Kia ora koutou katoa, ngā mihi nui kia koutou.
I welcome you in the language of Te Reo Māori and bring you the warmest greetings of Aotearoa New Zealand.
I consider it a true honour and a privilege to be joining you here this morning, so I thank you for sharing and spending a little bit of time with me.
I began preparing my comments for today’s event while sitting at my constituency office
in Auckland, New Zealand.
It’s a relatively humble space; made all the more so by the fact I have never quite unpacked
my office, and I still sit amongst quite a few boxes.
But on my desk sits a photo of my nana, who died when I was 12, but was a really staunch member of the New Zealand Labour Party, the party I am now very very proud to lead.
Next to my Nana sits a framed image of Kate Sheppard. She was the suffragist we in New Zealand credit for
the fact that women were granted the right to vote in New Zealand 125 years ago. We were the very first in the world.
A framed box nearby holds a letter I received from Hillary Clinton after the 2017 election
in New Zealand, which she has signed off with the words “never, never, never give up.”
And finally, on my far wall sits a cartoon. It’s of Nelson Mandela and underneath it
contains his words “overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice.”
You could say the artefacts I sit amongst in that office sum up my life in politics.
It started with my family, has been full of role models, but ultimately it is
motivated by the idea that politics is a place you can address injustice.
I grew up in two small towns in New Zealand. Given our population is roughly 4.5 million
here in America you probably consider our entire country a small town.
I’m talking something like 3000 people.
The first town I grew up in was a little place called Murupara and it taught me about inequality.
I was raised the daughter of a policeman, and was a product of the 1980s where New Zealand
went through a rapid period of privatisation and economic liberalisation. We called it
Rogernomics after our Finance Minister of the time, in America the same phenomenon was
called Reaganonmics, and the impact on working families was similar. Jobs in New Zealand were lost, manufacturers
moved off shore, regulations were removed and the gap between rich and poor grew.
Then came the 1990s. A conservative government in New Zealand introduced reforms that brought
user pay to the fore and welfare cuts for the poorest.
I was young when all of this was happening around me, but I still remember it. If it’s
possible to build your social conscience when you are a school girl, then that is what happened
to me. I never looked at the world through the lens of politics though, but rather through
the lens of fairness.
And that sentiment captures one of the most pervasive values that we have in Aotearoa
New Zealand. We are proud but also self-deprecating. Dreamers but also complete pragmatists. And if there
is one thing we hate, it is injustice.
We try our best to do right by one another. Perhaps it comes from being a million miles
from anywhere, isolated and reliant on one another.
We think a three hour flight is a short commute, and hardly bat an eye lid at 12. It takes
a full 24 hours in the sky to connect us to Europe and don’t even get me started on
a 20 hour flight to New York with a three month old baby!
Yet despite our geographic isolation we are acutely aware of the impact we have on the
world, and that the rest of the world has on us.
These are the values I believe we need to display in our politics. Because politics
is increasingly a dirty word, but values are not.
Values have always been my starting point. I signed up to a political party when I was
17, not because I was looking for a career, but because (perhaps naively then) I wanted
to change the world. I was promptly handed 300 leaflets and started changing said world
one mailbox at a time.
But what does it look like to bring that values based approach into politics? How do we make
the rhetoric meaningful, and make sure we’re delivering genuine changes for our population?
Some would argue that if you’re looking for a long list of values-based reforms, look
no further than the SDGs, and they would be right. An earnest politician would be hard
pressed to argue with goals like halving poverty, preserving the sustainability of our oceans
or inclusive education.
And yet they haven’t been treated as a given, and on a number of measures I know we in New
Zealand have a long way to go.
Our response to this challenge hasn’t been to create a tick box list. Instead, we have
decided to try something no other country has done before and embed indicators like
the SDGs into everything we do.
And we’ve started by redefining what success looks like.
Traditionally, success or failure in politics has been measured in purely economic terms.
Growth, GDP, your trade deficit and the level of debt you carry. On those terms, you would
call New Zealand relatively successful. But in the last few years the deficiency of such
measures has become stark.
We have had rates of growth that international commentators have remarked upon and commended,
but at the same time we also had some of the worst homelessness in the OECD and growing
inequality. I don’t consider that success. Economic growth accompanied by worsening social
outcomes is a failure.
So we are establishing brand new measures of national achievement that go beyond growth.
We have for instance created a tool called the Living Standards Framework. It puts the
notion of sustainable intergenerational wellbeing at the centre of the different decision making
processes we have - policy advice, government expenditure and long term management of our
assets.
We will start tracking our progress using a range of new and different tools. Our Statistics
department is at the moment working on an ambitious project called Indicators Aotearoa
New Zealand that aims to create a comprehensive set of indicators across the different dimensions
of the current and future wellbeing of New Zealanders; economic, cultural, social and
environmental.
These new tools will help us deliver, and monitor the delivery of goals like the SDGs.
Our first test of this new approach in some ways will be early next year. That’s when
we will deliver our first budget using these new measures, and new approach. We’ve called
it the well-being budget, and it will unashamedly look to invest in generational change.
But all of this is the how – the way we are choosing to work. It doesn’t tell you
much about what it is that we will be rolling out. Our agenda for change. For that, I want
to reference again the starting point for New Zealand.
Like many, New Zealand has not been immune to a period of rapid and transformational
change these past few decades. Globalisation has changed the way we operate, but it has
also had a material difference on the lives of our citizens.
Not everyone has been well served by those changes, however.
While at a global level economic growth has been unprecedented, the distribution of benefits
has been uneven at the level of individuals and communities. In fact for many, the transition
our economy made in the wake of globalisation has been jarring,
Now as politicians, we all have choices in how we respond to these challenges.
We can whip up resentment or we can build a response.
My choice is action.
That’s why one of our key priorities is to grow and share more fairly New Zealand’s
prosperity.
We’re investing more in research and development so that we improve the productivity of our
economy, we’re focusing on shifting away from volume to value in our export, and we
are committed to lifting wages.
We know we can’t fund our social programme unless we generate income from exports. We
are supporting exporters but also workers and the environment by pursuing a new form
of progressive free trade agreements and developing a trade for all agenda
We are modernising our Reserve Bank so that it works to keep both inflation in check but also
unemployment low, and we’re committed to a better balanced and fairer tax system.
We also need to do better at lifting the incomes of New Zealanders and sharing the
gains of economic growth.
So we are progressing pay equity settlements with new groups of predominantly women workers,
we're taking the pressure off families by extending paid parental leave to 26 weeks, we're closing
the gender pay gap and we have already raised the minimum wage.
When fully rolled out our Families Package – a tax credit policy aimed at low and middle
income earners – will lift thousands of children out of poverty.
But economic gains and growth matter for nothing if we sacrifice our environment along the
way, or if we fail to prepare for the future. That’s why we are transitioning to a clean,
green carbon neutral New Zealand.
That means making the transition to a net zero carbon economy, and we want to do that
by 2050. Our $100 million Green Innovation Fund will help business to tap opportunities
in smart, low carbon industries. We have also launched a programme that will see one billion
trees planted over the next ten years to support our climate change agenda, and generate jobs,
put an end to new offshore oil and gas exploration and set a goal of 100% renewable energy by
2035.
We also need to bring back some authenticity to our clean green image by better managing
the waste we produce, investing to protect our unique biodiversity and ensuring our rivers
are swimmable for future generations. We have plans in each of these areas.
But of course, we are nothing without our people. We have set ourselves some big goals,
like ensuring that everyone who is able is either earning, learning, caring or volunteering
– including making the first year of tertiary study completely free of fees.
We’re supporting healthier, safer and more connected communities, ensuring everyone has
a warm, dry home, and last but not least, making New Zealand the best place in the world
to be a child.
This agenda is personal to me.
I am the Minister for Child Poverty Reduction.
I took that portfolio because of the importance we place on lifting tens of thousands of children
out of poverty and the importance I place on ensuring that every child, no matter their
background, has the basics and the opportunity to thrive and reach their potential.
We are determined to make a difference. This year we will pass into law the Child Poverty
Reduction Bill that will make it a legislative requirement to lift more and more kids out
of poverty.
But we also know that it’s not just about family incomes, but whether a child has all
of their needs met, including good health, a roof over their head, a great education,
and perhaps the thing that we are too quick to place last on the list – time with their
parents or caregivers.
If I were to sum up our agenda though, it would be simple. I want to demonstrate that
politics doesn’t have to be about three or four year cycles. It doesn’t have to
be self-interested or have a singular focus.
It can think about long term challenges, and respond to them. It can be designed to think
about the impact on others, and show that it’s making a difference. And it can even
be kind.
As an international community I am constantly heartened by our ability to take a multilateral
approach, to sign up to a set of aspirations that are values based.
But perhaps it’s time to also challenge ourselves to move beyond aspiration to action.
I can assure you that is what we will be doing from our corner of the world.
And I can also assure you we will never, never, never give up.