Hughes Darren: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Hughes Darren: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:665;Page:12681] 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Labour) 
: 
 If this Government were a television show it would be entitled  
It’s All About Me John Key 
. That is why the Labour Opposition is making a big effort today to focus on Vote Prime Minister and Cabinet because the whole thing is about John Key. The whole point of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet is meant to be to put together the policies and the plans a Government is meant to have to give effect to its manifesto its Speech from the Throne and the Prime Minister’s statement. It is all about John Key and this Prime Minister is failing to develop a plan for New Zealand that lasts the test of time—and that could be just 12 months—and is failing in his ability to drive through real change for New Zealand in order to give people the brighter future they were promised at the last election. Hundreds of thousands of people voted for National more than those who voted for it in 2002 when it was led by the hapless Minister of Finance. Hundreds of thousands of people shifted from 2002 to 2008 to support National because they believed in the brighter future that was promised to them by John Key. It has turned out that after one episode of  
The 
Late Show with David Letterman 
 all we are getting is one tyre kicked after another. The tyres have been kicked to death. They are flat; they are down to the rims on the road and the only place National wants to go is to Tony’s Tyre Service to try to get the Government back on track but it cannot happen. 
I heard the Prime Minister on the radio this morning. He was asked about one of the few genuine reforms the Government has driven through. I refer to Auckland governance where National took the royal commission set up by Labour and managed to bring a reform through. Though controversial at least it is one thing the Government has done. John Key the Prime Minister of New Zealand who is serviced by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet was asked about how powerful the Mayor of Auckland would be. He was asked whether the Mayor of Auckland would be the second-most powerful person in New Zealand. Our Prime Minister who is serviced by policy advice from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet said: “They might be; but on the other hand they might not be.” This constituted the top-level leadership from the Prime Minister in respect of the Mayor of Auckland. 
Moana Mackey 
: Decisive. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: It was decisiveness writ large from a man who said he would deliver a brighter future and who said he would turbocharge the New Zealand economy. We were going to have a step change and we are now finding out 2 years into this Government that all of those slogans are just that—they are just words. There is no plan to give effect to any of the words that the National Party spent 9 years in Opposition carefully road-testing or getting Crosby/Textor to check out. Every single word was focus-grouped. National checked to make sure it tested well with the market and it gets 10 out of 10 for the marketing and the research it did in order to give effect to the policies it campaigned on. The problem is that National now has ministerial warrants. National now has departments that it is being serviced by to try to turn those slogans and that rhetoric into policies that will change New Zealand not just for a week or a month but for a year and a decade. That is the failure for the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet with its vote in that this Prime Minister is not capable of sticking to a plan. Whenever the pressure comes on the Government always buckles and it cannot keep going. 
Steven Joyce who runs large swathes of the Government is the man for whom the Road Code has been designed with the contents page having on page 1 “U-turn”. The most important piece of road safety that Steven Joyce knows is the same as his political safety—the U-turn. That is the key thing he knows which is on page 1 of the Road Code. The slogans are getting harder and harder to turn into policy and that is where the Deputy Prime Minister actually has a point. We always wonder why he is quite as angry as he is but it must be so frustrating to have predicted things years before they have happened and to be rubbished at the time only to sit back and watch everything he has said come true. I empathise with the Deputy Prime Minister because he rubbished the cycleway and he had Gerry Brownlee’s number years before anyone else worked out that Gerry was a good fella but he was not so good on policy. Mr English had John Key worked out with his case of bouncing from cloud to cloud. Mr English tried to tell them all this but no one would listen. Now he has to sit there and try to suppress the laughter and the giggles as Labour finally points out what all these things are about. 
Hon Bill English 
: I wish I was that smart. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Deep down he knows he is that smart. There is no such thing as self-doubt when it comes to Bill English. Mind you in that respect he will never be lonely in the National Party caucus where there has never been a great connection between talent ability and personal ambition. 
One of the aspects of the brighter future we were going to see from National was where it was going to close the gap with Australia. So the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet should be going through all the different organs of State to work out how this gap with Australia can be closed. As was shown today by the Minister for Economic Development that was only ever a slogan. The National Government has no idea what it wants to do to try to reduce the gap with Australia and when Mr Parker asked the Minister for Economic Development a simple question today about income parity the Minister said he was blind-sided by the question. Let me read to the Committee the question: “Hon David Parker to the Minister for Economic Development: Does he have targets or milestones to achieve income parity with Australia by 2025?”. That could not have been a clearer question for which we wanted to know the answer from the Government; we wanted to know what it was doing to achieve parity with Australia. 
The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet is meant to be driving all the policies across the votes to make sure that this can happen. But Mr Brownlee was surprised that the issue was about wages and surprised that it was about income parity. What on earth he was doing preparing for question time today Lord only knows! I am not sure what special is on at Copperfields; all I am saying is that I would have thought that if I had that question arrive on a green sheet of paper in my bill box this morning I would think: “Gee I’d better look up what people earn in Australia as against New Zealand.” That shows me that the Government is not coordinated; there is no plan with regard to how the Prime Minister leads his Government to make sure that parity with Australia can happen. 
Gerry Brownlee did not know what the wage difference was. John Key did not know at question time how much a 2-litre container of milk was. The deputy leader of the Labour Party Annette King asked him about the price of milk and of Weet-Bix and he had no idea how much the price of bread was. They are out of touch because they have no plan other than how they got elected in 2008. 
I close by saying that National has previously had plans before that it has worked to and in preparing for today’s speech I remembered that back in the Bolger National Government it was ambitious for New Zealand. It did have a plan for New Zealand and it did believe in a brighter future for New Zealand. It used to call it a plan for a “decent society”. That kind of went by the by. That was before Mr Henare joined them! I found from the Parliamentary Library a document called  
Path to 2010: Securing a future for New Zealanders to share 
. In that document the National Government in 1993 had a plan for the country and it was going to achieve 5 percent annual growth for the New Zealand economy under that plan. It talked about preparing for an ageing population by trying to help ensure that people could have savings. Well of course we know that this Government has no plan for the savings of workers because it cut the KiwiSaver scheme. Superannuation savings for workers is one of the key advantages that Australians have over New Zealanders yet the Key Government cut it out. I know that Lianne Dalziel will have something to say about that. 
This document  
Path to 2010 
 
talked about agriculture and the importance of making sure that that industry remained critical to New Zealand through “better research and development”. Well of course the previous Labour Government took up the challenge to boost research and development for New Zealand’s critical primary industries and the Bill English - John Key Government came in and wiped that despite the fact that in  
Path to 2010— 
the last time National had a plan 17 long long years ago—that was all going to be taken care of. 
The last aspect it covered was the “heavy indebtedness of New Zealand” at the time that the plan was written. The Labour Government led by Helen Clark and Michael Cullen paid down the debt of this country when people like Gerry Brownlee Bill English and John Key were saying not to worry about things like that but to give out tax cuts. Can this country imagine how indebted we would be today if Labour had not reduced debt before we went into the recession where we had to borrow money to keep the country going? The position of the economy that this National Government inherited was far and away better than what the previous National Government gave to the country in 1999 when it left office. 
National used to have a plan; it used to believe in doing things for the country; it used to have the courage of its convictions and the fortitude to follow through with policies even though they were unpopular. What we are seeing from this Government now is back-down after back-down when things get tough. It turns out that the slogans have got nothing behind them. They are slogans they are clichés they are rhetoric; there is nothing to them. When it comes to the really tough decisions National does not have the bottle to follow it through. There is a U-turn on mining there is a U-turn on the importance of the cycleway there is a U-turn on doubling trade with China there is a U-turn on becoming an international financial hub for the world and there is a U-turn even on a simple matter like road safety where National could build bipartisan or even multipartisan support across the House to move on issues like road safety or blood-alcohol limits. National did not even have the intestinal fortitude to get on and do that. What is the point of being the Government if one cannot lead? What is the point of being the Government if one cannot campaign on manifesto policies and turn them into proper plans when one becomes the Government?  
It’s All About Me John Key.  
That is why we are opposing Vote Prime Minister and Cabinet. That guy has no plan for New Zealand that he can make happen.