General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. In a world increasingly dominated by debt, deficits, and demonstrations, this is a Government that is protecting New Zealanders and growing the economy. Nothing is more important to New Zealanders today than a strong economy, because that is where the jobs come from, that is where the independence comes from, and that is where security for our families comes from—a strong, growing economy. That is where top-quality health and education services come from. So this is a Government focused on the economy. This is not a Government focused on trivial, electoral fluff like taking GST off food, free this, and free that. This is a Government that is backing the producers of New Zealand to get the economy moving for all. We have cut taxes. We have got the lowest interest rates that we need. We have got low inflation. This Government has reduced compliance costs. We heard earlier on from the Hon Steven Joyce, I think, that we have removed 170 unnecessary and excessive regulations from the law book. There is an unprecedented amount of progress on free-trade agreements around the world. This Government has tidied up the capital markets, and made a huge investment in innovation.

This Government has been dedicated to protecting New Zealanders from the sharp edges of the recession, and the increasingly serious global financial crisis and worsening international debt situation. The latest European GDP quarters results stand in strong contrast to the performance here in the New Zealand economy, especially when it comes to the debt crisis that Europe is sliding further and further into. In the last quarter New Zealand grew about 1 percent. You just need to compare that with a negative growth rate across Europe in that period. Germany, Spain, Italy, France, and Portugal all had negative growth rates. In the last four of five quarters France has had a zero growth rate. The Socialist President, elected on a platform of spend, spend, spend, has just told the French people that he is now embarking on a programme of cut, cut, cut. So the French have got their debt out of control. Every week we are seeing the evidence on our television screens of how serious the impacts of economic stagnation or decline are in Europe, where even countries like Germany are facing these problems.

But here in New Zealand, with a balanced approach of control on spending and a focus on value for money, and a determination to reduce the deficit, control debt, and improve public services, New Zealand is being able to deliver for its people. In fact, a report released on Tuesday overnight from the OECD says that this Government spends more of its Budget on education than any of the other 33 countries in the OECD. So we are right up there. We will not comment about the Opposition: it has spent the last 10 years saying there is nothing wrong with the New Zealand education system, and all of a sudden we need Reading Recovery. It said there is nothing wrong with the New Zealand education system, but all of a sudden we need Reading Recovery.

Let us focus just on what the OECD has actually said about the New Zealand education system and the spending from this Government in the toughest of times. The OECD says that New Zealand directed, in the latest year available, over 21 percent of its public spending to education. That was enough to push us beyond the previous bigger spender, Mexico, by nearly 1 percent. The OECD average is 13 percent. The report also considers public spending on education as a proportion of GDP. Again, New Zealand ranks highly with 7.2 percent, exceeded only by Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. That is a major achievement for New Zealand. In health, the average OECD country had a zero increase in the year under review, whereas New Zealand had the second-highest increase of public commitment to health services in the OECD.

So, in a world increasingly dominated by debt, deficits, and demonstrations from upset voters, this Government is protecting New Zealanders and growing the economy, and every day we can see a Government that is determined to work hard for New Zealanders.

Tomorrow New Zealand First is releasing a report from Business and Economic Research summarising the case for amending the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act. The Business and Economic Research report concludes that New Zealanders’ lives will benefit from an amended Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act. In alignment with the Business and Economic Research report, there is now a broad consensus on the need for an amendment to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act. The International Monetary Fund, exporters, manufacturers, many leading economists and commentators, and even our own Reserve Bank are all agreed.

No serious economist will deny that our exchange rate is overvalued, but yesterday in this House, when the Minister of Finance was asked whether he agreed with the overwhelming weight of expert opinion on the overvalued dollar, he fudged it. Today in this House he fudged it once again. I quote the Minister’s comment yesterday: “We do agree with their level of discomfort about the high level of the New Zealand dollar,”. So that is all right then, is it? It is all right that there is a level of discomfort, and the Minister even today cannot disclose or give us any more information on how that level of discomfort is out there.

“Discomfort” is such a nice word—an inoffensive and euphemistic word. But ask the workers in Kawerau, ask the workers in Bluff, and ask the workers in Timaru, in South Auckland, and throughout New Zealand who have lost their jobs because the business they work in no longer is competitive due to an overvalued dollar if they are experiencing “discomfort”. Are they experiencing “discomfort”? Most certainly they are. If you ask them that question, you will get a very blunt answer.

The plain fact is that the current Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act is seriously flawed. The focus on inflation is having a dire impact on New Zealand’s international competitiveness. The current Act dates from 1989—a whole different epoch. The fixation on a narrow inflation target may have been appropriate in the past but is now creating a major headwind in the form of an overvalued New Zealand currency, creating a great competitive disadvantage for our economy. Globally, inflation is not the threat it was back in 1989.

Today we face a different threat to our economy: cut-throat competition in our export markets, the very basis of our survival as a developed, trading nation. What the current Act has given us is a chronically overvalued exchange rate, and the result is that every week businesses are closing, markets are in jeopardy, and jobs are being lost. The New Zealand public is now asking why there is no urgency, why there is no action from this Government, and why there is no resolve.

The basic economics are straightforward. Our currency should reflect New Zealand’s economic fundamentals. Instead, we have a persistently overvalued exchange rate. That has served the interests of international currency speculators—the so-called carry trade, the people from the likes of Merrill Lynch and other money traders—who have done well out of trading currency in this country. Our overvalued exchange rate has encouraged people to park money here simply to earn higher interest rates. That has led to all manner of distortions. The facts and consequences of an overvalued exchange rate are not in doubt. The facts on the ground are stark. The loss of competitiveness is costing us markets, costing us jobs, and losing us many major employers.

So the time for prevarication and passivity over the Reserve Bank is over. The damage needs to be stopped before more irreparable harm is done to our economic capacity. The bill that New Zealand First has introduced to amend the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act will mean the Reserve Bank can pursue a balanced macroeconomic policy in which price stability, although remaining important, is no longer the overriding policy objective. We will have an amended Reserve Bank that is fit for purpose and will promote growth, jobs, and, more important, exports. So, in summary, everyone agrees the dollar is overvalued—

💬 Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: No! What should the value be, Andrew?

Everyone agrees the dollar is overvalued—the Minister of Finance said as much this week. The damage to our economy is now widespread and growing. We are undermining our economic capacity in the country day by day. The Government is stuck in passive mode.

What a shocker of a day it has been for Labour. You know, Labour had a great chance this afternoon for their leader to get up and make a real impact in this House, and what did he do? The one question he had, he withdrew. I think there would have been major disappointment amongst the grassroots Labour Party membership out there to see the Labour caucus performance in question time today. I tell you what, if it is not time for a change of Labour leadership, there never will be. My advice to people over there is that they have got to grasp the nettle and get on with the tough decisions.

It has not been a good day for Labour online either, because we had Mr Shearer’s online chat today. I am sure that Labour supporters, that dwindling number throughout New Zealand, would have been looking for some real substance. Well, there it was. Clint asked Mr Shearer: “How do you get New Zealand out of debt without selling assets, raising tax, or taking away the few benefits that middle-class New Zealanders receive?”. Mr Shearer said: “We need to grow the economy, and that needs pro-growth tax reform.” And then Sally asked: “Well, what do you mean by pro-growth tax reform, Mr Shearer?”. Mr Shearer said: “The big change we would make is a capital gains tax.” So that is the answer. On the one hand, if Labour is in Government with New Zealand First, we are going to have the exchange rate fixed, and then the big answer is going to be capital gains. Well, I can tell one that is not going to be what gets New Zealand going ahead.

What is going to get the country going is sound economic management and the sort of leadership that John Key is bringing to the country. If you look at that online poll—I am sure the Labour Party will have seen it today—1,800 readers of the New Zealand Herald were asked who they would be voting for: 49 percent National, 22 percent Labour. They are on course for an absolute shocker. So when we see the sorts of theatrics we are getting from Trevor Mallard and co. in the House today, you can tell that those people over there have lost the plot.

Meanwhile, what we are focusing on is solid performance in the economy. Unlike Labour, who were supporting the crazy Green bill banning the sale of all land to overseas owners, a bill that would have really severely dented our economy and sent terrible signals overseas, unlike them we are getting on and encouraging investment into New Zealand and making sure we have got the capital in this country to grow the economy. A good example, if the Labour Party had been in charge, is that none of these decisions would have been made. So you would not have had the Japanese investor who fronted up with the capital to save 60 jobs at Terrace Downs estate in Christchurch. No, the Labour Party opposed that. You would not have had the American non-profit organisation that purchased 15 hectares in Richmond and has produced jobs in construction and tourism, and made sure that the people working there have maintained their jobs. No, that would have been gone under Labour, because it supported that ridiculous Green bill that would have banned the sale of land to all foreigners. Carbon Conscious Holdings and Kingheim Ltd would not have been allowed to purchase their forestry investments, which have produced jobs and growth in New Zealand. There would not be any jobs from expansions in new projects by TAG Oil and Bathurst Resources. They would all be gone under Labour. Basically, when you look at it, what you are hearing from Labour members is just rhetoric. They are opposed to anything that results in economic growth. I challenge them—and I hope it is Mr Shearer who gets up next—to actually say what the Labour Party would do to grow the economy.

Today Mr Shearer was asked some very straight questions during his online chat. He was asked what his stance was on decriminalisation of cannabis: “David, yes or no; are you for the decriminalisation of cannabis?”. “I’m not making policy on the hoof.”, said Mr Shearer. Mr Shearer could not even say whether he was against our young people being able to smoke marijuana or not. Well, I can tell you, on this side of the House we are pretty clear-cut on that stuff. I oppose the decriminalisation of marijuana because we know what it does to our young people. Labour is now trying to deflate the argument and move it off the agenda.

But what I can say is that the Labour Party is opposed to anything that means jobs or growth for New Zealanders, and New Zealanders know that. New Zealanders know that the path ahead is the very sensible course that John Key has got this Government on. I think the argument is pretty clear-cut. I think it is being reflected at the polls. The path ahead is the sensible investment decisions that this Government is encouraging. What we are seeing from those members is support of policies that are going to lead this country down the gurgler. The case rests.

I just want to say thank you and pass on my gratitude to the last speaker, Jonathan Coleman, for helping me to get elected into the Mt Albert seat. His ongoing and persistent efforts were certainly missed in the last election, but I certainly did appreciate those during the by-election.

Today we have been confronted with a $78 billion figure from the Minister for Social Development. Nobody quite knows exactly what that means. It is a meaningless figure. The last figure that we heard along those lines was from the Ministry of Social Development. It was a $45 billion figure, and nobody quite knew what that meant, either. What her figure is supposed to say, or what she is claiming it is saying, is the cost of our social welfare spend in this country.

What this Government is really good at doing is measuring not very much and doing very, very little. So we actually do not know how we are going to move past those numbers to actual real improvement. But let me give you some other numbers. These are the costs to this country of kids growing up in poverty. It is $8.8 billion a year. That $8.8 billion a year is what it is costing this country because of kids growing up in poverty: lost productivity, $2 billion; crime, $2.2 billion; health costs, between $3 billion and $4.5 billion; and social welfare, $1.4 billion. That is $400 billion over a lifetime. That is nearly 10 times what that Minister was talking about in terms of social welfare. If she actually solved the real problems in this country—the real problem is about child poverty.

This week we put on the table some proactive, positive steps forward in terms of changing the way that we do something about the choices that kids have in their schools. You go to schools across this country and you look at those kids at those schools. They look up at you, and they are eager. They are ready to learn and are willing. Then you look a little bit harder and you notice that many of them do not have shoes. They have got no jumpers on. They are cold, and many of them, according to their teachers, come to school without lunches. We can argue about whether that is the parents’ responsibility or not—of course it is the parents’ responsibility for the kids to come along to school well fed and with lunch, but the reality is that they are not. More than 80,000 kids are coming to school without those things. Without lunch and without having something to eat before school, of course they are not going to do well in the classroom—either for themselves or as a distraction to others.

We are proposing to put food into schools to ensure that those kids get the best start. What does that mean? What does that actually mean? That means that when those kids get a good start they do not come out the other end and fall into the unemployment queue or form part of our health statistics or our crime statistics.

What else are we proposing to do? Actually, what we are proposing to do is something that we only just discovered that Bill English was proposing just a few years ago, and that is to make sure that every kid has access to Reading Recovery. One in five children in this country has problems with reading. Reading Recovery has an 80 percent success rate—80 percent. It is the gold standard across the world. Yet Reading Recovery is not available in every one of our schools.

So what we are proposing is making sure that every kid has access to Reading Recovery, making sure kids have food in their stomachs when they go to school, and making sure that they get picked up if they are having reading difficulties. This will mean that they come out the other end and contribute to our society, and the meaningless statistics that the social development Minister came up with today will not need to be pandered around this Parliament. They are ridiculous. They are ridiculous, because all they do is throw out a number, when what we are really looking for is solutions. This Government has no solutions. If it did have solutions, it would have come up with them, and we would not be in this situation.

Does it not speak volumes about the level of confidence in the leadership of the Labour Party that there is fewer than half the caucus here this afternoon to listen to their leader? I remember in the days when National was in Opposition, and John Key was the leader, that you would have had every single member of the National caucus down here, backing the leadership and the team. But having heard the content, I am not surprised that the Labour caucus is sitting up in their offices embarrassed by the content. You see, the Leader of the Opposition has just said he does not understand the significance of a $78 billion social welfare liability. Well, I say to the Leader of the Opposition that until he understands the scale of the welfare challenge, and the importance of getting families into work and off welfare, he has no prospects of being a Minister—let alone a Prime Minister—in the Government of New Zealand.

What a contrast there has been over the adjournment in the approaches to the challenges that face New Zealand. I want to commend Paula Bennett on the powerful work that she is doing to change this country for the better, in the way in which she is dealing with those welfare challenges. You see, Paula Bennett and this John Key - led Government understand the obligations and responsibilities that must sit alongside rights. For instance, we on this side of the House say that a person should be able to be drug tested whether they are in work or whether they want to get a welfare benefit. The Leader of the Opposition does not even know where he stands on the issue of whether we should liberalise cannabis laws in this country. We on this side of the House know that children need to get access to doctors, to early childhood education, and to schools to be able to get ahead in life. That is why the Minister has announced a pre-requirement for those families that we are financing to make sure they meet that obligation. I hear New Zealanders from Kaitāia to Bluff saying hear, hear!

You know, the biggest absence in commentary from the Labour Party is where they stand on national standards. Is it not interesting to see Julia Gillard, the Prime Minister of Australia, championing the cause, and the importance, of measuring how kids do in Australia, and yet we have a Labour Party in New Zealand that is so beholden to the teachers unions that it is not prepared to stand up for what is right and for measuring how our kids do at school?

But the contrast goes far deeper than that—far deeper than that. You see, what we heard from the Government over the adjournment was how we grow the economy, and from the Opposition we heard how we spend, how we borrow, and how we get New Zealand further into difficulty. What we have from Labour in that confused and muddled speech from the Leader of the Opposition is not one mention of the biggest issue that confronts our country, and that is how we are going to grow wages and grow jobs so that this country can provide the education, the health, and the opportunities for the next generation of New Zealanders.

So often we on this side of the House have said that Labour is living on some different planet, and that was reinforced in the contribution today. All around the world countries are trying to confront the issues of debt, of deficits, and of how to grow the economy. Yet we have not had a single idea from members opposite on how to achieve those things. Let me just reflect, just quickly, on the good things that this Government is doing in that space. Firstly, let us look at the issue of jobs. There have been 40,000 new net jobs created in the last 2 years in the New Zealand economy, a faster rate of job growth than any other OECD country, and it has been achieved in incredibly challenging financial times.

💬 Sue Moroney: What rubbish!

I ask the member who is interjecting what the unemployment level is in Spain. It is 24 percent. What is it in Italy and Ireland, and other countries in Europe? It is in double digits. New Zealand has one of the lowest levels of unemployment because of the competent economic management, the focus on growth, and the package of measures that colleagues are rolling out, which gives this country hope for a brighter future.

It has not escaped anybody’s attention that Bill English refused to back the Prime Minister today, and refused to defend the Prime Minister’s comments on Reading Recovery. He would not go anywhere near it. When a question was put to the Acting Prime Minister he went out of his way to get it off his desk, because he did not want to back the Prime Minister on Reading Recovery. Why did he not want to do that? Because the comments and the commitments that the Labour Party has made with regard to Reading Recovery are the same sentiments that Bill English was expressing when he was in Opposition. And has National done it? After 4 years, has it delivered on it? No, it has not.

In fact, the problem has got worse. There are fewer decile 1, 2, and 3 schools delivering Reading Recovery today than there were when Bill English was lamenting the fact that not enough schools were delivering it. It is no wonder Bill English was ducking for cover and was refusing to back John Key on Reading Recovery, because it would simply have shown once again that what Bill English said in Opposition is not what he has been doing in Government. Nothing that the National Party said when it was in Opposition can be relied upon as a guide for what it has been doing in Government. For 4 years New Zealanders have been waiting for the brighter future the National Party promised them, and they are still going to be waiting at the next election, when they turf National out and introduce a Labour Government, because then they will actually see the brighter future that New Zealanders hunger for and want to see.

New Zealanders know that education is a core part, a core way that we can deliver the brighter future, and it is not going to come from this National Government. This National Government is destroying the most positive aspects of our New Zealand education system, which is one of the best in the world. National is tinkering with it, experimenting with it, and turning our kids into guinea pigs. It is turning to the countries in the world that are way down the ladder and have a worse education system than us and it is copying the things they do. It is copying the things they do, and it is hoping that that is going to improve our education system. Well, it will not.

The National Party tells parents that they cannot trust teachers. The National Party, at its core, hates teachers. They really do not like teachers over there in the National Party, and they keep telling parents they cannot trust teachers. Their solution to improving the quality of teaching was to make classes bigger, and when that failed they resorted to a new plan to introduce charter schools without having qualified teachers in them. That was National’s solution to the fact that parents overwhelmingly rejected its plan for bigger class sizes. So what did National members do? They went back to the drawing board and said: “Let’s just not have qualified teachers. Let’s just reduce the number of qualified teachers in charter schools.” That is not going to be the solution to the problem. We have a very efficient education system when it comes to building schools. What is the National Party’s solution to that? “Oh,” National says, “we better get the for-profit private sector involved. We are going to build some public-private partnership schools that cost more than the regular public schools are going to cost.” That is the bright future the National Party is promising to New Zealanders.

We should know, of course, that National is not committed to qualified teachers, because one of the very first things it did was to lower the standards for early childhood education by reducing the number of qualified teachers that an early childhood education centre is expected to have.

💬 Katrina Shanks: That’s rubbish.

That was one of the first things Anne Tolley did when she became the Minister of Education, and I agree with Katrina Shanks—it was a rubbish decision that Anne Tolley made when she lowered the standards for early childhood education.

This is a Government that does not have a clear agenda for education. It does not have any idea what it is trying to achieve. It has the charter schools idea—the silver bullet. So now we are going to have the “Merrill Lynch School for Ethical Investment”. We are going to have the “KFC School for Nutritional Studies”. We will have the “Monsanto School of Organic Agriculture”, and the “Rothmans School for Health Studies”. That is fundamentally what the National Party believes—that running schools is a business that someone should be able to make a profit out of, and they do not even have to deliver on quality. They do not even have to deliver on quality. It does not matter whether they have qualified teachers in the classrooms of these new charter schools. That does not matter to the National Party, because, fundamentally, it does not know what it is trying to achieve in education. It does not have a programme that will improve our education system.

What we need to be focused on is how we go from having one of the best education systems in the world to having the best education system in the world. That is what the Labour Party under David Shearer’s leadership is committed to. That is what we are going to deliver when we win the next general election.

One of the really difficult things the public has to do at the moment is to try to discern what Labour actually stands for. Dr Nick Smith has gone through some very excellent examples of that in the realm of education. I want to touch on this in relation to fiscal policy, because there was a fascinating exchange during question time today when the Deputy Prime Minister, in suggesting that Opposition parties advocate an exchange rate that was 20 percent or so lower, received a barrage of interjection from Mr Mallard and Mr Goff. In fact, Mr Mallard even received a withering look from the Speaker as he said something like “Don’t tell lies.”

I am actually very interested in this, because I know that Mr Parker has just been overseas and has been blogging about his trip to the US and the UK. He was meeting with some of the world’s greatest economists, apparently not to listen very carefully and learn as much as he could but to discuss his ideas on monetary policy and the exchange rate—not to listen and learn but to tell the best economists in the world what he thought. He says in the blog: “He agreed”—quoting Mr Olivier Blanchard, so he obviously was saying that he agreed with Mr Parker—“countries need to attend to the competitiveness of their exchange rates.” I can only infer from that that Labour and Mr Parker at least want lower exchange rates.

More extraordinarily, there is a belief, which I believe is Mr Parker’s, that exchange rates can be controlled for longer periods than have traditionally been acknowledged by most economists—here it is—“without losing the battle to control inflation.” So I want members to consider what a 20 percent lower exchange rate would mean for consumers. Do members know those $2 a litre petrol prices? They would go to $2.80, without any other inflationary impacts. Petrol would go straight to $2.80. What would that mean for transport? Well, a lot of our freight goods are transported by road, by trucks. That is the cost of goods, even those we export. So our exports become less competitive, even though the exchange rate is lower. In terms of imported goods—often those that form the basis of the products that we value-add and then export again—they will be 20 percent to 25 percent more expensive. The cost of home appliances, all our imported electrical goods, will be 20 percent to 25 percent higher. In an inflationary environment, lowering the exchange rate will only add to inflation.

I worked for a bank in the 1980s, when I was giving out mortgages of 19.5 percent and 20.5 percent—runaway inflation. Nobody can remember what the exchange rate was then—nobody can remember what the exchange rate was—but they sure as heck know what their mortgage rates were. We are now paying mortgage rates of, what, 5.75 percent to 5.8 percent floating rates. I think the public of New Zealand are entitled to know the impact of Labour’s proposal—even if it was possible—to lever down the exchange rate. How on earth it would do that without taking one of the biggest fiscal crapshoots in world economic history is absolutely beyond me. But the public need to know what that will mean for their incomes, and for the cost of living in their households, and I can tell you it is extraordinarily high.

The impact on that in jobs is anybody’s guess, but one of the things that I do know is that Labour members are very good at telling half a story well. This is a Government that is firmly focused on jobs and growth. Yes, there is concern when things like the Kawerau pulp and paper mill and the Tīwai Point aluminium smelter announce plans to reduce hundreds of jobs. Tīwai is fascinating. Mr Parker, in the previous Parliament, decried the fact that it was getting what he described as 90 percent subsidies. In fact, when we softened Labour’s emissions trading scheme, the subsidy, if you want to call it that, went from 80 percent to 90 percent. Labour members were quite happy to do it when they were in Government. That lower exchange rate might increase the value of aluminium exports—that is not clear—but it would certainly increase the costs of production.

So, yes, it is concerning when those jobs go, but let us talk about the growth in jobs as well. Let us talk about IBM and Unitec announcing 400 jobs; Todd Corporation and Methanex adding another 500 construction jobs for methanol manufacturing at Motunui; The Hobbit—we do not need to talk too much about The Hobbit—and Bathurst Resources, a salve on the West Coast, which is experiencing some very challenging times with Solid Energy jobs at risk. Bathurst is quietly getting on, growing jobs, growing exports, and doing well for New Zealanders. The news is very good. It would be bad if we tried to engineer our exchange rate down.

Tēnā koe. It is Conservation Week this week, and it is particularly significant this year because of the historic announcement that Ngāi Tūhoe are prepared to accept the Crown’s offer to settle their claims and grievances under the Treaty of Waitangi. A major part of that settlement relates to Te Urewera National Park. The Government plans to introduce special legislation that would give the park its own separate legal identity, rather than being a national park managed under the National Parks Act 1980. That will be landmark legislation because of the way in which it must combine both biodiversity protection and adequate recognition of Tūhoe’s cultural, spiritual, and historical connection with Te Urewera, and we look forward to it.

But the Minister of Conservation has marked Conservation Week by announcing an increase in penalties for the smuggling of our native wildlife. That is very welcome, but getting tougher on wildlife smugglers cannot disguise this Government’s neglect of the spectacular landscapes and of our native, indigenous wildlife and plant communities. The previous speaker, Michael Woodhouse, was a case in point. He was talking about Bathurst Resources quietly getting on with the job. He was totally failing to appreciate the significance of the Denniston Plateau where that open-cast coalmine by this Aussie coalminer is proposed to take place. The Denniston Plateau is one of the key areas of conservation land that this Government should be protecting and preserving. It is one of our special places. It is no place for an open-cast coalmine.

This Government repeatedly talks about balance. If it was serious about balance, then it would recognise that the Stockton Plateau has been much mined over recent decades and much of the remainder of the Stockton Plateau, which is adjacent to the Denniston Plateau, is proposed for mining, and it would keep the Denniston Plateau and the unique coal measure ecosystems, which that plateau is home to, as conservation land that is protected because of its distinctive character. These coal measure ecosystems, their plants and animals, are adapted to live in these very harsh growing conditions in the infertile, acidic soils. We have got over 20 different species of earthworm on the plateau alone. That is more than exist on the rest of the West Coast. We have got giant carnivorous Powelliphanta land snails, which go right back to Gondwana. We have got a giant weta species. We have got species that were previously undiscovered, like a moth species, until the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society’s bioblitz.

The Denniston Plateau is no place for this Government’s crazy, economic development, trash-the-environment plans. It is a place that should be protected as conservation land. It has got small, pygmy plants. The Government fails to recognise that these species have value. It is miserly when it comes to investing in conservation. It has cut $54 million from the conservation budget, yet it is spendthrift when it comes to propping up polluters like Fonterra shareholders and like coalminers by subsidising them through the very flawed emissions trading scheme. Yet it slashes money from conservation, and it fails to recognise that our public protected lands are the essential infrastructure of our economy and that a healthy environment is the basis for a healthy economy.

The Government needs to invest much more in conservation, not the piddling expenditure that we have seen on Conservation Week this week. It is a reflection, I guess, of the overall miserliness with the conservation budget that this year the department has spent $3,000 on Conservation Week. It used to spend $30,000 each year on Conservation Week, enabling it to educate a lot of children, provide literature, handbooks, posters, bookmarks, and to have a lot more activity around New Zealand in reaching out and showing a lot of schoolchildren how special a lot of our conservation lands are and why we have to protect our forests, our wetlands, and our estuaries. That has been cut back as part of an overall cutback in conservation funding, which is seeing failure to do adequate pest control, failure to acquire new unprotected areas to add to the conservation estate, and failure to do proper advocacy—the department being absent from a number of critical resource management hearings. Yet, instead, the Government is propping up polluters through the failed and flawed emissions trading scheme.

A healthy environment is the basis of a healthy economy. Protecting places like the Denniston Plateau, not opening them up to mining, is protecting those areas for present and future generations for their values and their value for tourism.

It is my pleasure to take a call in the general debate. I want to touch on job creation and employment, because that is what this Government is focused on. It is focused on getting more jobs, creating good-quality jobs, and growing our economy. Let me put some facts on the table to begin with. I want to talk about our unemployment rate: 6.7 percent is our unemployment rate. Obviously, it is higher than what we want it to be, but it is what it is right here and right now. When you compare it with other countries around the world, we are certainly in a really good position. There are many countries that are envious of what we have done with our employment. Unemployment in Spain is 24 percent. Youth unemployment in Spain is 51 percent.

Let us look at Europe. There is 11 percent across-the-board unemployment. Greece has 22 percent. France, Italy, Ireland, Turkey, and Poland, to name just a few, are all in double digits. Britain and the USA have 8.3 percent. Canada has 7.3 percent. So New Zealand is doing really well compared with the rest of the world, and that is what we should focus on.

Let me put some more facts on the table. This Government has created 60,000 more jobs in the last 2 years—60,000 more jobs—and we are going to create another 154,000 over the next 4 years. A significant number of those will be in Christchurch, with the rebuild of Christchurch.

This is a really interesting fact I want to talk about: more people are employed as a percentage of the population on this side of the Tasman than in Australia. [Interruption]

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Thank you, Mr Speaker. There are just over 49,000 people on the unemployment benefit, which is 18,000 fewer than 18 months ago. That is a significant change when you think where New Zealand has been, what the financial crisis has looked like, and where we are going now. We want to create more jobs in New Zealand. We want to do it through being competitive. We want to do it to ensure that our companies are productive and that our businesses can invest, grow, employ, and pay higher wages in New Zealand. So that is what we are focusing on—our businesses—because unless we can create that growth in New Zealand, we are not going to create more jobs.

We have some fantastic companies in New Zealand that are growing, going into new markets, and doing it all on their own. This Government has provided a framework for them to be able to grow and develop, and they are going out and doing it on their own. A perfect example is in the Hutt—I am sure the member Chris Hipkins has been to see it—and that is Fraser Engineering. It is an absolutely fantastic, progressive company in New Zealand. It produces fire engines. Not only does it produce all the fire engines in New Zealand but it has now entered the Australian market and is producing fire engines in Australia as well. It is a very progressive company that is doing great work, and it has been very innovative, investing a lot of its money back into its research to ensure that it stays cutting edge.

This Government is creating a lot of initiatives to ensure that we have got jobs. One of the big initiatives has been the 90-day trial period. This is allowing employers and employees to work together to ensure that businesses can employ more people, because what we have had are businesses not being prepared to take a bit of risk. So with the 90-day trial period, it has allowed businesses to take a bit of a risk to employ somebody they might not have employed, or somebody whom they were unsure whether there was a position for or not, and put them on a 90-day trial period to see whether it would work. It has been extremely successful in New Zealand. In fact, the Department of Labour has done some research around this. Eighty percent of those people who went through the 90-day trial period have been employed. Employers said that they would not have hired to begin with—40 percent of employers said that they would not have hired to begin with—unless they had that 90-day trial period. This initiative has created 13,000 more jobs in New Zealand. That is significant—13,000 jobs from one policy. It is one policy that has created jobs in New Zealand, which has been fantastic.

We also know that to do that we have to support our businesses and give them the support they need to be able to grow. You would not be a National member of Parliament for Wellington—

That last speech by Katrina Shanks was an example of just how much the National Government lacks in ambition for this country. Apparently, we are supposed to feel that it is doing a good job because the unemployment rate is not at 24 percent. That is what we are told. We are supposed to be thankful and grateful to that Government because we are not at 24 percent unemployment. Well, when Labour was the Government, it boasted the lowest unemployment rate in the OECD—not just saying: “Well, gosh, you know, Spain and Portugal and Ireland are ahead of us, and Greece is ahead of us.” Actually, unemployment was the lowest in the OECD under Labour. That is because we actually had a plan and we knew what we were doing.

If you want to look for vision these days on the political scene in New Zealand, then you need to look no further than David Shearer’s speech on education. He was not prepared to sit back and say: “Well, as long as we’re just a little bit below Spain and Portugal and Ireland and Greece, we’re fine.” He was not prepared to say that. What David Shearer said was that Labour will ensure the world’s best education—the best education in the world—is available at every school. We want every child and every community to have access to world-class education. We are not satisfied with the situation where parents have to drive often past four or five school gates to get to a school that they feel is the right one for their child. We do not agree with this idea of charter schools, of actually giving public money over to the private sector to make a profit out of education.

In fact, what David Shearer said—he was the one coming up with the fresh new ideas—was: “We’re going to actually deal with the real issues there in the community. We’re going to work with community agencies to put food in low-decile schools.”—the very thing that the National Government is in complete denial over. Labour knows what is going on out in the community and we have a plan to fix it. We will also extend Reading Recovery to all schools, because we just cannot afford to have kids dropping out without basic skills. We are also going to introduce clear and easy-to-understand school report cards to parents so they know what is going on in their schools. The Education Review Office produces reports now, but for most parents it is actually like reading gobbledegook. I think it is going to be great for parents to get an easy-to-understand report on how their school is actually doing. Those are the commitments from Labour and that is where a vision is coming from on the political scene in New Zealand at the moment.

Contrast that with the National Party. What has it got to say about education? Well, the only plans it has for education are to increase class sizes so that teachers have many more children to try to interact with, and, of course, we all know, and all the parents throughout this country know, that the quality of education will go down. Well, what are its other plans? Charter schools, as I said before, without qualified teachers. It wants to dumb down the quality of teaching by introducing charter schools. That is the vision that the National Government has, and league tables. Today we learn about possible exams for 3 and 4-year-olds. That is where it is heading next. That is where it is heading next, because Hekia Parata had plenty of opportunity in question time today to deny that she was going down that path. She absolutely would not deny that work is being done on introducing national standards for our preschool children. Three and 4-year-olds being under exam pressure is not the vision for New Zealand. It is not the vision that Labour has.

But it is not only with regard to the threat of exams for 3 and 4-year-olds that the National Government is in trouble with early childhood education. Yesterday the Minister for Social Development, Paula Bennett, was actually announcing a whole series of compulsions, but compulsions only for the children of beneficiaries, to have to take part in early childhood education, at ages 3 and 4. But here is the strange thing: costs for early childhood education under this Government have risen four times the rate of wages since 2010. This Government has been busily putting fees up in early childhood education, and now it is going to punish beneficiaries because they cannot afford to send their children to early childhood education. It is going to punish not only the beneficiaries but the children of those beneficiaries because they cannot afford to send their children to early childhood education.

It gives me great pleasure to take the opportunity to speak in the general debate today, to comment on the fantastic progress this Government is making with things that really matter to New Zealand. It is making great progress with the building of an economic platform that will set this country on the way to a brighter future.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Has the member learnt how to do supplementary questions yet?

I would remind the member that I am talking, not him.

I wanted to just comment on comments that we have heard this afternoon about education from the Labour Party, which clearly has forgotten that it has been only 4 years since it had an opportunity to sort out our education policy. It did absolutely nothing about it, and the reason we have had to increase the expenditure in education in the last 4 years is because of the neglect it suffered in the previous 9 years.

I want to also, while I am on the topic of education, just make a couple of comments on some stuff that Mr Hipkins talked about in respect of education, and wonder seriously whether he ever visits a school, because, frankly, I do not think he does. In my electorate we also have, interestingly, decile 1 schools. We have all ranges of schools. In those communities they find ways of ensuring that children go to school with shoes on, and they find ways of ensuring that children have uniforms on and that they are provided with food during school hours, whether or not their parents can achieve that. I think that that is the great strength we see in our school system today. We have some amazing school teachers, they provide a wonderful service for our community, and I think that for the Labour Party members to be speaking in the way they have been about teachers and education in the last half an hour is extraordinarily stupid.

In the 8 months I have been privileged to represent the Rangitīkei electorate in this Parliament, I have seen and heard many exciting and forward-thinking people who comment on the way the New Zealand economy is moving in what can only be seen as extremely difficult times. We have a Minister for Social Development who is driving, and understands, the need to reform our welfare environment, to both encourage people into work and get an education that enables them to work productively for New Zealand and their own futures.

We have a welfare system that cares for our elderly. In rural New Zealand that is pretty important, because we have the privilege in New Zealand of being able to be born and die in our communities. I think it is most important that we can live our life in one community.

💬 Dr Megan Woods: Unless you’re forced to move to Australia by this Government.

The other thing that happens in electorates like mine—which may well be foreign to Christchurch—is that because of the extraordinarily testing amount of manual work that people in the Rangitīkei electorate do, the retirement age suits those people, and we need to protect their ability to retire and get some years of comfortable retirement as a result of our current retirement age.

We also have a Minister of Education fully occupied in increasing the skills, knowledge, and achievement of our school-leavers. As I have already commented, I think our education system is on the right track, and in my electorate the teachers are reasonably comfortable with the way we are moving forward. To complete the triangle, we have the Minister of Health driving a very strong performance in our health business in New Zealand, in very challenging times. Our expectations and survival rates are increasing dramatically and adding challenges to the health sector at an unprecedented rate.

These three sectors are like a tripod. They keep our economy based, and they give us a base from which to leverage from. Having set that platform, I want to turn to the productive sector. This is, of course, what the Rangitīkei does best. We grow trees, we grow sheep, we grow cattle, we produce milk, we grow root vegetables, and we service agriculture the world over. We service agriculture not only through our science and development, which take place at Massey University, but also through some innovative businesses that are growing the New Zealand economy.

I want to just talk very briefly about three issues that have an impact on New Zealand’s economy, and particularly on the Rangitīkei electorate, which relies heavily on tourism and agriculture for its living.

💬 Chris Hipkins: No tourist wants to go to Palmerston North.

I must remind you that the member of Parliament for Palmerston North sits on the other side of the House. I want to talk very briefly about the emissions trading scheme and capital gains tax, and the effect they would have on an electorate like mine and its potential to produce jobs and to fix the environment in the current system we live in. Our environment is particularly precious to both tourism and agriculture, and if we do not invest in the future and fix some of the challenges we have around our environment, we are going to have serious problems in the future.

It is my pleasure to take the last call in this general debate. We have had to sit here for the last hour and endure the National Party members opposite chanting that they are on the right track with job creation and employment, and that they are creating their version of a brighter future. This has been hollow rhetoric from hollow members. What we have is aspiration that today we are not Spain, and that we do not have unemployment of 24 percent. Well, we on this side of the House want something more for our nation. We want something more for our future than that. We want something more than the 160,000 people whom members opposite have thrown on the scrap heap of unemployment. We do not want to see 50,000 people leaving every year for Australia because there is no future here for them.

How does Labour propose to do this? Well, Labour sees education as an investment in our future and not a cost to cut, which is what members opposite have shown. Education is at the very foundation of a fairer and more prosperous New Zealand. We have heard from members opposite that we have to get the economy right if we want to pay for health and education. Well, we will never get the economy right if we do not invest in our future and our education system. It is not an either/or situation. A good education provides our children with a lifetime of opportunities. Children have the right to the best education from their first day of school through to their first day on the job. Labour has a vision for education. It is a priority for Labour. What we have is a National Government that is presiding over a disaster in education.

Today I want to focus on three areas of this disaster. I want to talk about the University of Canterbury, where today the library went into lockdown because there was the first of what I predict will be many student protests. I want to point out that this was quite a small student protest today.

💬 Grant Robertson: Not like the ones that member was part of.

It was not like the ones this member was part of. It was because there is a Government opposite that has failed the University of Canterbury. Post-earthquake, like so many things in Canterbury and Christchurch, the Government made a commitment to support the University of Canterbury. But are we seeing support? No. We are seeing one in five staff at the university lose their job. We are seeing an 18 percent reduction in that workforce. We are seeing a Government that is doing nothing but failing the university.

If the Government’s own scenarios of economic recovery are to be believed, the rebuild will be under way, student numbers will recover, and the university has to be at the heart of that rebuild. But we see a Government that puts no confidence in the university, and is simply failing it. Instead, the Government is resorting to bullying tactics with the university, with its own internal papers showing and telling us that the implicit message from the Tertiary Education Commission and the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment is that if the institution is willing to lead the way with cuts that could easily run to hundreds of jobs, the State may invest in the university. The university thinks that this is reprehensible. What we have are students being the collateral damage of this—students who are giving up on their university and do not see their future residing there.

Just as I was reading the Twitter reports of the mini-protest at the University of Canterbury today, I received an invitation to an event. It is a collaboration between the Canterbury Museum and the University of Canterbury called Canterbury Tales. It is going to show artefacts from the university and the museum. Well, you know what? My fear is that graduates and students from the University of Canterbury will soon be the only artefact. This is a university that is in trouble, and this is a university that this Government needs to step up and do something about.

The second disaster of education in Canterbury that I want to talk about is the Canterbury schools blueprint that is going to be released tomorrow. The Minister of Education is claiming that it will foster close connections across the education sector. This is far from the truth. Instead, what we are seeing today is Christchurch swirling with rumour, with uncertainty—

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.