Robson Matt: General Debates 
Robson Matt: General Debates 
[Volume:608;Page:5476] 
Hon MATT ROBSON (Deputy Leader—Progressive) 
: 
 The usual thing is to say in order to compliment former speakers that they are hard acts to follow but I am afraid it is difficult to follow such acting. It was just acting. 
In the 5 minutes allotted to me I would like to talk about the important relationship between education and training on the one hand and the achievement of a high-quality job-rich society where employment growth is maximised and no one is left behind on the other. Education is a top priority for social investment because it not only gives more employment opportunities but also is a profitable public investment that delivers ample public benefits in the form of a more efficient and productive economy and a much more contented and healthy society. 
Some Opposition parties—and we have just seen one—like to run down and bad-mouth New Zealand. In spite of the fact that New Zealand’s 4.4 percent annual gross domestic product growth rate of late puts us at the top of the ladder for performance among the OECD group of rich nations and despite the OECD forecasting that New Zealand’s average growth rate over the next 3 years will continue to outperform the OECD’s average some in Opposition just cannot bring themselves to be happy for New Zealand. Instead they for ever exaggerate the burden to business arising from the Resource Management Act—an Act introduced by a National Party Government in the 1990s. 
It is of course absolutely true that Governments must always be open and willing to remove unnecessary obstacles to economic development and job creation. My party is totally open to rational practical and progressive steps to remove unnecessary red tape that has passed its use-by date. We are also advocating taking rational steps to make the income tax structure more progressive by lowering effective taxes paid by low and middle-income working families. 
But the key thing is to be as rational and honest about these things as possible. The truth is that the costs to business of our regulatory environment are low by OECD standards. While progress can be made there is no magic wand to wave that would deliver a sudden surge in our economic development or performance. Fostering economic development requires a framework and culture that value and promote the upgrading of our intellectual capital our skills base our educational standards and our ability to compete in the high-quality sectors of the increasingly borderless global economy. Fostering conditions that will enhance economic development requires patience and planning. It requires hard work and maturity by the Government business unions voluntary groups and iwi. It means drawing together to put in place a framework that facilitates high-quality job creation. 
A critical ingredient in this mix of policy is ensuring that every young person is in work training or education and we have the goal of having that for every person who leaves school. That means lowering barriers not only to job creation such as lowering unnecessary tax and red tape barriers but also to accessing education and training. Removing obstacles to education and training we believe is critical to unleashing the full potential of our people. The goal of the Progressive party is to move progressively towards universally accessible early childhood primary secondary and tertiary education. 
In relation to tertiary education my party last year campaigned to stop the student debt burden from getting worse reduce the scale of the debt by a range of incentives for payment and debt write-off freeze fees reduce or eliminate fees for the first year of study introduce living allowances so that students do not have to borrow money to live and work towards the progressive elimination of all fees. We see substantial value in establishing a bonding-type programme whereby student loans could be remitted in return for people working in particular regions or sectors of New Zealand for a specified period of time. 
As the smaller partner in a minority coalition Government it is obvious that the Progressives will not get everything we want. We believe we are achieving a great deal towards most of our Progressive objectives across a wide range of portfolio areas but we know we will not always win the internal debates that must take place within a coalition Government. When we do not win an internal coalition policy debate we will differentiate our policy from that of the coalition Government of which we are a part and whenever we do not win a policy debate we will of course reserve the right to live in order to fight the cause another day. It is extremely important that the goal we have set of moving towards an education system where the barriers of fees are gradually removed in order to reach the goal we want to achieve of eventually having a free and open education system is eventually put into place. That is a goal that the Progressive party has set itself and we believe it can eventually be won.