Cunliffe David: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Cunliffe David: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 01 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:1788. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to resume this call for the economic development section of the Appropriation (2010/11 Financial Review) Bill. For the sake of every New Zealand child growing up and wanting to work in a good job in New Zealand for the sake of the grandparents hoping to see their children grow up here for the sake of every Christchurch family and business waiting to see decisive action to lead the rebuild of Christchurch and for the sake of those patriotic businesses that have not yet sold up or been shipped out may the Government please please get a real plan to grow this economy. A real plan has strategy it shows a future state and a plan to get there it has performance measures and it tracks progress towards that. There is nothing—nothing—in the record of the Ministry of Economic Development that indicates that such a plan has yet been effected by this Government.  
I must however praise the ministry for this: its briefing to its incoming Minister has made very clear that a reliance on the negative politics of free markets hoping that cutting selling deregulating and tax cutting our way out of the hole will work is in the ministry’s words in no way sufficient in a small and remote economy. What it says quite rightly is that a much more ambitious plan is required. It must be common ground that a real plan does not rely on light-handed free markets where they are dysfunctional that neo-liberalism gave us the great financial crisis and that austerity economics is giving us a long recession to follow. A real plan does not imagine that balancing the Government’s books at the expense of businesses or the economy’s books is a way to get us out of the hole. As my colleague David Parker has said a billion-dollar Budget hole is a sure sign that the plan is not working.  
In the absence of a credible obvious clear economic strategy something that would guide the actions of Ministers in a transparent and credible way what we see from the Minister for Economic Development and the Prime Minister is a habit now of being involved in one-off questionable deals lacking transparent processes for some of the largest most powerful corporates in New Zealand: Skycity Casino—currently under way—MediaWorks Warner Bros selling the telecommunications company law to split Telecom and now the Dotcom scandal.  
This Government is showing all the signs of being a tired ragged third-term Government on its way to collapse. Will it last to the election? Yes you are looking like a third-term Government only 3 months into your second Mr Foss. “I can count to three” says the Minister of Commerce—wonderful! It is good that he is holding up three fingers. It looks like a third-term Government even though it is a second-term Government and that is the point.  
Third-term Governments sometimes looks ragged they sometimes do deals with their mates they run out of steam and they do not have a clear plan and this Government has got there in record time. It has got there in record time. It might be funny if it were not for the fact that it will impact the lives the careers the incomes and the families of real New Zealanders—the 1000-plus a week who are voting with their feet because they know that their opportunities are more limited here than they are across the Ditch the ones who listened to John Key 3 and a bit years ago when he told them that if he was elected the gap with Australia would be closed and the brain drain would be stopped. Well it has got worse. It has got worse. It is time for a plan time for some strong Government action to get the economy moving and time for growth and economic development before it is too late.