Post-Cabinet Press Conference: Monday, 20 October 2025

Well, kia ora, good afternoon, everyone. Look, delivering modern, reliable infrastructure is one of the five pillars of our Going for Growth Plan and it is absolutely key to enabling future economic growth. It’s critical to our economic productivity, better public services, and also lifting incomes. We’ve already announced that $7 billion worth of infrastructure projects will get underway before Christmas. Those are new roads, classrooms and hospital buildings, and these projects will create thousands of jobs and enable both urban and regional growth. Now, alongside the big infrastructure jobs is the important task of getting those jobs done easier and quicker. We want building them to be faster by cutting red tape.

Fast-track is already proving its worth and already three projects have received fast-track approval. Prioritising a new wharf and berths at the ports of Auckland and housing developments at Maitahi Village in Nelson and also Milldale in Auckland are creating jobs, growth, and momentum in the construction sector. We are taking away the barriers and the red tape that have traditionally hamstrung New Zealand’s progress with new RMA legislation due in the House by the end of this year, and today we’re announcing the next stage in building our roads of national significance.

The Government, as you know, has announced 17 roads of national significance. These are the highways that will make a real difference in people’s lives. It is a huge investment in New Zealand’s future and we make no apology for doing so. This investment will make Kiwis’ lives easier, whether by moving people and goods more quickly and reducing travel times, or by making our roads safer and more resilient with less road closures, and by unlocking future growth and new housing. The bottom line is that we need to act now to future-proof this country’s infrastructure.

Yes, we are coming out of challenging financial times, but we are starting to see some positive signs in our economic recovery. Tourism numbers are up 34 percent since 2023 and our agriculture sector is also performing well. The recent 50 percent interest rate cut will also provide further support for households, with the cost of servicing a typical $500,000 mortgage now around $400 a fortnight less than it was in the middle of last year.

This country needs to be ready for the good times and we need to be building now to meet the demands of the future. We want to shape our recovery, not just observe it. Our roads of national significance, therefore, will allow the wheels of industry to get business done more efficiently, and we intend to do all that we can to expedite that. And with that, I’ll pass over to Chris to provide some further details.

Thank you, Prime Minister. Today I’m laying out the next steps in the Government’s roads of national significance programme. As the Prime Minister says, we’re committed to building a long-term transport infrastructure pipeline to address New Zealand’s infrastructure deficit. Building infrastructure supports economic growth, creates jobs and opportunities for New Zealanders, and to help Government with funding decisions and the construction sector with workforce planning decisions, it’s important we have a long-term pipeline of projects that are credible, carefully planned and designed, and consented. The roads of national significance programme is a really important part of this pipeline and the NZTA has been working really hard over the last couple of years to get these projects ready for delivery.

Today is a significant day. The Transport Agency board has now endorsed investment cases for all of the roads of national significance, with the most recent endorsements including sections 2 and 3 of the Northland Expressway, the East-West Link in Auckland that connects State Highway 20 and State Highway 1, the Hamilton Southern Links project, Petone to Granada and the Cross Valley Link connecting State Highway 2 and State Highway 1, State

Highway Wellington improvements, including a second Mt Victoria tunnel and a second Terrace Tunnel, the Hope Bypass Project in Nelson. The investment case summaries have been published on the New Zealand Transport Agency website.

We’re also announcing combined funding of nearly $1.2 billion to move these roads to the next stage of development. There’s $675 million to progress consenting, design, route protection, site investigations, and some early works. You can’t just turn up and build a road tomorrow. Actually, it takes some time. Designations and consenting, route protection, site investigations are all a really important part of that. There’s also $515 million expected to be used from property funding to enable local property acquisition to get underway on these projects.

The approval of funding by the board and the investment cases ensures progress on these projects can continue. It is important we have a clear plan for delivery, including well-reasoned prioritisation to inform the order with which these roads will be funded and ultimately delivered, and we’ll have more to say about that in coming months. But today is all about completing all of the investment cases for the roads, unlocking the potential to start those projects in due course with the commitment of $1.2 billion or so of funding, and as I say, building that long-term transport infrastructure pipeline to build jobs and growth for the long term. Thank you, PM.

Well, thanks, Chris. Look, just before we get to questions, this week, obviously, Wednesday is a members’ day. Thursday, the funeral of Jim Bolger is being held at 11 am at Our Lady of Kāpiti Catholic Church in Paraparaumu, and Chris is actually going to ask the Business Committee to consider delaying the start of Question Time to 3 pm so as many people can attend as possible. With that, I guess Chris and I happy to take your questions. Can we focus first and foremost on this announcement and then we’ll come to other general questions of the day?

So those will be the things that we weigh up over the next couple of months. It is a complex picture between deliverability, market capacity, ensuring a regional spread. Some projects, frankly, are quicker, are going to be quicker to bring to market than others. Take, for example, the alternative state highway project in Auckland. That’s, frankly, a project that’s probably a bit more for the longer term, and there are other projects that are more construction-ready. So we’re just going to be weighing up construction readiness, the ability to deliver funding, getting a regional spread around the place as well. I just want to take a bit of time to get the prioritisation order in place. But the point is, all of the projects have gone through the investment case process and, you know, they all have good benefit/cost ratios that justify the investment.

The project’s been redesigned to some extent. You can have a look at exactly how that’s happened. The East-West Link is actually an example of how our planning laws and our resource management laws have stymied growth. That project has been tied up in the courts for year after year after year, and is actually a classic example of how the RMA has got in the way of progress.

It is an expensive project but if you look at the investment case, it’s got a benefit/cost, from memory, of over three. That is the most—that economic hub in Penrose and the surrounding area is a massive freight and logistics hub. It’s an incredibly important part of Auckland. In fact it’s an incredibly important part of the national economy, and the idea that basically the trucks trundle from State Highway 1 to State Highway 20 along a local road, clogging up the traffic for everyone else who’s just, you know, living in the area or trying to get around the place, is frankly nuts, and the idea that we need to connect State Highway 1 and 20, I don’t think anyone disagrees with. The debate has been about the extent of it and the exact route and all of that, and so NZTA has gone away and done quite a bit of work on that. And that is a really important project for Auckland in fact for New Zealand.

It’s from the Transport Agency—it’s from the Transport Agency so it’s ultimately paid for by road user charges and petrol tax, which is hypothecated.

It’s new funding that the Transport Agency board has committed to that they will be spending over the next months and years.

Well, it’s from—it’s from the National Land Transport Fund, yes.

Well, I mean, there’s—if you—there’s some detail provided around each of the individual 17 projects. You know, you’re very struck reading through, you know, it’s 13 minutes off of commute time here. It’s actually a better, more resilient road that—if you think about the Brynderwyns, for example, which is just, you know, often in road closures for good parts of the year, you know, the resilience of those roads being created. So for each of them it’s a different sort of mix of benefits, you know, for commuter time, for safety, for road resilience, and obviously that has huge economic benefits.

We know that, you know, if we want to lift the collective living standards of this country, there’s five things we have to do. One is we have to get a world-class education system in place. We have to have more technology innovation. We need to get rid of red tape. We need to have doubling of trade and investment. And importantly, we need to have modern, reliable infrastructure. And we can do those five things as part of our long-term plan. That’s what we’re working towards because that’s what will make New Zealand, you know, much, much better economically.

The starting point for all of the roads, as per the Government policy statement on transport, is that roads will be tolled. Now, the Transport Agency goes through a process around working out exactly how the road will be tolled and making a recommendation to the Government, to me, which is ultimately made by Cabinet. But a starting point is that we will toll the roads and the reason for that is that a) it brings forward the investment, so it provides a revenue source, a revenue stream that you wouldn’t otherwise get, and b) it provides an ongoing revenue stream for the maintenance and the ongoing operations of the roads as well.

And I think, you know, we’ve already made decisions to toll the Ōtaki to North Levin road. Construction has started on that already. We’ve made decisions to toll the new Penlink road, which is north of Auckland, and we’ve made decisions to toll Tauranga Northern Link—or Takitimu Northern Link as it’s now called—stages 1 and 2 as well. So we’ve already made those decisions and we’re consulting on tolling the Belfast to Pegasus road down south as well. So I think people—I mean, if you look at the Belfast debate there’s been a bit of local opposition to it, including by the Mayor. My sense is though, most people, once they realise if they don’t — if you don’t toll things, the road is delayed or doesn’t happen at all, people say, “Well, just bring the tolling forward, thanks, we’d just rather pay a bit extra to drive on the road”, and that’s our starting point and that’s what we’re doing.

Yeah, so the Transport Agency will be considering that but it’s not just a second Mt Victoria tunnel, so I want to stress that. The project that’s been endorsed by the board is what’s called — now called State Highway 1 Wellington improvements. So it’s a duplicate Terrace Tunnel. It’s three-laning down Vivian Street, so no longer, if the project goes ahead, no longer will you be able to park on Vivian Street, which frankly I think is ridiculous, so it will be a road, which is actually what it should be. Then it will be grade separation - which has been widely discussed over many years - at the Basin Reserve and then it will be a duplicate Mt Victoria Tunnel.

So it’s actually a package, and the reason why it’s a package is that you could do the Mount Vic Tunnel but you just shift the problem. You could do the Terrace Tunnel but you just shift the problem. You’ve actually got to do the whole lot. And before anyone asks, yes, there is provision for walking and cycling through the second Mt Victoria tunnel. So I’m looking forward to Julie Anne Genter’s strong tweet in endorsement of this very important project.

Let it go, let it go.

That will be exactly what is studied by the Transport Agency when it comes to—when they make their recommendation to us. But as I say, the starting point for all the roads is the consideration of tolling, the next step is to look at exactly what the traffic flows will be as part of that, and then the other thing I would say about Wellington is you’ve got the other debate around congestion pricing or a cordon charge as well. We’re also progressing time of use pricing. So it may be that those conversations merge together at some point, or it may not be. Let’s just wait and see where we get to.

Well, actually, the majority of the people who would be hit by this would be people in my electorate of Lower Hutt who currently drive to and from the airport, or go to the eastern suburbs of Wellington. And, you know, if indeed we did toll it or looked at some congestion price, we’d be asking them to, you know, pay a little bit extra. That would be a challenging conversation, I’ve no doubt about that.

However, if you also said to people on the Hutt Valley, in Lower Hutt and Upper Hutt and frankly Porirua as well, if you said to them, “You no longer will have to wait for 15 minutes at the Terrace on-ramp in the morning, you can just go straight through, and then no longer wait for 20 minutes to get to the eastern suburbs because you’ve got to drive through a tunnel that was built in 1931 and takes 40,000 vehicle movements per day and hasn’t been added to in the last 93 years”, I think people would say, “Well, if it shaves, you know, 15 minutes off my commute in the morning, yeah, I’m prepared to pay a little bit of extra money for that”. I think— I think many people in the Hutt Valley and Porirua would say that. So we’re going to have— you know, that’s a conversation for another day, but—well, [Inaudible].

But I—but I think the bigger point is that, you know, we want to get infrastructure built. And we can keep talking about things like we have done for decades now, about roads we’re “gonna, gonna, gonna” one day build, or otherwise we actually find a new funding and financing way to actually pull that investment forward, get that road built now—it’s going to be cheaper to build it today than it will be tomorrow—

That’s right.

—partner with the right people and the right financing and funding mechanisms in order to get that infrastructure there, so that people get the benefit of that road, whether it’s economic, social, or arguably environmental benefits of it. So, you know, this is how it’s done in other modern countries all around the world. Has been for many, many years. I lived in Sydney in the mid-90s, I can tell you, as they put tolls in across the city in order to get infrastructure built quicker and roads built faster, that was well understood and well appreciated.

Well, ultimately that’s over to them. We are putting forward the Government’s plan for the projects that we want to build. In due course we will publish our prioritisation exercise of the projects that we want to see built and the rough order in which we want to see them build. I can’t control the Labour Party, God knows. You know, what I can control, or what the Government can control, is what Government policy is, and these projects are very important for New Zealand’s future.

I think, Jamie, I’d just say—sorry, just, Jamie, on that one, I mean what’s interesting to me is the Labour Party can’t even agree a position on public-private partnerships. Well, Jacinta Allan and Chris Minns from the Labour Party in New South Wales and Victoria—the Labour Party for the last 30 years in Australia have understood what public-private partnerships are and how they work. You know, Barbara Edmonds can write a lovely forward in our document about public-private partnerships and then it’s undone by Kieran McAnulty and Megan Woods the next day, and then by Chris Hipkins again. So, you know, we will keep reaching out. The more that we can actually put infrastructure projects into, you know, a 30-year pipeline, where we’re actually not discussing the actual projects, we’re just discussing how we might fund them, and the relative priority of them remains unchanged and outside the political process, I think that’s all good stuff.

Yeah, I’ve talked about having a bipartisan approach to the Government’s 30-year plan, for example, which a draft has been published and we’ve had some meetings about between the Government and the Opposition. But in relation to these projects, no.

I’ve had some—I’ve had some phone calls with him and I’ve had some sort of, I would say, informal meetings. I haven’t had a formal meeting with him, no.

Sorry, [Inaudible]—

State Highway 35 up on the East Coast?

Yeah.

Is that the one you’re talking about?

Yeah, Gisborne.

Yeah, yeah, Tairāwhiti. It’s not—it’s not named—I mean the announcement today is about the roads of national significance, of which that is not one, but very aware of the challenges there. In fact, there is funding from Budget 2025, the North Island, for severe weather events, which I’d have to double-check but I’m pretty sure there’s some money going towards that project.

Well, it’s not that it’s not an unimportant road, it’s just that not everything can be a road of national significance and these are the 17 we’ve chosen. But it’s not to say it’s not unimportant.

Well, I would just say that’s a bit rich coming from Labour, isn’t it? These are the same clowns that actually said they announced new projects in 2018, you know, Kāpiti, north of Levin, then actually, yeah, cancelled it in 2018, reannounced it in 2020, didn’t do anything about it. Melling, you know, announced in 2018, cancelled in 2020, didn’t do anything about it. We’re getting on and doing it. So, you know, our legacy of actually getting stuff done is really important.

You know, these are the same clowns that actually spent, what, $300 million on a six-year project to work out where Auckland Light Rail may possibly go, and not a single metre has happened. Well, in Montreal, they started a project a year later, and they delivered it within five years, and people are using that light rail system. This is the same outfit that actually put in place, you know, Let’s Get Wellington Moving, and what do we get? One very expensive pedestrian crossing, maybe, if we’re lucky. So, I mean, no disrespect but these guys have no ideas, no track record of delivery whatsoever, so you know they can say whatever the hell they want but, you know, really we’re not that interested.

There’s $172 million for property acquisition and $185 million for consents design and early works development for the State Highway 1 Wellington project, so within the next year you will see spades in the ground on that project.

Well, I mean, totally underwhelming. Pretty classic Labour, isn’t it? No detail, no costings. I think three of the 12 pages I saw were pictures and just a whole bunch of buzzwords and jargon and nothing, actually no detail on it. Can’t list the companies for commercial reasons, apparently, market-sensitive reason. What a load of rubbish. So I mean, like, honestly, no detail, no costings, and frankly, you know, if we’d dished something up like that, we would have been crucified for that.

Well, inflation is at 3 percent. It’s within the band of the Reserve Bank. Under Labour, it was at 7.3 percent. So we have brought inflation down in just under 18 months or, you know, 18 months, two years, and that’s making a big difference. If you care about working people and—who are doing it really tough, you actually manage an economy well and you make sure you get spending under control so you get inflation under control, so you get interest rates down. That’s exactly the path that we’ve been putting in place. So they wrecked the economy, let’s be clear. They just spent more, tax more, borrowed more, and they’ll continue to do more of that going forward. But that is what caused the pain and suffering that New Zealanders are experiencing up and down this country.

Well, there was no—there was no—I mean, I just had a very cursory look at it on my way down but I mean, like, there was no numbers in the—in the document whatsoever. There wasn’t even the $200 million seed money that I understood Barbara Edmonds talked about in the briefing. But if you look at it, over the last three years there’s anywhere from $600 to $800 million worth of dividends. Well, that money is actually used to pay for health and education, so where’s that going to come from? Where’s the costing for that? What is the implication of that on the delivery of the deficit, for example? So, you know, where’s the thinking behind it all? There is no detail, there is no costings, it’s just classic Labour.

But, you know—someone said to me, “Oh, it’s like the Tamasic model.” It’s nothing like the Tamasic model. Tamasic can actually trade assets in and out. They can recycle assets. They can actually invest overseas. They can do a bunch of things. It’s got nothing to do with that. So, yeah, it just—it just smacked a little bit of what we saw in Health New Zealand. Let’s take 20 DHBs, throw another 2,500 managers over the top, call it a wrapper called “Health New Zealand” and actually not really make it work.

I mean, the key issue here is making—you know, I just—they’ve got no details and as I said to you, after two years in Opposition, this is your first outing. You know, honestly, if we had done that, we would have been crucified, absolutely crucified, without showing up with numbers. We showed up with a tax plan, fully costed, you know, a—you know, well out from an election. So I just think, look, you know, just more of the same of what we’ve seen, a whole bunch of bumper stickers and buzzwords, no detail, no numbers, and as a result, nothing’s going to happen.

Yeah, it’s what’s actually called an official funeral, as I understand it. So essentially, it’s, you know, some Government support, acknowledging there’s probably going to be 1,000 people that will be coming to the funeral, so we work with the family on funeral arrangements there. But this will be—you know, it’s what he wanted, which is at his local Catholic church in Paraparaumu, and the family have been very generous in acknowledging there’ll be people that want to come and pay their respects to Jim, and as a result they’ve encompassed it all into one farewell.

Yes, I will be going. Yeah, looking forward to it. I mean, he was someone, I think, that sort of left quite a legacy around economic, social and constitutional change, if you think about, you know, inheriting a hell of a mess and cleaning that up through the ‘90s.

Economically it was a very challenging time for New Zealand. Certainly the work that he did repositioning New Zealand into Asia, the work he did on Treaty settlements, and ultimately also sort of MMP being introduced are pretty big issues. And I think, you know, he actually led in very difficult times, doing the right things, as I said, for the right reasons at the right time.

I got to spend—I didn’t know him super well but I got to know him a little bit before I came into politics and then, you know, when I was in Opposition and in Government. He would be at different events and we’d have often the odd phone call. But I remember being out with him at a bar, as I said before, and Waikanae, and this guy loved politics and he loved people. And so even at 87 years old, he was out there with me, working the bar.

Yeah, well, you’ve obviously—right in the middle of this one because, you know, the issue is I think the situation raises some pretty good questions and I’ve got a lot of sympathy about it being overreach and an impingement on free speech. So I think, you know, the issue for us is let’s actually see where Goldsmith gets to with a review of it all. But we know—but we know that that this area—

Well, let’s see where he gets to because I know he wants to think about it a little bit. But I’d just say to you that we know that regulation in this area is incredibly difficult. If you’re seriously going to tell me you’re going to go off and regulate and legislate for every social media piece and online—you know, we know it’s a difficult environment, as we saw with the Fair Digital Bargaining Bill and other things. So I’d just say to you I think—I’ve got some sympathy. It’s a bit of an overreach.

I don’t know. Those are things that Goldsmith can look at. But I think, you know, our view is that there is a role for it to play but, you know, whether it’s going outside its terms, you know, that’s something that he’ll look at.

I just think it’s a really complex area and a very difficult area to regulate, as we’ve seen on things like the Fair Digital Bargaining Bill. It all sounds very simple at the beginning and you get into it very quickly and it’s very difficult. I think it actually, you know, there is a risk that it is overreaching and impinging on free speech, and so, you know, let’s see where Goldsmith gets to on it. You know, he’ll have a good look at it. But I’m just highlighting that I’ve got some sympathy for it, I think it’s difficult, and let’s see where they get to.

Well, again, our focus here is, you know, we put—deliberately put money in from day one to make sure that IRD had good enforcement resources. It’s important that our tax system is upheld. It’s important that there is good enforcement. There have been times through COVID and other periods where there’s been, you know, some liberation and relaxation, understandably so, often when businesses have had zero revenue, for example. But it’s quite right that we actually make sure our tax system is enforced, and every dollar we put in there, it’s generating a good return and I think that’s entirely appropriate.

No, I’m comfortable with the fact that we’re putting more money in, deliberately so, as a conscious decision to make sure that IRD is enforcing our laws, our tax laws, and making sure that it is—people are paying their fair share of tax.

Well, again, I’m not—I’m not interested in the past, I’m interested in right now, and my view, very clearly—I’ve directed very strongly Simon Watts and others to put money into IRD in order to make sure that we are actually enforcing our tax laws. When you have a tax system and laws are not respected, and payments are not made—and we want to make sure there’s no evasion—then that’s important that we actually have a good, strong enforcement investment to do so.

Well, it’s classic councils. They’ve got to focus on the things that matter most to their ratepayers, not all the extras. Spending $2.5 million on a public toilet block with a light show is not a good use of money, and punters are paying, the public are paying for it. That’s unfair and it’s unacceptable, so councils—you saw mayors lose their jobs because they actually had high rates. Councils need to be very, very focused on doing the basics brilliantly, no different from what we’ve been trying to do here in central Government. We expect our local Government to do exactly the same.

About the what, mate?

Well, I think what we’ve got here is a slogan. I don’t think we have an idea. I don’t think we have any detail and no costings. So, you know, I just encourage you to read through the 10 or 12 pages and if you can work out what the hell they’re talking about, good luck. But I’m just saying to you, you know, that is just classic Labour. You know, how do you spend two years in Opposition, your first policy out the gate is this? And as I said, man, if I dished this up to you guys or to the country, we would have been crucified for it. But no numbers, no detail, classic Labour.

No, look, I expect parties to take their policies to the election, as they will next year, and compete strongly and try and get support for their respective policies amongst their own constituencies. That’s not something we’ve talked further.

No, I don’t need to. No, I mean we don’t need politicians telling Fonterra what to do or farmers to do. Farmers are quite capable of working out what they want to do. It’s their livelihoods. They’re very astute business people. That’s ultimately their decision. Winston can have his views on what he reckons should or shouldn’t happen there. I have a different set of—perspective, a personal view that I actually think it’s a really good thing, actually. The margins and the profitability of a consumer goods business is infinitely lower than a—than a— than a food ingredients or a food service one, so actually part of the reason why Fonterra is doing so well and actually generating great returns is because of a shift in strategy, which makes much better sense. And so, from my point of view—that’s my personal view. I’ll articulate that when I asked it, but at the end of the day, our views are secondary because actually the farmers matter the most. I trust our farmers. They’ll make their own decision. It’s their livelihoods, they’re the shareholders, and they should make those calls as they should.

I’ll come here and then I’ll come to you.

Oh, look, I mean, I’m—I think it’s absolutely tragic for the kids that have been missing out on huge amounts of school. I think for the kids who are about to go into NCEA in the next two weeks, I think for the parents that have been mucked around, I think for the 6,000 patients that are going to have their surgeries that have been on a wait list that Labour ran up 30 times and we’re trying to power through it. I think that’s an incredible, you know, a tragic thing that they want to go to strike this week.

From my point of view, it’s incredibly politically motivated by the unions. Let’s be clear about it. If you care about it, stop the strike, get back around the table and negotiate. We did a deal just last Friday with the, you know, primary principals union, and they came in very clear about what they wanted, clear about the trade-offs. I think both parties got a good deal off the back of that.

Yeah, look, I mean, I worked obviously with Teamsters unions in North America. We never had strike action there. I worked obviously my whole time at Air New Zealand, we had 42 contracts and no strike action there.

A lot of it is actually working and actually highlighting the situation that the company is in, and actually having good literacy from the union side as to what the performance of the organisation actually is, in this case the Government. You know, the reality is we would love New Zealand to be wealthier so we could afford more and better public services and pay our public servants more, but the reality is we are in very difficult straitened times, thanks to Labour. We don’t just go run up the debt, and you guys may or may not care about this stuff but actually you should, as it goes from $60 billion to $180 billion. That’s a $9 billion interest bill that we write off to the world each and every year. That is money that we don’t get to spend on public services in this country, more schools, hospitals, teacher pay, nurses’ pay, all that kind of stuff. So we have to make this country wealthier in order to afford more public services.

But once you acknowledge the reality that you’re in, that’s where you need to have good commercial literacy from the union side that understands the organisation, and vice versa, what are the things that—not just always financial. You know, we are asking quite simply for teachers to say when you’ve got 12 weeks of school holidays a year, it’s not unreasonable to expect that teacher-only days or professional development would happen in that time frame. That’s not unreasonable. Let’s have that conversation.

No, I don’t need to. The negotiations, the terms and conditions are done between the Public Service Commissioner doing the centralised bargaining and also the CEO of Health New Zealand, who are the employers, with the respective unions. And so I just say the unions, you know, pull the strike on Thursday and get back round the—round the table. We’re ready to go.

Sorry?

I think it’s deeply politically motivated. I honestly do. I think, you know, I appreciate the unions are very close with Labour, I get it, they don’t like our Government, I get it. But actually they’re not serving their members well, and I don’t think they’re actually serving the kids, the patients and the parents of New Zealand well.

I thought it was an excellent letter. Her and I talked about it before she sent it. I thought it was a fantastic letter.

Oh, what a load of rubbish.

Well, they might be, but it’s going to be a negligible amount of money. It’s not—you know, it’s—it’ll be a negligible amount of money. But they’re not attacking the unions. They’re actually just in a world of misinformation. They’ll be doing what they need to do, which is laying out their offer.

We’ve had a situation—you know, take the PPPTA last Friday week. Comes in, does a negotiation with the Government. We actually—they ask us to put new terms together. We put those new terms together on Friday night, we say, “We’re available to talk to you all through the weekend”. Instead, they just go straight out to strike, don’t even take the offer, the new offer, to their members. Well, that’s bad faith, right? We want to see good faith negotiations and good faith bargaining.

And so whether it’s that—you’ve had Simeon Brown. You heard it, you know, a couple of weeks ago. He said, look, the senior doctors have been negotiating with Health New Zealand for a very long time, I think over a year or so, and actually he said to both the Health New Zealand CEO and the head of the unions. Why don’t you actually go to binding arbitration, get an independent person to pick a number? And the union still said no.

So, you know, like, you’ve got to be a bit real about this stuff, which is we have a responsibility to make sure we are doing everything we can in very difficult financial times, that we’re being responsible about that. But equally, we expect them to show up and engage and not just go into strike action because it’s politically motivated.

Well, I just think the unions are not serving their members well by going straight to strike. You know, like, seriously, what does a union wanting to talk about Palestine have to do with educational outcomes for New Zealand kids? Seriously. I mean, you must think that’s completely insane, right? I mean, why on earth? Your core mission in life is to manage your members’ interests, and your core engagement with a Minister should be around what are we doing around attendance, curriculum, you know, improving academic outcomes. That’s surely in the interests of the union, not the state of Palestine, for goodness’ sake.

Sorry?

I can’t talk to that. What I can say is what I’m experiencing in the last 18 months is clearly, you know, a lot of political motivation from unions that I don’t think is serving the people of New Zealand well. We have outstanding nurses, doctors, and teachers. We’ve been working hard at actually making sure we put extra learning support resource, for example, into teachers, so we get more teacher aids into the education system. We’ve gone out and said, actually, we’ll pay the teacher registration fees to teachers up and down this country. We’ve hired 2,100 more nurses extra than what we had when we started. We’ve hired 600 more doctors extra than what we started with Health New Zealand.

So it’s not just the bargaining and the—and the—and the dollars and cents, it’s also about the conditions and the terms and other things that we’re doing as well. So there’s a huge amount of investment going on across the public service to make sure that we beef up and improve the quality of our frontline service delivery.

But all I’m just saying to you is the answer is not going to be strikes. The answer is actually to come back to the table, sit down, just like the primary principals did—principals did on Friday. They did a smart deal because there’s no backdating of payments and so as a result, they get—every week that it goes on is another week that members of unions don’t get any benefit from new contract arrangements.

No, no, I’m saying we deeply value them and we really appreciate the work they’re doing, and that’s why this Government—

—that’s why this Government—the unions are politically motivated. But that’s why we are making sure that we are investing in health and education, as you’ve seen in our first two budgets, and we’ll continue to do so. OK, team, thank you so much. Have a great week. See you soon.