kind of, you know, one-size-fits-all kind of legislation.

And what we’re going to do is say, look, we want you to manage the critical risk really well— death, illness, serious injury—of course, but if you’re asked to manage everything you end up not doing anything very well. And we want you want focused on the core stuff that is going to be really serious, versus worrying about whether we’ve got signs beside a handrail or whether we’ve got signs over a hot water tap, for goodness’ sake. I mean, that is where we have literally jumped the shark and sort of it’s gone mad. And that’s what people are immensely frustrated about, is the amount of time, the cost, the compliance associated with actually filling in that paperwork is actually not—it’s completely counterproductive and that’s actually not what we want to see.

Look, I can’t talk into the specifics of how many lives were saved or lost due to the road cones. But what I can say is that people are not following the road cones because there are so many of them, and what I’ve heard talking to health and safety professionals as part of our roadshow is that because there’s so much PPE and there’s so much compliance, people are becoming less aware of it because it becomes part of everyday life and you’re less likely to actually follow it.

Claudette, the bottom line is that we can actually keep workers safe, which we have to do. People have to be able to go to work and come home safe, that’s really important and we acknowledge that, and we’re going to make sure that that is continued focus on improving safety while people are at work. But we’re also dealing with a situation where the regulations and the rules have got so out of hand that we’ve got overkill happening with respect to, say, road cones, for example, which is why it’s talked about, because it’s so obvious to everybody driving around the country that it’s got completely out of—out of whack, so we’re just going to bring some common sense back to it.

And I guess this is what Brooke is, you know, driving this agenda around, is saying, look, there’s just got to bring back some common sense to health and safety rules. We—that’s not to say we’re going to diminish safety. We want to make sure we enhance and protect safety., but if you have a risk managed approach rather than just a one-size-blanket-fits-all and a lot of bureaucracy associated with that—we want to strip it back down just to common sense.

No, I’ll let Brooke—to it, but it’s about what is a small business and then what is a low-risk business and those are two dimensions that will need to be defined. Brooke.

Yeah. Like what we were saying before, a lot of this comes down to common sense. If I take, you know, the example of a couple of shops that I visited just in my Tāmaki electorate the other week, you know, we’ve got a small travel agent, a café, a hairdresser, a new Pilates studio in one block. None of them are high-risk activities. In the other block we have a cafe, a couple of real estate agents, a small financial consulting firm and a boutique law firm. They’re not high-risk but they are small business and I wouldn’t expect them to need to manage a plethora of paperwork just to help do their work. But what we will be doing over these next few months is actually defining the small low-risk business in law, and I’ll be coming back to Cabinet with those specific words.

Yeah, no, no, but this is—this is—this is the madness of the whole thing, is that we need to be able to strip down and say, look, there are small businesses, frankly, that don’t need that level of complexity. But equally, as you’ve just said, we need to make sure we get the low-risk definition right and so, you know, Brooke has a pretty good sense of where that’s going to skate to but over the next coming months, as she goes through finalising legislation, we’ll get really clear on those two dimensions of what is a small business and what is a low-risk business.

You can have a small business that’s got a very high risk profile. You know, it might be actually a bunch of, you know, engineers or mechanics sitting inside enclosed spaces, inside fuel tanks of farm equipment or silos, for example. That needs to be really well managed to make sure that—because that has got high risk associated with it. But as Brooke referenced, there’s a lot of businesses in New Zealand, the vast majority of our business community, that are actually being really overloaded with dumb things like signs on handrails, signs on hot taps. We don’t need that.

No, this is just common sense that we also know that we’ve got over-regulation on things that are low risk. That actually is driving a huge amount of time, paperwork, energy, when actually that time and energy would be better focused on managing the actual, material, serious risk that exists in that business. At the moment, when you actually give everyone a laundry list of, you know, from 0 to 100 of every action under the health and safety legislation, they don’t focus on the critical stuff, which is things that would avoid death, serious injury or illness, for example. And so it’s just being very practical about it.

I agree with you, we’ve had a poor record over a number of decades with respect to workplace safety, you know, that—we’ve put a whole bunch of reforms in recently. Based off your latest quoting of that data, it doesn’t look like it’s actually improving things. We’ve got to find that balance of actually just common sense, which we seem to have lost.

Well, I’d just say Brooke’s still got some serious reforms to continue to roll out. She’s got, I think, five papers coming to Cabinet, is that right?

I do, five papers. But what I would say to this is I expect that these reforms will actually help workers. This will help focus everybody on critical risks in workplaces, those risks that end up with death, serious illness and injury. And to give you a practical example, there are companies out there who might have some workers working from home on one or two days a week, who are worried about whether or not they have to put on ergonomic desks and chairs because they need to manage those sorts of risks for their workers rather than on serious, critical risks. So people are losing a lot of money, they’re losing a lot of time and they’re losing a lot of sleep on trying to figure out if they’re compliant with our laws. This will manage both business owners and workers on those areas of serious workplace harm and I would expect our statistics will improve.

Sorry guys, we’ll go to Tom Day and then we’ll come back to Thomas and then Jason.

I don’t have those numbers but they are the numbers that I had in my head as well, but I didn’t want to confirm them until Chris could do that formally for you. But I’d just say to you, you know, that’s the issue, right? $786 million spent on cones and traffic management. The two go together and obviously that’s what Chris Bishop’s looking at and getting NZTA to get into. The fact that we didn’t even record that or even know the breakdown of how much we were spending on cones and traffic management is something that we’ve now got visibility to, since Simeon’s work.

Well, look, again, I’m going to let Chris Bishop continue the work with the NZTA. He’s got more to—he’s working his way through that, all of those issues right now. He needs a bit more time to surface that.

But what we’re just signalling here in this announcement today is: look, we’re just saying for small medium enterprises there’s actually a bit of common sense that’s needed. There’s a bunch of stuff that’s going on that’s wasting a huge amount of time and we want the critical risk really well managed. There’s more work, as Brooke drives through this agenda, to make sure we get the balance right of increasing workplace safety but also making sure we’re not adding in just unnecessary red tape that’s actually just getting in the way of actually managing those risks properly.

Well, we just want to make sure that risks are being well managed and it’s a risk-managed approach, as it is for many industries across the economy as well. And it’s about taking that lens through that—through that risk management approach and that’s what Chris will look into.

Sorry, just before we finish, is there any more topics on health and safety? Because otherwise I’ll let Brooke—

No, what I was suggesting with my comments there—

Sorry, the people that work on road maintenance is what you’re saying?

What I was suggesting there is that I’ve spoken to people who do work on our roads and put up road signs and help fix our roads, who do unfortunately face some abuse from members of the public who are frustrated from having seen so much traffic management and maintenance, as well as road cones. And I think what I would hope from these reforms is that, one, we will respect people who are working in health and safety—that’s really important—but secondly, there will be clearer understanding from members of the public that when they see road cones on the road, they will know that it’s genuinely to reduce harm rather than because of over-compliance. And we know—you just have to look around New Zealand at how many road cones that we have—that people get frustrated every day just trying to get to work or pick up their kids from school. They need to know that it has a purpose.

Correct. We’re focusing on the regulations about traffic management and about road cones. And as I said, Chris Bishop will talk about that soon.

OK, so we’re finished on health and safety? You sure, Jenna, you don’t want to ask another question?

It’s about cones and traffic management, not about road workers, yeah. Cool. Right.

Well, the first thing I’d say is that any threats of violence, death threats or otherwise, is totally unacceptable on MPs or frankly any New Zealander, and I think accountability actually lies with those that are making those threats.

I’m not aware of any, but actually it’s up to police to have independent actions and as I said before, you know, actually, it should be—the burden should be on the people making those threats, and that’s what—that’s up to the police to investigate.

Look, I thought the language was really inappropriate. I think the reality is that in the scrutiny and the reality of political life, our social media language is scrutinised by the media. It’s also scrutinised by fellow politicians and also the public and, you know—but ultimately, that’s a case for the Greens leadership to deal with.

I just would say to you—I’m not going to get into the language, I’m just saying to you that I thought it was inappropriate.

Well, I just—I think you’ve seen the terms, I think you’ve reported on the terms. The reality is, you know, I just thought that language was inappropriate. If that was one of my MPs, I think you would rightfully be scrutinising me about what I’m doing about that social media language being used. I think those are questions for the Green Party and the leadership to answer for.

Well, those are decisions that—ultimately that should be directed to the leaders of the Green Party. But I’d just say from my own party’s point of view, we spend quite a lot of time vetting social media for potential candidates and making sure that anything that’s inappropriate has surfaced and has been dealt with. But the bottom line is this is an issue for the Green Party leadership, it’s not an issue for me.

Well, as I said, the reality of political life is that we are deeply scrutinised for the language that we use by you, the media, by also our fellow MPs and also the public, and I don’t think he’s doing anything different.

Well, I’d just put it to you the only people who should be accountable for death threats are those that make those death threats and, you know, that’s what we’re saying. If there’s an issue there then the police need to be very much involved, and that’s up for individuals concerned to talk to police about that.

Well, as I said before, as politicians, our language is deeply scrutinised on social media and other forms as well, by fellow MPs as is the case here, as—by media, as is the case here, and also by the public.

As I said, I found the language inappropriate.

Again, what I’m reacting to is the language that’s been used and the terms that have been used.

The language. I haven’t seen the post yet.

Sorry?

I thought the comments from the Green MP were inappropriate, yes. The language was inappropriate.

Yeah, look, I thought that was really—I’ve read those reports as well. I thought the CubaDupa festival, which is a great family affair and actually only happens because our police are able to keep the people that are attending the festival, you know, safe. And to have a Green MP again stand up and play an anti-police track, I thought was really disrespectful. So, you know, those are questions, as I say, that you should be directing to the Greens leadership. They need to be held to account for the behaviour, the language of their own MPs.

Again, it’s not for me to say. It’s really up for the Greens leadership to hold their own team to account for a standard of behaviour.

I would have found that language inappropriate.

Again, I won’t get into it because it’s hypothetical. But I’d just say to you I think it’s pretty clear that I find that language inappropriate. I if think one of my MPs had used it you would certainly be holding me to account and to a standard, and I expect you to do the same with the Green leadership.

Look, no disrespect, I’m not interested in actually what the Green Party think about this issue because they want to defund the police, they want to abolish prisons, and the comments from the Green MP I think have been very disrespectful for the work that our police do. Our police come to serve this and protect our community, they do an exceptionally good job of it and we need to back them up.

And I disagree completely with that position from the Green Party. And I think, you know, again, direct that to the leadership. Is that really what the leadership of the Green Party believe that their spokesperson should be advocating for? And the answer is no. That’s not what the public want. The public want to be safe in their homes, their businesses, their communities, and they—and our police do a brilliant job and I back the police.

Hang on, Claudette, you’ve had a go, I’ll just—

Again, I believe that our police are doing a great job.

Well, again, we’ve got research vessels that come in and out of our part of the world regularly. Again, they are acting lawfully within the confines of international law and following— and compliant with UNCLOS, the law of the sea, as you know. We, of course, reserve our right to track and shadow, exactly as we did with the previous Chinese flotilla that came through, circumnavigating Australia and through the Tasman Sea. But the reality is their freedom of navigation and international law must be upheld. But equally, we are very conscious of, you know, as I’ve said before, we are no longer living in a benign environment in the Pacific.

Well, again, I’d be careful about making an accusation. This was a research vessel.

No. No, no. But again, it’s acting—it’s acting within the confines of international law.

No, not that I’m aware of. I haven’t been briefed otherwise around that. I’m very comfortable with the fact that this is a research vessel that’s doing work with NIWA. It’s actually—but equally, we also do monitor very closely what’s happening within our region.

Absolutely. I think we’ve got to a really good proposal. We had a good one at the end of last year, we’ve been able to improve on it and I think Winston’s done a fantastic job getting us to this point.

No, not at all. They’re—I mean they’re actually very, very proud of the outcome. We had a great plan, we’ve now got a better plan, and that’s a good thing.

Well, again, as I said, we gave him a proposal as a starting point and said, “That’s the—that’s the best efforts that we’ve got at this point. If you can find out with more expertise, with different advisors, and get to a better and improved outcome, go for it. We’ve got plenty of time for you to do exactly that.” That’s why we—

Yeah, we do.

No, no, no. Let’s be clear. The ferries, you know, go through to 2029. You know, if you look at the assessment—

Yeah, the two, the—if you look at the assessment of their hulls, they’re in good shape. Now it’s a question of making sure that KiwiRail maintain them appropriately. But they’re entirely appropriate, as Winston alluded to in his remarks this morning, that they are actually set up for 2029. But what we’ve got now is a really good solution, and I’m really proud of the fact that the way that we’ve worked is: right, let’s put forward our best proposal right now. Let’s see if we can improve on it. We weren’t sure that it could be improved upon. It has been able to be improved upon, and that’s going to lead to a really secure long-term solution for a critical piece of national infrastructure. And importantly, we’re going to do it a hell of a lot cheaper than iReX under Labour.

Again, as you would understand and as Winston explained ad nauseum in his stand-up, the reality is that—

And I’m not going to talk about the envelope. All I can reassure you about and all New Zealanders about is that we have got a deal that is infinitely cheaper, markedly cheaper, than what we saw with the Labour Government’s proposal under iReX.

But I won’t go into numbers. I’m not going to go into numbers because actually, in all—this is quite a serious issue and I think it’s important people understand it. It’s very difficult if you’re negotiating port infrastructure and/or ferries that you actually don’t want to reveal what our envelopes are and what our framing is around the budgets. It’s important that those negotiations can go on with—as they should, and that’s why we won’t be talking about it publicly until the end of the year, when we surface with the actual ship and also port infrastructure.

Yes, and all I can tell you is that it is infinitely cheaper than what was being proposed by the previous administration, we were completely justified to cancel the project and we’ve got a great solution that will be a great long-term solution for New Zealand and good value for taxpayers.

Again, I’m not going to go into that because we had a proposal at the end of last year which was our best efforts over the course of last year, and we gave Winston a window of time to see whether he could improve on the offer. He has been able to do it. Good on him. Fantastic. A better outcome for New Zealanders, get a better—great result for the taxpayer. That’s awesome. So again—

No, no, there was some very good work done through the course of last year that gave a very good starting point for Winston then to see whether he could improve upon it, and there are different—

We’re pro-rail. We want to make sure we get a proper solution on the ferry—on the strait, that’s what this is about. And being able to get two ships that will actually have a 30-year life that actually gives us long-term security on essentially State Highway 1 over water, that connects the south and North Island—it’s a critical piece of infrastructure. And we’ve got a great solution that we had at the end of last year, we’ve got even a better solution today, and we’re doing all of that infinitely cheaper than what was previously proposed by the last Government.

No, not at this point. I mean, you’ve seen Winston talk about the fact that obviously the infrastructure in Picton is at end of life and that will be upgraded at the—at the ferry—at the terminal end of it, and obviously there’s partial infrastructure here in Wellington, that we can continue to use some of the existing infrastructure in a much better way. So, from my point of view, the headline is pretty simple and I can’t get any clearer. You know, the current ships will go through to 2029. They’ll be well maintained. They’re perfectly safe and legitimate to use up until that period of time when they get to the end of their life. Actually, the condition of the ships is actually in pretty good shape and could go longer, but we think 2029 is the date. We’ve got a proposal on the table that actually gives us a really good long-term solution, and good on Winston for improving on what we had. I’m proud of him.

Well, I mean that’s a separate conversation, as to we don’t need to do that in order to get a solution for the Cook Strait. What we need to be able to do is make sure we get good port infrastructure at both ends, and we need to make sure we’ve got the right ship, right sized ship, that actually can manage the ocean well.

We support all New Zealanders. That’s what we’re here to do, we’re here to make sure that we advocate for all New Zealanders. That’s why we’re working incredibly hard, as I keep saying, to make sure whether you’re transgender or non-transgender that we actually build a better economy for you, you feel safe, and you get better health and a better education.

You’re conflating two issues. I disagree—

Excuse me, would you like me to answer or not?

You wouldn’t want to be making a sweeping generalisation or any discrimination there, Claudette.

All I’m saying to you is I thought the language was inappropriate. That’s what I said. I said if one of my MPs had used similar language, I think you would be holding me to account and scrutinising it very strongly, I think the MPs would and so would the public.

No, no. Sorry, Jenna, last question.

Well, I don’t actually care what pronouns people use, you know. That’s pretty straightforward.

No, no, no, what they use to—what they use for themselves is up to them, I—you know, what I’m here to do is focus on some pretty—bigger things than that. OK, thanks so much everyone, appreciate it.