News & Achievements

We’re taking the next steps to tackle plastic pollution and protect Aotearoa’s clean green image, by phasing out hard-to-recycle and single-use plastics.

New Zealand’s housing crisis has been decades in the making. And we know that one of the key barriers to the construction of more homes is a lack of basic infrastructure.

Our $3.8 billion Housing Acceleration Fund – designed to speed up the pace and scale of house building – has taken a big step toward tackling this problem. Today, the criteria to access $1 billion of this fund has been made available, with an invitation for expressions of interest set to be released on 30 June.

A few great days at Fieldays are done and dusted! We had a huge team of Labour MPs at Mystery Creek this year – and we were there because partnering with farmers, growers, and our rural communities matters to us.

Farmers and growers have been the economic backbone for New Zealand throughout COVID-19, and our primary sector will be at the heart of our recovery. This week, as Fieldays gets underway, we’ve outlined the next steps in our work with farmers to secure our recovery.

Today, we’re taking the next step in our work to support children and young people in poverty, starting to roll out free period products in more than 1,600 schools and kura across New Zealand.

Today, we’re taking action in line with the advice of the Climate Change Commission to reduce our carbon footprint, so future generations have a fair go.

Our Clean Car package, announced this morning, delivers on our promise to cut transport emissions. It will make it easier to make the switch to low emissions vehicles, helping us hit our carbon neutral target of 2050 while securing our sustainable recovery from COVID.

In 2019, we established the Climate Change Commission to provide independent advice on climate change action and to hold this Government and future Governments to account. Today, the Commission's final advice was released. It sets out the total amount of global warming pollution Aotearoa must cut by 2035 to be on track to meet our goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Aotearoa New Zealand is surrounded by Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific Ocean. The ocean is central to our identities and to our ecosystems. The Big Blue both isolates us from other countries and connects us to our Pacific neighbours. We have the seventh largest maritime area in the world, ranging from subtropical to subantarctic, with more than 50 habitat types. And we’re responsible for the protection of this area and the thousands of species – all the fish, mammals, seaweeds, microorganisms, crustaceans, seabirds – that call it home.

Here in New Zealand, we have a remarkable natural environment, with unique ecosystems and native species. It’s taken millions of years for Aotearoa to develop this precious environment – and it’s up to us to protect it! In collaboration with communities across the country, we’re doing just that.