Williams Andrew: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williams Andrew: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Sitting date: 30 January 2013. Volume:687;Page:7635. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First) 
: 
 I wish to amend the motion as follows: to delete all words after “Government” and to substitute “only if the Government refrains from selling State-owned assets and addresses unemployment and the overvalued New Zealand dollar.” In moving that amendment and speaking to the motion and the amendment we have listened to speeches in the last 2 days yesterday and today and one could be forgiven if you were a New Zealander for thinking that there were actually two New Zealands. On the one hand we have the New Zealand that John Key sees: “Planet Key”. He reckons the economy is in good shape. It just needs some tinkering like changing the warrant of fitness system. He thinks that interest rates are at a 50-year low. Well that is what happens when you have a recession and unemployment. 
He reckons that manufacturers have never had it better. Well he should have perhaps sat in on the inquiry into manufacturing in New Zealand on Monday and listened to some of the iconic companies like HamiltonJet and Wyma Engineering and other such things which actually are the real manufacturers of this country which are definitely not saying they have never had a better time. He says there is no housing crisis yet people in parts of Auckland are living with two three or four families—10 12 or 15 members of a family living in one small two-bedroom or three-bedroom house. John Key tells us that primary exports are holding up and our terms of trade are high. He also says that as for unemployment we are not to worry the labour market is a very dynamic place. Jobs are being lost he says and new ones are being created all the time according to this Government. Those 175000 people who cannot find work are just a nuisance to this Government. Ignore them and they will go away eventually! That is the New Zealand that John Key sees. 
But of course as we all know John Key is dreaming. He made a very telling comment both in this House and later when he was interviewed when he said that as we get closer to the finish line it will show up. We just do wonder whether he was meaning in terms of his finish line when he will finish his time in office and move on and leave the destruction behind him that he has created during his time as Prime Minister or whether he means the finish line is the next election at which time there will be a change in Government and we will get New Zealand back on a true stated course. 
As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech there are the two New Zealands and the other is the one that everyone else sees. We started the year with more New Zealanders out of work than at any other time in the last 13 years. The previous time when there were as many New Zealanders unemployed was when National was in Government in 1998. Up and down the country people are begging for work. We have all heard the story about thousands of people who queued for hours in South Auckland to apply for a few low-paying supermarket jobs. This is the life for a lot of New Zealanders—not New Zealanders living in Parnell or with baches at Omaha or in Hawaii but the lives of true New Zealanders who holiday in New Zealand by the way and do not always holiday at their luxury homes in Hawaii. 
The official statistics do not tell the full story. Under the household labour force survey the definition of “employment” is 1 hour of paid work a week—just 1 hour of work a week classifies you as being in paid employment. This has created a new crisis and that is of underemployment. Now we are hearing about not just unemployment but also underemployment. The Roy Morgan Research poll reckons that the number of New Zealanders who are not able to find enough work could be as high as 226000 people. So when the underemployment is combined with the unemployment rate this represents almost 20 percent of the New Zealand workforce. One in five New Zealanders are either unemployed or underemployed. There is a trend away from decent paid stable long-term employment towards precarious short-term employment and we heard this at the manufacturing inquiry on Monday. Good stable solid manufacturing jobs are being lost as more and more manufacturers close down and those jobs turn into precarious jobs part-time jobs jobs that do not allow people to go to the bank and ask to borrow money to buy a house because simply those people are not in stable long-term employment. 
Meanwhile under the National Government living costs have skyrocketed. Not only are Kiwis paying more in increased GST—something National said it would not put up but it did—but they are now paying more in petrol ACC levies alcohol tobacco and just about everything else the Government can put a price on. At the same time we have higher foreign debt a worsening current account deficit and despite Mr Key’s rosy predictions export prices are predicted to fall. This National Government has racked up more debt than all previous Governments of New Zealand combined which is a shocking shocking statement to have to make. But the reality is that in 4 short years—for many people 4 long years—this Government has racked up more debt than all the Governments in the history of New Zealand combined. The terms of trade are at a 3-year low. We have a trade deficit of $700 million. The primary sector is not holding up either. Income from dairy is expected to fall 20 percent. 
So what can be done? Well John Key would have us believe that the answer lies in positive thinking with his smiley happy clappy “Mr Spray and Walk Away” approach to the economy—rather than face up to the reality we should put all the negative stuff to one side and just concentrate on the good things. According to Mr Key we should just put all the negative stuff aside and just concentrate on the good things. It is delusional but so far it has worked for Mr Key. The trouble is Mr Key that people are starting to wake up to the reality. They are starting to realise that they are actually worse off than they were 4 years ago when the current Prime Minister came to power. National has failed to deliver on its promise of a brighter future. The brighter future these days is in Australia or elsewhere for young New Zealanders. 
Jobs for New Zealanders—how will New Zealand First attack this? Well our objective—New Zealand First’s—is to ensure that every New Zealander who wants a job has a job. We want to see to it that unemployment is a thing of the past. This will not happen overnight. It is not something that can be done with the stroke of a pen. It requires openness to new ideas innovative policy and the political will to do it. Our first step would be to change the monetary policy settings which have allowed the artificially high New Zealand dollar to cripple our export sector. We want to put policies in place that discourage speculation on the New Zealand dollar by the likes of the John Keys of this world—currency dealers in New York and Asia. We want to revamp the Reserve Bank and put in place more measures so it can control the exchange rate within a specified band just as Singapore and many other countries do. 
We are also investigating a number of innovative ways in which smart interventions could assist the creation of new jobs and the retention of existing jobs in New Zealand. In regions where job growth is low and unemployment is high New Zealand First would move quickly to implement a community wage policy. We would work with local and regional councils to develop such a scheme. Whether it is planting trees removing graffiti or helping the elderly we would be making sure that everyone who is collecting an unemployment benefit is giving a little bit back to the community and at the same time gaining valuable work experience. The way forward is not to pretend that problems do not exist. The way forward is with practical common-sense policies such as these. New Zealand First will work constructively with any party to meet our objective of making unemployment a thing of the past. 
I hope that we will hear more positive things from the Government in the remainder of this debate because for the last 2 days I have mainly heard the Government just talking about and rubbishing the Opposition and all parties of the Opposition and spending most of its focus on putting down the Opposition. Perhaps we could as New Zealanders all expect in the next part of this debate to hear constructive ideas from this Government rather than the destructive comments that its members just seem to want to make.