Key John: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Key John: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:629;Page:1094] 
JOHN KEY (National—Helensville) 
: 
 What a remarkable speech that was from Mr Gosche whose best years in politics as we all know are behind him! He came down to the House and said we should be worried about the National Party’s policy—that from a Government that went into the election campaign with no policy! Labour’s policies were quite simple: “Don’t risk the Opposition!”. That was its only policy so if that member is worried about policy he needs to worry inside the tent not outside it. That look of worry is a feature actually of this Labour Government’s front bench and back bench today. It is a look of worry with very good reason indeed. Those members came to the House today hoping that Prime Minister Helen Clark would deliver for them a speech that would ensure a fourth term for this Labour Government. 
Darren Hughes 
: And it will. 
JOHN KEY 
: There is not a dog’s show on that one I say to Mr Hughes. That member with his very slender majority will be out looking for a new job. He along with the rest of the Labour caucus had better go out there and find a new job. If I were him I too would have a look of panic on my face because if that speech is what is going to deliver a fourth term for the Labour Government then the Labour Government is in very serious shape. 
Labour members need to have a look at what is actually happening in the Labour Party. Prime Minister Helen Clark has just come back from her little sojourn in South Africa as she looks to shore up her job in the United Nations. Michael Cullen has been out buying full membership of the Napier Golf Club. He knows what will happen in a couple of years from now. But for the other 48 Labour members I come to the House today with a message and it is a pretty bleak one: their future is in jeopardy. It is time for them to look in the situations vacant columns although as unemployment is going up their prospects of getting a job are not good. 
It has all been quite remarkable in fact. When I looked back on the election campaign I saw a $2 billion election pledge from the Labour Party in relation to student loans. I thought when I saw that very shameless act of self-preservation—a $2 billion write-off of student loans—that I had seen it all in terms of shameless acts of self-preservation. But even I did not envisage what we learnt about this Government this week—that is that Labour has a very new term and a very new version of “tax and spend”. The model goes like this: the Labour Government will tax us the hard-working taxpayers of New Zealand and it will spend the money on buying itself re-election. That is the way it will work: tax and spend. We will be taxed and it will spend. What disgraceful behaviour from a Government that has deliberately breached the Electoral Act! What disgraceful behaviour that is from a Government which as our leader said today should pay that money back to the hard-working taxpayers of New Zealand. 
It is no wonder the Labour Government is ashamed. It is no wonder Government members looked so ashamed when they came to the House. It is no wonder the police have been called in to investigate. It is no wonder Helen Clark refused to meet the Auditor-General. It is no wonder John Armstrong described this Labour Government as “squirming” and it is no wonder Michael Cullen could not even explain his own actions when he was on Paul Holmes’ radio show yesterday—because their actions are inexcusable and indefensible. This is a day of shame for New Zealand politics. Taxpayers’ funds have been used in deliberate breach of the Electoral Act to buy re-election. 
This is a day of shame for New Zealand. The Prime Minister came to the House today speaking of economic transformation. Well I have a message for the Prime Minister: she should have started 5 or 6 years ago. It is too late now. She had the money back then and she had the time. Instead what did the Government do? It squandered 6 golden years when it had the opportunity. Those members had an economy set up by the hard work of 9 years of a National Government. They had the opportunity to transform our economy. They had the opportunity to deliver the kinds of things we have seen a progressive Liberal Government in Australia deliver for the people of Australia. What did this Government do with that time? It spent it on talkfests reviews frameworks sector strategies and lolly scrambles of grants and all the other “Mahareyisms” that it has managed to write into every speech which are really nice words for doing nothing. For the last 6 years Rome has burned while the economy has been on the up-cycle and now that we are entering the down-cycle what do we find? We have a Government that still has no ideas whatsoever. 
I looked at the Prime Minister’s speech. I was looking for the good ideas she was going to bring down to the House. Labour members still do not have any good ideas. They still want to consult they still want to discuss and they still want to get advice. That bit about getting advice was really the bit of the speech from the Prime Minister that I found the most galling because the last time Michael Cullen got advice he described it as an ideological burp. That is what he does with advice. When Government members get advice they do not like they just go out and shoot the messenger. They tell the messenger that they do not like what they are hearing. Well that is not going to work. 
The New Zealand economy needs transformation. It needs to be taken to a different level. In the last 6 years of this Labour Government growth has quite simply been this: two-thirds of it has been delivered solely because more people have been in work and because New Zealanders have worked longer hours. It is not because we are more productive or because this Government has delivered a framework an environment or an opportunity to really push Kiwis on and give them everything they can; it is because Kiwis are working longer and harder. And why are they doing that? It is because this Government has gone out of its way to deliver roadblocks and to make life more difficult. 
It is not just us who are saying so. The very ideological burp that Michael Cullen dismissed the very advice that the Government now seeks again in this latest speech from the Prime Minister was the stuff where Treasury came out and said not only that had this Government spent more money in New Zealand’s history than anybody else but that Treasury had no idea what the money was being used for and no idea how to account for it and no results had been delivered at all. Productivity has been going down yet the Prime Minister came to the House and told us she would be delivering economic transformation to New Zealand. When the history books are closed on this Labour Government—and they are closing very rapidly—it will not be economic transformation that is talked about; it will be economic stagnation. That is exactly what will happen when the history books are closed on this Labour Government. 
The other bit that I found galling in the Prime Minister’s speech was when she said that the Opposition did not want to debate the economy. That is very interesting. I was on a radio show with Michael Laws on the last day of the election campaign when Michael Laws asked Dr Cullen about the number of economic debates. He threw into the conversation that he had had 19 economic debates with me during the election campaign which was more economic debates than he had had with any other finance spokesperson in the entire time he had been Minister of Finance and the Opposition finance spokesman. National members wanted tofront up and talk about the economy. We wanted to talk about the impact of writing off $2 billion worth of student loans. We wanted to talk about the issues and that is exactly what we did. What did we get? The only response from the Labour Government was: “Don’t let the Opposition go there.” It is a real worry because this Government has delivered its largesse in the economy through one reason alone—it has overtaxed New Zealanders and New Zealanders know that. 
The Government has grown its tax revenue at 56 percent over the last 6 years which is far in advance of the 43 percent economic growth rate that we have seen. Why has it done that? It is because it has continued to enjoy the benefits of inflation. It has continued to take hard-working taxpayers for a ride. Yet the best that Michael Cullen could theoretically do is give someone 67c in 2008 and even today he has argued that he might take that away because the Government has had to back down on the Kyoto Protocol. That is the vision that this Government has for New Zealand and it is the reason that our economy is on the skids. It is the reason we have a widening economic gap between New Zealand and Australia. We did not use that time as the Australian Government did to deliver better infrastructure to deliver lower taxes for people to deliver labour-market reform and to deliver labour access. That time was not used in New Zealand. It is too late for economic transformation. It is far too late for this Labour Government.