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Madam Speaker,
We do not gather in this House to pass laws for our own sake.
We gather because somewhere a family is hurting, a child is hoping, a worker is struggling, and they are counting on us to make a difference in their lives.
That is the spirit in which I rise to support this Resolution to thank Her Excellency the Most Honourable Dame Cynthia Pratt for her gracious reading of the Speech from the Throne.
It is fitting that she is the one who delivered this speech of progress for our people.
Long before she was Governor-General, the Bahamian people gave her a different title.
They called her Mother.
She earned that title in the Grove community, in the pulpit, and in the service of people who needed someone to stand with them.
She was a mother to many.
And a speech about progress for Bahamians could not have been placed in better hands.
Madam Speaker,
The Speech from the Throne outlines our vision for the next five years through the lens of policy.
I’m here today to talk about how those policies impact Bahamians.
Because a policy is only as good as the difference it makes in the lives of people.
We have a duty to the Bahamian people to live up to their expectations of us as an administration, and as a Progressive Liberal Party, the party of the people.
On the 12th of May, the people told us something they had not told any government since 1997.
They told us they would grant us a second term, and the statement was very decisively made, as the composition of this House reflects today.
However, I do not take the support we received as a congratulation for a job well done or a celebration of our record.
I take it all as instruction.
Voters looked at five years of work, and they told us to keep going. So, today, I am here to outline to this Honourable House, how we intend to keep building on progress.
Madam Speaker,
I will start where many Bahamians feel a tremendous amount of anxiety and strain: at the grocery store.
When a mother stands at the cash register and watches the total climb past what she budgeted, she is not relying on economic projections or other fancy numbers.
Her experience is defined by the numbers on her receipt. And until she feels relief there, no figures we quote will mean very much to her.
Over the past few years, we have brought some relief for her.
We took value-added tax off the unprepared food in her cart, and we cut the rate on baby items, feminine products, and medical supplies.
We held inflation to 0.6 percent last year while the rest of the world struggled.
But we know this was not enough.
So this term, we will aggressively go after the cost of living in whatever ways we can.
We will bring competition legislation to stop the price-fixing and abuses that strain household budgets.
And we will end the injustice that makes a family in Mayaguana pay more to keep the lights on than a family in Nassau, by introducing standard rates for light bills across the country.
We will review Real Property Tax rates so the relief reaches Bahamian homeowners.
And we will grow more of what we eat, setting real production targets and empowering our farmers so more locally grown, healthy food is available in our stores.
Madam Speaker,
As our families leave the grocery store and head home, we encounter a number of other issues.
For too many Bahamians, owning a home in their own country still feels out of reach. We plan to make it possible for many more people to achieve their dream of homeownership.
We’ve raised the first-time homeowner exemption to 600,000 dollars.
We are expanding Affordable Homes and Rent-to-Own opportunities so that hundreds more families each year can turn a key in the front door of a home they can call their own.
For the families still renting, we will set new standards that landlords cannot ignore and create an authority with the power to enforce these rules.
And, since we’re talking about truly owning a piece of our country, we will offer Bahamians the chance to own a piece of one of their own national institutions by placing up to a quarter of the ownership of Bank of The Bahamas directly into our citizens’ hands.
This is important because ownership is how we truly empower Bahamians. It’s how we get Bahamians to stop feeling like guests in their own country.
Madam Speaker,
We must also think about the worker who leaves their home every morning to take care of their family.
For generations, many Bahamians have worked hard, but our labour laws did not work hard enough for them.
This term, that changes.
We are bringing about the most significant reform of our labour laws in a generation: introducing better workplace standards, expanded maternity protection, paternity leave, mental health leave, remote work, and real safeguards for working parents.
That mother who once had to choose between her own health and her paycheck will now have laws that better empower her to balance both.
We will bring the informal worker – the roadside vendor, the tuck shop owner, the woman doing hair and lashes at home, the ones who have always been left outside the system – we will bring them under the protection of National Insurance, and we will secure NIB’s fund for future generations.
We will give public servants a proper contributory pension, so a lifetime of service will be properly and sustainably repaid without worry about availability in the future.
We are also tightening the machinery behind it all, with modern digital systems and clear performance benchmarks across the public service.
Madam Speaker,
As we go from our workplaces to our schools, a transformation is underway.
Walk into a government primary school just before the first bell.
There is a child at a desk who, for the first time in our history, has had a free, universally available breakfast before that bell rings, because this Government decided no Bahamian child should have to learn while hungry.
This term, that same child, and the teacher in front of them, will be handed a tablet or laptop of their own.
Every child and teacher will be provided with their own device, because we can’t have digitally literate citizens without properly equipping our young people with the tools they need to thrive in this technological era.
We will also follow through with the Education Act, bringing about the most transformational education reform in a generation, and we will make pre-primary education universal and compulsory from age four, because the child who starts strong carries that head start for life.
And for adults who want to continue learning, we have launched Upskill Bahamas. Sixteen thousand Bahamians have already enrolled. We are about to open it to twenty-five thousand people.
That is real progress as we bring our education and training systems into the 21st century.
Madam Speaker,
Progress also extends to our people in the later phases of life.
As we protect NIB pensions and improve government pensions, it’s our senior citizens who benefit most. And we are not stopping at pensions.
Somewhere tonight, there is a senior citizen, a patriarch or matriarch, who raised children, kept a home, and held a community together, who can no longer care for themself, and who has been left to survive without sufficient support.
This is not a norm I can accept.
I believe a country is judged by how it treats its elders.
We have a moral duty to take care of those who took care of us.
So we will bring forward a framework on elder abandonment that gives social services the standing to step in before their hardship becomes a crisis or worse.
And because health is wealth, we want to ensure that we maintain health for all citizens.
That is why we will extend health insurance to every public servant, including the contract workers left without coverage for years.
They will not be left out, Madam Speaker, not on our watch.
And we will keep renovating dozens of clinics and building the two new hospitals in Nassau and Grand Bahama, while we expand the Prescription Drug Plan and National Health Insurance to tens of thousands more people so that illness no longer brings Bahamian families to financial ruin.
Madam Speaker,
We must also address the very real fear that impacts far too many communities throughout New Providence.
For years, a parent sending their son out the door carried a fear no parent should know.
The fear of crime is real and has been substantiated by years of violence that has stolen far too many promising lives away from us.
Last year, murders in this country fell by 31 percent. To me, that isn’t just a statistic.
That is a count of sons and daughters who made it back home each night.
Major crime fell by 10 percent last year.
Our five-pillar strategy is working. And the Clear, Hold, Build initiative is steadying the communities that needed it most.
We will build on this success, beginning with stronger gun laws and dedicated firearm courts for a zero-tolerance stand on illegal weapons.
If you are a gunman, be ready to spend a lot of time behind bars.
We will also introduce a Backlog Reduction Court and a Sexual Offences Court, because justice delayed is justice denied.
And swift justice is essential to crime reduction.
We will put the full force of our resources behind the Protection Against Violence Act and a properly resourced Commission of Investigations.
A mother should be able to send her child into the world without worry of harm coming to them, and a woman should be able to navigate our society without fear and be assured of justice should she be a survivor of violence.
We will not rest until that is the experience for citizens in every community throughout our nation.
We have made great progress in that regard, and we will continue with our holistic approach to fighting, solving, and preventing crime.
Madam Speaker,
As a Family Island man, I know what it’s like to feel like your community is being neglected.
For so many years, Family Islanders felt like they were an afterthought, as though the nation began and ended in Nassau.
We are ending that.
Under our Blueprint, every inhabited island will have its own development plan, written in consultation with its own people and backed by the force of law.
Meanwhile, our airport renaissance is reaching more than twenty Family Island airports.
The dozens of clinics, docks, and the hundreds of miles of roads being paved will continue throughout our islands.
And after decades of broken promises, the Glass Window Bridge in Eleuthera is finally being fully repaired.
And then we have Grand Bahama.
Grand Bahama holds a special place in my heart as my second home for so many years of my life.
For years, people talked about Grand Bahama in the past tense, as if the Magic City’s best days were behind it.
I never believed that for a moment. Because I know how resilient Grand Bahamians are. Today, the comeback is real.
Visitor arrivals are up more than 91 percent, that’s over one million visitors last year, making Grand Bahama the fastest-growing tourism destination in the country.
This is just the beginning.
The Afro-Caribbean marketplace, the MSC cruise port, the Xanadu project, a new deal with the Port Authority, and a new hospital and modern airport are on the way.
The Grand Bahama Power Company is under new ownership – a purchase made by the government to ensure that Grand Bahamians are no longer excluded from lower bills under our new energy era.
Big things are happening in Grand Bahama, and people can feel the change.
Madam Speaker,
Nothing corrodes a nation’s trust faster than seeing the law broken without accountability.
This is especially the case when it comes to our borders and our sovereignty.
So we are placing real consequences on the employers who exploit and hire migrants unlawfully. We will also require verification of qualifications before a person is hired, as well as submission of biometric information and the introduction of overstay alerts at our borders.
A new fraud intelligence unit will detect fraud and enforce the law on those who try to cheat the system.
And to any public officer tempted to break the law for financial gain, especially when it comes to our national identification documents, hear me clearly: that offence will now carry substantial prison time.
Our borders will be governed by law and order, and the law will apply to everyone, with no exceptions.
Madam Speaker,
We talk a lot about the need to spur growth within the orange economy.
And I want to make sure our young creators see themselves in our platform too. Because their talent is a form of national wealth we have undervalued for too long.
The Creative and Performing Arts School, CAPAS, will train them. An online rights registry and a small-claims court route will allow them to defend what they make. And new legislation will bring film production and related jobs to our shores.
Madam Speaker,
We are also dragging the government itself into the 21st century, so Bahamians no longer have to submit the same information over and over again each time they use a government service.
We are committing to a national digital ID and to bringing all government services onto a single digital platform to improve accessibility and efficiency.
At the same time, we are establishing clear and ethical rules for artificial intelligence, stronger cybersecurity frameworks, and improved protections for our children online, as well as a more modern, secure voting process with biometric cards and electronic poll books.
Behind it all sits a long-term National Development Plan, so that the vision we are building outlasts any one administration.
Madam Speaker,
We must also address one of the most pressing challenges facing us as a nation.
We are a low-lying nation sitting in a warming, rising sea. For us, climate resilience is about survival.
We will enforce a modern building code that can stand the storms we know are coming.
At the same time, we will give our environmental laws real force, better protect our waters, manage the value of our blue carbon credits, and make the National Youth Guard a permanent service and disaster-readiness force for the young Bahamians who will inherit this country.
Madam Speaker,
This is the agenda the Bahamian people voted to continue. This is the work they have asked us to carry forward in this House.
The campaign is over. The people have spoken. What they are owed now is the serious work of governing, and that work cannot be drowned out by the spectacle of those who keep choosing politics over country.
The Bahamian people have already sent their message to every member who would downplay good news and welcome the bad, those who would oppose for the sake of opposing while offering no solutions of their own, and those who would treat this Honourable House as a stage for performance rather than as the chamber where the future of this country is shaped.
These are serious times, Madam Speaker, and serious times demand serious leadership.
The time for clowning and performing is over. It is time to work together for the common good.
Now, I just want to be clear about this.
We expect disagreement in this House because that is a part of the work of a parliament.
But while disagreement belongs in this chamber, distraction does not.
And the matters before us are far too important to be cheapened by anyone who is more interested in making noise than they are in making progress.
So I extend my hand across this floor to every member willing to meet this moment with the maturity it demands.
Where there is common ground, let’s stand on it. Where there is disagreement, let it be honest.
And where there is work to be done, let’s do it together.
Madam Speaker,
The Speech from the Throne is, in the end, a statement of confidence.
It is this Administration’s confidence that our country holds everything it needs to succeed. We have the talent. We have the creativity. We have the resilience. And above all of it, we have the Bahamian people, who on the 12th of May, chose progress.
We will keep building on progress until it is felt in every home, on every island, and by every Bahamian. That is the work we now undertake.
Madam Speaker,
I am proud to support this Resolution thanking Her Excellency the Most Honourable Dame Cynthia “Mother” Pratt for her gracious reading of the Speech from the Throne.
May God bless this Honourable House. And may God continue to bless the Commonwealth of The Bahamas.