Labour has now been in Government five years: a good point to take stock and gauge our progress as we plan towards the future.
Despite Covid causing the greatest economic downturn in New Zealand since the Great Depression, our economy is in a good position relative to the rest of the world.
Thanks to strong economic management, debt is low, exports are up, and our economy is larger now than before the pandemic.
We have more people in work, with higher wages, which makes Dunedin families and our economy strong.
We’ve also seen child poverty decline, and measures such as our Families Package, minimum wage increases, benefit increases, and free lunches in schools have helped to lift families’ wellbeing.
Turning around New Zealand’s record on child poverty wasn’t the only big, long-term challenge that we were elected to fix.
The housing crisis is a problem that has been decades in the making, and while there’s no easy solution, the actions that we’ve taken are already making a real difference. Housing supply is ramping up across Dunedin and Otago.
We’ve changed the law to make renting fairer, and we’ve successfully tipped the balance in favour of first home buyers with 25% of all home purchases in Dunedin belonging to this market.
We’re speeding up the scale and pace of house building through our Infrastructure Acceleration Fund, and we’ve built more public and transitional houses than any Government in decades.
We’re also making good progress on our plan to make sure everyone in New Zealand has access to world-class healthcare.
We’re upgrading hospitals and health centres across New Zealand, including the new hospital build right here in Dunedin.
We’re also training more nurses and doctors to work in these buildings.
We’ve put in place more mental health support, boosted Pharmac’s funding, and extended free GP visits to all children under 14, and lots more.
We’ve also made tackling climate change a priority, and thanks to the actions that we’ve taken since 2017, such as passing the Zero Carbon Act and supporting businesses to switch to cleaner energy, New Zealand is on track to bend the curve of our emissions downwards for the first time in history.
While there’s still a lot more work to do, I’m incredibly proud of our Government’s record of achievements over the past five years.
