General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. That seeking of leave just brings to attention the housing problem that we have in New Zealand. When you have 5 percent of our housing stock currently not being used—that is around 3,300 homes that could actually house people on lower incomes—that is a disgrace. That is a disgrace, because right now people in my electorate anyway are living in cars, in caravans, and two or three families to a home, when they could actually be living in a State house instead.

There is a real problem in New Zealand with housing and housing affordability. No longer is the Kiwi dream of owning your own home a real possibility for thousands and thousands of Kiwis. No longer can you get a chance to be on that bottom rung of the ladder. House prices have gone up in Auckland in particular, in Christchurch, in Tauranga, and in a number of other places—in more than half of the country.

So it was with great anticipation, enormous anticipation, that we wanted to hear what Bill English was going to announce to the Productivity Commission’s report on housing. We waited 7 months. We waited 7 months. The build-up was excruciating. What did we get? An extraordinary let-down—an extraordinary let-down. They weakened the Resource Management Act, they lowered industry standards, they pushed more responsibility on to councils, and they tried to make land cheaper by expanding the boundaries of Auckland, for example. So you have to get on to the motorway and drive for an hour, rather than actually do something intelligent, which is medium sized - scale housing inside of Auckland.

That is it—that was it. That was to solve New Zealand’s housing problem. It fails utterly, and that is what everybody said—not just us, not just me and not just Annette King, but, for example, the Mayor of Tauranga: “In my view it failed to take into account the reality of the situation”, he said. Brian Fallow said: “It is fair to judge a policy package like the one on housing affordability announced this week by what they do to relieve those problems.”—those problems being housing affordability—“In short, precious little.” John Armstrong wrote: “Package? What package? … The plan looks like a rough first draft”. In other words, nobody is impressed with this Government’s performance on housing. It is woeful and it is disappointing.

There is a real shortage of houses for younger people wanting to get that first chance on the ladder, and this Government is determined not to do anything about it. It gives up on the most basic things to do. One thing it might want to look at, for example, is a capital gains tax, or at least not allow the price of houses to go through the roof, and at least put our investment into productive enterprises rather than into the Auckland property market.

Even when there is a possibility of State housing and community housing, as in the Hobsonville scheme, the Government cancels it. The Prime Minister calls it economic vandalism—that is what he calls it, economic vandalism—to put social housing into a housing development. Of the 3,000 houses, 1,000 were going to be houses that would have been able to accommodate low-income families. The Government cut it from 1,000 to 100. And guess what? Now it is down to 17—17. And the Government wonders why there is a housing affordability problem! That is why there is a housing affordability problem. It is because it is not doing anything about it.

You have got Craig Heatley—Craig Heatley—who is completely asleep at the wheel, completely asleep—[Interruption] Sorry, Phil Heatley. Phil Heatley. Even Phil—[Interruption]

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Phil Heatley says he agrees with everything, and does absolutely nothing. He agreed with everything in the poverty report, and what did he do? He cut funding to community housing. He cut funding for State house maintenance—[Bell rung]

Order! Before I call the Hon Bill English, the level of interjection—actually the level of noise—was discourteous. I hate interrupting members speaking, but it is so discourteous to have a high level of background noise.

Well, I have not yet met the housing Minister, Craig Heatley, but I am looking forward to meeting the leader of the Labour Party, Ian Shearer! At least he might get listened to by his front bench when he gives a speech. It is absolutely clear that even if Charles Chauvel was here yesterday, he should have been at the barbecue with the Davids, who were not here, because he did not start listening until the 4th minute of the speech. No doubt half of that caucus are sitting there thinking it is almost the second or third to last general debate speech that the current leader of the Labour Party will give.

Yesterday they were away plotting. What else would David Parker, David Cunliffe, and Grant Robertson be doing, if they were not in the House on a Tuesday? [Interruption] Well, Grant Robertson was probably on Skype—I will give you that—from New York, or wherever he was. I will tell you what they were talking about: the same things that New Zealand’s union leadership is talking about in the Koru lounge, and that is who it is going to be to follow on from David Shearer.

The Labour Party should do what it did with Helen Clark. Helen Clark was polling very poorly, making no impact on politics, and Labour stuck with her. In fact, it stuck with her for 2½ years until the 1996 election campaign, when she finally came through to show her political capacities in that campaign. She still lost the election, polling only 28 percent, but Labour kept backing her. That is when the Labour Party used to understand middle New Zealand, because it knew that in the long run it had a leader who could take it to victory. This Labour Party does not understand middle New Zealand, and that is why Labour members are looking to jump ship. The rats are leaving the ship because David Shearer does not look like he has beaten the Government this year. In just a matter of a few months since he has been the leader, they are ready to slit his throat, stab him in the back, and throw him to the wolves. But that is the easy bit. The hard bit is deciding who would replace him. My advice is that that fight will be so divisive that they should stick with David Shearer like they did with Helen Clark, because he has not all of the same qualities but some of the same qualities.

I would say that he alone, of those on the front bench of Labour, has an instinct for middle New Zealand. There are other people there who do not, like the Hon David Cunliffe, who has said publicly—and I think this is honest—in the Listener: “I think I am sincere.” I think I am sincere! Well, ask anybody who has listened to this man—he is not sincere. He has perfected the art, as Mike Moore said—when you can fake sincerity, you have really got them. But at least David Cunliffe recognises his inner troubles—and this is not an inner struggle that David Shearer has—when he says that he has to keep reminding himself that it is not about him, every day: “Every day I look in the mirror and I tell myself, it is not about me.” Well, the leadership of what used to one of New Zealand’s fine political parties cannot be about an ego that big.

💬 Hon Annette King: Bill knows a lot about leadership!

I do know. I have been there. I know what it feels like. I know how David Shearer feels today, when he can hear them baying for his blood, knowing he is going to be cut down. It is just a matter of when, because this is the Labour Party at its best. The discipline it had under Helen Clark is gone; now it is egos, now it is each man for himself, and now Labour members spend a lot more time talking about themselves than they do—

Of course, Bill English knows a lot about leadership, because he was “Mr 22 Percent”, who took the National Party to one of the worst defeats that it ever had. He is still bitter about it, he is still whinging about it, and he is still plotting at every moment how he can get back into the Prime Minister’s seat.

Last week the long-awaited affordable housing package from the Government was announced. You know, it reminded me of that old Peggy Lee song from the late 1960s, “Is That All There is?”. If you remember, Mr Speaker—and I am sure you do—it was a song about disillusionment. I have to say that New Zealanders who have been waiting and wishing and hoping for a response to the growing housing crisis in New Zealand have every right to feel disillusioned. Seven months ago the Government received a report from the Productivity Commission on affordable housing. What did that report do? It set out the issues, it highlighted areas for action, and it gave the Government 33 recommendations. For 7 months we had to wait for the Government’s response. For 7 months we got the old political striptease from the Minister of Finance: a little speech here, a little hint of action over there, a patsy question or two in Parliament, and some pathetic comments like “We clearly have a problem in Auckland with a lack of supply of housing, particularly for low-income people. We are determined to get a better deal for people.”

I say to Bill English that he is either not determined enough, or he is a spent force in the National Cabinet, because he has been overtaken by the ideas man, the apparatchik of the National Party, Steven Joyce. The affordable housing package is toothless, and it is gutless. As John Armstrong wrote in the New Zealand Herald last week, “Package? What package?”. I have to agree with him. He said that the Government’s plan looks like a first draft. Duncan Garner on his blog wrote that “There is nothing bold in here at all.” [Interruption] Oh, so they are now laughing at Duncan Garner. This is a man they all suck up to most of the time. They do not like it when he writes the truth. He said that “it is tinkering while Auckland burns in the face of unsustainable house prices.” He said that National “has shied away from getting hands on or even getting its hands dirty.” He said that there was one word for it: underwhelming.

What I say is that it is tinkering by muddled thinkers devoid of ideas, paralysed by ideology, lacking in vision and innovation, and into a whole lot of blame shifting. Local government, they say, must stump up, or else. We do not know what the “or else” is, but local government is being told it must stump up and address affordable housing in New Zealand. Of course, the irony of that is that at the same time that Bill English is saying that, Nick Smith and his would-be Minister of Local Government, David Carter, are saying “No, no, local government, you must get out of anything the private sector could do.” Well, I can say that this is a pathetic response to a very serious problem in New Zealand. We have been told that there will have to be more inquiries, more work done, and more evaluations.

There is a choice the Government can make. There are two paths a Government can go down. One is where it is hands-off, with an approach of “Business knows best” and letting the market rule; a deregulated economy, deregulated safety, and deregulated everything. We are seeing the results in New Zealand after two decades or more of that approach, with some of the worst health and safety records around the world, with leaky buildings, and with a deregulated electricity market that they said would give us cheaper prices, but which means we are paying more. Then there is the other path a Government could go down; a Government that is more hands-on, that is supporting its exporters, that is protecting New Zealand jobs, and that is leading our building of affordable homes in New Zealand. The Government should be leading by example. An example was in Hobsonville. What did it do? It cancelled affordable housing, and it cancelled State housing. It is devoid of ideas, and nothing in housing will happen under this Government as long as it occupies the Treasury benches.

We all know the clichés about being in Opposition, and they all add up to one and the same thing—it is not a pretty place to be. It is particularly difficult when you are in Opposition when you are clearly facing an internal leadership crisis of the type that Mr English has just outlined—when the Green Party is eating your lunch at the same time.

It is perfectly clear what has happened. There has been some type of strategy meeting and somebody has come up with a “bright idea”. The bright idea is “Let’s declare there is an economic crisis—a crisis in manufacturing”, and everyone who is desperate for something other than another silly proposal to print money has said “What a brilliant idea! We’ll hold a conference, we’ll paper over our cracks, and we’ll declare there’s a crisis.”

The only problem is that you cannot declare a crisis. You cannot create a crisis by political fiat. It is particularly difficult to say that New Zealand is facing a crisis when you are facing the following economic realities. No. 1 is the cost of living. The rate of inflation has fallen from 5.1 percent in November 2008 to the lowest rate this century, taking pressure off New Zealand families, New Zealand households, and New Zealand companies trying to compete everywhere. It is very difficult to say you are facing a crisis.

It is very difficult to say you are facing a crisis in manufacturing when you have just seen a Government oversee the creation of 60,000 net jobs in the last 2 years. It is very difficult to say that you are facing a crisis when the Government that replaced you was facing forecast unemployment going up to 10 percent and it is now—still higher than we all want it to be, and it is a very challenging situation—around 6.8 percent. It is very difficult to say that there is a crisis facing middle New Zealand when the average New Zealand household with a $200,000 mortgage is facing a mortgage bill that is $200 a week after tax lower than they were paying in April 2008. That is $200 in the hand. It is very difficult to persuade those folks that they are facing a crisis. The superannuation married rate is 22 percent higher than it was in April 2008.

It is very difficult—if we move to the macroeconomic front—to say that New Zealand is facing a crisis when the current annual growth rate is 2.6 percent and when you look across the developed world and look at that in comparison with what other countries that also enjoy a high standard of living are facing at the moment. Net Crown debt, which was forecast when we came to Government to rise above 60 percent, and deficits thereafter, is now forecast to around 30 percent. That is when the UK itself is looking at net Crown debt of 85 percent of GDP.

It is very difficult to sustain a manufactured crisis in the face of economic facts like those. Let me try to illustrate what would represent a real crisis—a real crisis. We do not have to invent one, unfortunately. We have only to look at eurozone countries and, to some extent, see what emerges in the United States to understand what a real crisis is. A real crisis is when you are sitting on eurozone unemployment of over 11 percent—almost, just a tad short of, twice New Zealand’s unemployment rate. A real crisis is when you have got within the eurozone a 25-plus percent general level of unemployment in the fourth-largest economy in the eurozone and you have got 50 percent youth unemployment—people between 15 and 24. One in two of them is unable to find a future for themselves. That is not just an economic crisis, that is not even just a social crisis; that could have long-term extraordinarily serious political consequences for the stability of those places.

That is what a real crisis looks like, not this manufactured crisis designed to paper over the Opposition’s internal difficulties. A real crisis is when the Government is not following the sorts of policies that this Government is following—steady, disciplined control over public expenditure, nothing extreme, designed to help hard-pressed New Zealanders take the edges off the recession and manage us all through this extremely difficult patch internationally, which is facing all countries in the world. When you are looking at massive cuts in welfare and health services, and 500,000 jobs in the UK public sector to be slashed in the next 4 years, that is a real crisis, not the phoney crisis that the Opposition is trying to paper over.

Later tonight my bill to almost halve child poverty, the Income Tax (Universalisation of In-work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill, will have its vote in the House. I want to thank all those community organisations, Every Child Counts, the Child Poverty Action Group, Champions for Children, and many other groups and individuals who have written and emailed, tweeted and facebooked, marched, rallied, and otherwise worked to have this bill pass its first reading tonight.

It is with genuine sorrow that I report that we are still yet to find the one more vote we need to send this bill to the Social Services Committee. All those parties supporting the bill tonight have been given a pair of infant socks—baby socks—as a small gesture from me to acknowledge their commitment to finding a real solution to the poverty that is suffered by a quarter of a million children in New Zealand today. I have one pair of baby socks left, because we need only one vote from one party to pass the bill. That one vote will bring the family income of an estimated 100,000 New Zealand children above the poverty line. That one vote will ensure that these children have a warm, dry home, shoes on their feet, and food in their bellies.

Many organisations have expressed their distress at Peter Dunne’s decision to oppose my bill. During the 2011 election he signed a pledge with a group called Closer Together Whakatata Mai. That pledge says: “As a politician, I choose to commit to building a fairer New Zealand and will actively support policy measures that reduce income inequality and bring people closer together.” At the time, Peter Dunne wrote: “I very much support your call for more detailed debate around the possible ways to reduce poverty and income inequality.” I ask Peter Dunne to honour tonight that pledge he made. In a Facebook post in response to my bill, Peter Dunne has said: “I believe there needs to be recognition of the hard-working efforts of low income families, and the existing In-work Tax Credit is a way of achieving that.” It is a way, but it is a way that discriminates against the poorest families. My bill will remove that injustice and reduce poverty and income inequality, which he said he wants to achieve.

I have offered Peter Dunne and the National Government two compromises on my bill in order to meet their concerns. The first offer was to retain the hours worked criteria so that all parents who work would receive the in-work tax credit. At the moment, if you work and you receive a benefit, superannuation, or a student allowance, that work goes unrecognised. Mr Dunne has said that he believes in recognising the hard-working efforts of low-income families, but he has refused to recognise the hard-working efforts of this group of low-income families—some 40,000 DPB recipients who work, and another 20,000 who will be expected to work at least 15 hours a week next year. They all go unrecognised by Peter Dunne.

I have also offered an amendment to the Government and Peter Dunne that would allow a family to retain the in-work tax credit for 6 months after they lose a job or have insufficient paid hours. The working adults would then still be incentivised to find a job or more hours within the 6-month time frame, but they and their children would not suffer such a severe financial disaster at the time they lose their job, because families who lose their jobs also lose this tax credit. When the job loss has resulted from a factory closing, like in Mataura, or a workplace accident, which affects thousands of New Zealanders every year, or a natural disaster, as we have seen in this country, the personal and financial strain for those hard-working families is enormous. One vote is all that those families need.

But I must confess that these compromises I offered to Peter Dunne to meet his—what I consider to be somewhat irrational—needs were hard to stomach in the offering, because the Green Party believes that hard-working families are also those who care for their kids, whether in paid work or not. Hard-working parents are those who are deserving of dignity and decent treatment because they care for their kids. One vote is all that these families need. One vote is all that their children need. Thank you.

Well, we know something is up, because Mr Cunliffe is growing his beard again and Mr Jones has had a fresh new haircut. The last time that happened there was some movement over on the other side. Have a look, Mr Speaker. Mr Jones has had another haircut, and Mr Cunliffe is once again growing his beard. Something is up.

Of course, I do not know what is going on in the Opposition, because a couple of weeks ago there was a manufacturing crisis, apparently. Then we showed the Opposition the numbers and it realised there was not a manufacturing crisis. Today Opposition members are talking about a supposed housing crisis, and the Acting Minister of Housing pointed out today that there are 634-odd more State houses than there were when we came in to Government in 2008. I am not sure what the next crisis is, but, apparently, I do suspect happily that it is there to try to cast a shadow or avoid the leadership crisis under David Shearer. To be fair to him, he has had a bit of a rough year. His 1 year is not quite up—I think he has got 20 or so days to go—but the knives are being sharpened. We watched the leader’s lead-off debate at general debate time, and it was very revealing to see those who were not paying any attention whatsoever.

I will move on to the coalition of the unwilling presenting its solutions recently—Labour and the Greens. Future Minister of Finance, apparently, Russel Norman, will be casting aside Mr Cunliffe and casting aside Mr Parker, perhaps. Who would be the Minister of Finance under the coalition of the unwilling over there? But that team has given us some insights into Labour’s deep thinking. Mr Parker, Mr Cunliffe, and Mr Norman want to fix our exchange rate. They want to fix it at a certain rate. No one has actually asked them what rate is the correct rate. No one has actually asked them how much capital should be put at risk to defend the exchange rate at a certain level and for how long. No one has asked them how much capital should be diverted from schools, hospitals, health, and superannuation to be used to defend some artificial exchange rate that they think is correct. Those questions will be asked, and they will be very revealing because, once again, those members’ rhetoric and their grabbing for headlines do not actually match reality.

The only other solution they have got out there that they have told us about is that they just want to print money. It is a fair enough response, I suppose, which they keep coming out with day after day when we challenge them—“How will you pay for your promises?”—that they are just going to get the xerox out and the printing press out. What a solution! I do not know why after hundreds of years we did not think of that—why standard, normal economics did not think of that. But, incidentally, there are examples around the world where they have tried that, and our Prime Minister Key pulled out some Zimbabwe money the other day to demonstrate that to us.

There is no crisis. New Zealand is performing in growth statistics better than anyone else in the OECD right now—better than anyone else—so there is no crisis. The dream, or the nightmare, team over there want to abandon our inflation vigilance. Abandoning our inflation vigilance, which has been stable for so many years, is like throwing the sprinklers out or turning the sprinklers off because there has not been a fire in the house. It is the vigilance, the prudence, of our Public Finance Act and of our Reserve Bank, and its independence, that have served this country so well and have, essentially, created so many jobs.

I want to quickly bring us to Hawke’s Bay. Hawke’s Bay has great proposals in front of it—a huge storage dam to help our economy and to create jobs for our families. I challenge the Labour Party to put on record whether it supports that proposal, because its potential coalition partners are doing all they can to disrupt that proposal. That is about 3 percent or 4 percent growth for Hawke’s Bay if the dam goes ahead. Eugenie Sage from the Green Party was sacked after 19 years of not having a water plan in Canterbury and is trying to disrupt the water plan of Hawke’s Bay. I challenge the Labour Party to say where it stands, because Damien O’Connor said when he was in the Hawke’s Bay that he supported it, yet one of its candidates is now saying that they do not support it.

💬 Hon Annette King: What candidate? We don’t have candidates.

Former candidate, former MP Ms King. The Opposition party—it says no to everything. It says no to every initiative to create jobs that grow real growth and real after-tax incomes. It says no to every Better Public Services announcement or change we try to put in place. It says no to families’ aspirations of a brighter future. I am so surprised we have to fight for so many of the initiatives that we try to put in place for a much better, brighter future for all of our families in Hawke’s Bay and beyond.

There is only one thing worse, as Oscar Wilde said, than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. All the Government can do today is talk about the Opposition, talk about the Labour Party. Actually, it is only the Opposition coming up with new ideas to deal with the very serious problems that this country is facing. The Government has no ideas. Worse than having no ideas, it is out of touch. This is the Government of Jim Callaghans—the new Jim Callaghans. “What crisis? There is no crisis.” There is a crisis. There is a crisis in manufacturing. In the last 5 years 40,000 jobs have gone, and export capacity is reduced. Gone. Fewer of them. That is why we are struggling. There is a crisis in manufacturing, and this Government has got no answer to it.

But the other big crisis in this country—which even Tim Groser cannot see, because he spends far too much time out of this country—is in housing. The Government’s own report, the Government’s own Productivity Commission, said there is a crisis in housing, an affordability crisis. Housing is absolutely essential to a healthy community and a healthy life. Everybody needs a roof over their heads, and this Government has got no answer to the growing number, the thousands of people, who are increasingly finding it difficult not even to buy a house but to rent one, because the prices are going through the roof. The Government is out of touch and housing is out of reach to a growing number of New Zealanders. The issue is about affordability. It is about affordability, but also it is about access to housing—to social housing, to rental housing—because there has been a run down in rental stock.

You see, I was in New Plymouth just a few days ago with our housing spokesperson, Annette King, and we went up to the site of a Labour project there to develop housing—State housing, rental housing, affordable housing. It was a project all ready to go in 2008, and no sooner did this Government get in, it shelved it. It is in an area called Discovery Place. You know, there is a song that goes along the lines of: “Can we do what they do on the Discovery Channel?”. Well, in New Plymouth the song is: “Can you not do what they do on Discovery Place?”, because it is doing absolutely nothing. It took all the houses away because it told people it was going to redevelop them. It let what housing was there run down. There are only a few tenants there. They live in substandard housing. They have no idea what is going on because nobody tells them. Nobody tells them what is going on in Discovery Place, and they need to know.

What is the Government’s answer? The Productivity Commission tells it that there is an affordability problem. The Government’s own department tells it that there is a housing problem, and what is the Government’s answer? Nothing. No plan. No answer. Fiddle a bit around the edges of planning. Tell the local authorities that they have got to pull up their act, but what is it doing to the local authorities? It is trying to take away their powers, because local government under this Government will have no responsibility for social issues, for broader economic issues, or anything else. What the left hand wants to do, the right hand says it is not going to do. That is the problem with this Government: no coherence, no consistency, and no plan.

Actually, a lot more needs to be done. It is not just about the builders; it is about those who want to get into housing too—those who want to rent at an affordable level, those who want to buy at an affordable level, those people whose dreams and aspirations, young people in particular, are built on getting on the first rung on the ladder of housing, and they cannot get there. The average price of a house now in Auckland is $600,000. The average nationally is $360,000. It is impossible for people to get in a house. What is this Government’s plan for housing? There is not one—there is not one.

There is a lot more that we could be doing. What about intervening in the lending market? What about the State playing a role as we used to with the old State Advances Corporation? Why do we not assist young people?

💬 Hon Steven Joyce: For goodness’ sake.

Mr Joyce says: “For goodness’ sake.”, because he does not want to, because those members have no plan. They will talk about the Labour Party and they will talk about the Greens and everybody else. They have to because they have got no plan of their own, because they do not want to help people. They do not want to help people. They have never cared about people who are finding it tough and who just want to get ahead. They do not want to help them; they want to help their rich mates. That is what this Government is about. That is why it does not care about housing and it does not care about the jobs people are in. It does not even see a problem in manufacturing, because that is the nature of it. That is the nature of it. It does not see a problem when there is one. More has to be done. This Government is doing nothing and this country is crying out for an action plan. A decent housing plan would create jobs and would stimulate the economy, but this Government will not do it, because it has run out of ideas, it has run out of steam, and all it can do is point the finger at other people.

A couple of weeks ago I had cause to go to the dictionary after an interjection by David Parker on the Prime Minister, when the Prime Minister was talking about jobs in manufacturing. Mr Parker interjected that the figure that the Prime Minister was using included agriculture and therefore it somehow did not count as manufacturing. So I went to Wikipedia and I found that, indeed, manufacturing is the production of goods or services. It could be handicraft to high tech, but it is certainly not limited to steel construction. But that seems to be the attitude of a certain member from Dunedin—the negative, down in the mouth, glass half-empty member for South Dunedin—because when we went to Dunedin last week she issued a press release, before we had even done anything, actually, saying that Key had front to go down to Dunedin and suggest that there was no manufacturing crisis. In fact, he never said any such thing in all of that trip, but what we did do, I think, was acknowledge that there are challenges in manufacturing.

But the Government does not have the luxury of focusing on just the negative things. It actually has that tough job of focusing on the positive things that are going on in the manufacturing industry. On Tuesday, with David Carter, I met with some exporters in Dunedin and also the owner of Cowell’s Genuine Pavlova. This is a great little organisation in Dunedin that I claim makes the best pavlovas in the country. My colleague Craig Foss—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: That’s true.

Well, my colleague Craig Foss actually disagrees with me, but I would suggest that Cowell’s is the No. 1, and it would normally employ about eight people. At the moment, to manage the Christmas rush, it has 21 staff madly filling the orders, and most of those pavlovas are going to end up in Australia. Talk about selling coals to Newcastle! This great little company is now exporting pavlova to Australia.

The Prime Minister and I started our trip last week at a great wee company in North Taieri, the New Zealand Honey Co. Faced with competition from bulk commodity product coming in from China, it had a choice. It could either compete, add value, or fold, and it decided to compete. It is a Deloitte Fast 50 winner from 2009 or 2010, and it is now exporting millions of dollars’ worth of value-added honey products into the UK and China.

We then went on and visited Speights Brewery, that great brewery in Dunedin. While the Canterbury earthquake rebuild posed some serious challenges for the Dunedin workforce in losing its workers, at Speights it is going the other way. There are actually workers coming down from Canterbury Draught and millions of dollars being invested in the production line at Speights Brewery, and I understand it has announced just today the takeover of Emerson’s Brewery, a fantastic boutique brewery in Dunedin. That could create export opportunities. What it will certainly do is put capital into the city for those fantastic people, the Emersons, to look at other investment opportunities. And we did go to some steel manufacturing. We went to Farra’s, a 140-year-old company—

💬 Hon Craig Foss: Are they busy?

Yes, they are. They are struggling, but they are growing in revenue, they are growing jobs, and they are growing new markets. When the PM asked them: “If the challenges faced by the Hillside workshops resulted in further job losses, would they and the engineering cluster in Dunedin be able to pick them up?”, the simple answer was: “Absolutely, yes.” So manufacturing is not just about steel, and certainly, in Dunedin, it is not just about what is done in Hillside Road.

But I will say this about the member for Dunedin South. She has come out in support of responsible oil and gas exploration in the southern Canterbury Bight off the coast of Dunedin.

💬 Hon Craig Foss: Really?

Well, it is not surprising that you would say “Really?”, because she has been very quiet about it. No ads in the paper the way the rest of the chamber of commerce members were doing, welcoming Anadarko. No bold statements that say, yes, there could be challenges at Hillside, but there are also opportunities in the city. None of that, but she has quietly said that, yes, she does support oil and gas exploration. I think she needs to be braver about that and do what the other city leaders in Dunedin and the other MPs—certainly, the National MPs in the south, Jacqui Dean and myself—are doing and say to Anadarko and Shell: “Bring it on. Explore. Do it responsibly, do it safely, but certainly contribute to the manufacturing and export opportunities that do exist in Dunedin, despite the challenges.”

The people who created a society of equals in New Zealand would be sickened and disgusted at what sort of country we now live in. New Zealand is now a land of the haves and the have-nots. We are on the path towards creating a State-sponsored slave colony.

💬 Hon Steven Joyce: Oh, for goodness’ sake! Ha, ha! You clown.

The number of people at the bottom of the heap is growing. The Hon Steven Joyce can smile and laugh, but the number of people at the bottom of the heap is growing. Those at the top are getting richer and richer, helped by huge tax cuts from this National Government. This is a low-wage, high-price economy. That is what National and its big business backers want. They want queues of workers standing in the cold, begging for jobs. They want a minimum wage economy and even less for the youth of this country—even less than the minimum wage.

Many New Zealanders are leaving the country as the Government continues its job eradication programme. Recently, at Victoria University, some 200 students were asked the question “What are you planning to do when you finish your degree?”, and some 170 of the 200 in the group said “We’re going to go and live overseas. There is no future in this country with the qualifications that we have.” Is that not sad when 170 out of 200 young people feel that the future for them is not in this country? Yet National and its friends are bringing in thousands of immigrants to keep pushing down the wages—advertising in the likes of the UK for workers to come to Christchurch, while we have people unemployed and while we have something like 6.8 percent unemployment. It is interesting that Tim Groser mentioned before that in Europe unemployment is at 11 percent and we are not even halfway there at 6.8 percent. Well, that particular Minister really cannot do his maths very well, because he said we were virtually half of Europe. Well, 6.8 percent is not half of 11 percent, Minister.

The wages at the top keep soaring, as evidenced this week in the headline “Rise of the $1m salaries: top boss says enough”. More than 41 senior executives are getting more than $1 million in this country, many of whom are simply not worth that sort of money. The real wages at the bottom and the benefits keep falling. Rampant capitalism is now a disease, and it has infected many countries throughout the world. Greedy financiers and bankers have destroyed entire economies, many of whom have been bankers in the likes of Merrill Lynch in New York in their previous lives. The Government’s own figures released today show that its tired old slash-and-burn-and-sell-out policies are not working. The tax take is down. The deficit is growing. Every day there is a sad story of another failure.

The Government’s only solution is to sell our precious assets overseas and to make us a colony of China and everywhere else where the economy is controlled. This is a disaster. We cannot afford another 2 years of a National Government. After another 2 years there will be nothing left. New Zealand First asks why the Government does not take its courage in its hands and go back to ordinary New Zealanders and ask them what to do at the polls.

I am very pleased to speak in this general debate. I want to speak about not only National’s economic plan but also the situation that we were handed in 2008 and about how we have turned it round. I want to contrast that to the Labour Opposition, which is in absolute crisis. We saw that today in that those members could not even bear listening to David Shearer, or Ian Shearer, who could not even get the name right of one of our most senior Ministers.

Under this Government we have turned the situation round. Where inflation was running at 5.1 percent, exports had flattened out completely, Government expenditure was out of control, back-office bureaucracy was booming, and the Treasury books showed never-ending deficits, we are now in a situation where we are seeing steady increases in average after-tax wages. Inflation is lower, mortgages at $200,000 are half of what they used to be, and we have seen a creation of jobs. We have done this because we actually have an economic plan on this side of the House. We have a plan around labour market reform. We have a plan around innovation infrastructure, the Advanced Technology Institute. We have a plan around affordable housing. We have a plan around investment in broadband of $1.5 billion.

This side of the House has a plan, and we contrast that to the economic policy of the Labour Party, which I think can best be described as emergency management: “stop, drop, and roll”. Let us have a little look at that. Labour’s plan is to stop a whole lot of things that National is doing. Let us name just a few things. Labour will stop greater intensification and development of the agricultural sector. It will stop the 90-day trial period. It will stop the 3,000 jobs for The Hobbit movies. It will stop public sector reform. And then it will drop a whole lot of policies that it campaigned on in 2011. We saw that in David Shearer’s foreign ownership bill. We saw that pulled. We saw the confused position around the Kapiti Expressway.

So we have the “stop” and the “drop”, and what is the final part of its economic plan? It is called “roll”. Anyone who has been in Copperfields lately can see that the Labour Party is completely divided. The rumour has it that the numbers are 19 to Grant Robertson and 15 to David Shearer. What does that mean, folks? It means that Rajen Prasad and Raymond Huo, if you are listening, you are the kingmakers. And we can see today that when the Opposition cannot even be bothered to listen to David Shearer’s speech, when Grant has just popped by New York to see Helen, and when clauses are being inserted by random members of the Labour Party to buy the union votes, there is a serious situation. You contrast that to a Government that has serious economic policies, in terms of innovation, capital markets, and infrastructure reform and investment, to a party that is divided and, in my view, about to undertake the final part of its economic policy of “stop, drop, and roll”.

There is a clear choice for New Zealanders. You have a party that has turned things round from a dire situation of spiralling debt and a lack of investment in infrastructure, to a party that is in complete disarray, that wants to put up smoke and mirrors because it does not have any economic policy. There is a clear choice for New Zealanders. I am very proud to be a member of the National Party.

Debate interrupted.