English Bill: General Debate 
English Bill: General Debate 
[Volume:649;Page:17776] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 Yesterday it became official that the New Zealand economy is in recession. 
Jill Pettis 
: It became official that you were white-anting your leader. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Well that is typical of the point I am about to make. The economy is in recession interest rates are at a record high— 
Hon Phil Goff 
: They’ve just come down—didn’t you notice? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Well they have not actually—has the member not noticed? That is another example. The member is so out of touch that he does not know mortgage interest rates are going up not down. It took 15 seconds for Labour to show why it is completely irrelevant to the issues that matter. Its front-bench next leader believes mortgage rates are going down. I invite that member to go door-knocking in Mt Roskill and talk to the people who have mortgages and to ask them what is happening to the interest rate notice for their mortgages. They are going up. 
What else is happening? House values are dropping. Investment funds are closing up. We have got used to it—we have got so used to it now that we do not regard it as unusual when a brand like AXA Guardian Trust or AMP shuts down funds because of the risk that people will lose their money. That is happening. Business confidence is through the floor and inflation is headed for 5 percent. If it turns out—as most economists are picking—that there is no growth this year none at all in the economy then we could be heading for the worst recession in 20 years. Of course it is not affecting all people equally. If one is in the provincial areas particularly farther south things are moving along not too badly. But if one is in the suburbs of one of our big cities and in anything to do with the construction retail or financial services industries then one is in real difficulty. What will happen next? What will happen next is that the Reserve Bank’s forecast of 6 percent unemployment may come to pass—that is almost double what it is now. 
What is Labour’s plan? Well it has two plans: the big plan which Helen Clark talked about on  
Agenda 
 on Saturday and which of course has nothing in it; and the other plan which is the dirty tricks plan. The dirty tricks plan involves the covert bugging of private conversations everywhere and anywhere so that all politicians are on the record 24 hours a day; push-polling where Labour is ringing up people with pollsters it has had for 20 years and asking questions like “Is John Key slippery?” and “Will National cut public services by $10 billion?”; taxpayer funding of its election advertisements confirmed officially by the Electoral Commission last Friday; and of course its hardy annual of email theft. That is Labour’s plan. 
On Sunday John Key announced National’s infrastructure plan which was greeted by the world’s least qualified prime ministerial economist Helen Clark as being laughable and reckless. When asked to explain why she said it is because National is planning to borrow some more money. The debt levels that John Key specified are the same ones about which as recently as 2006 Dr Cullen claimed: “We are satisfied debt has reached a prudent level.” So by their own yardstick it was prudent 2 years ago but now apparently it is reckless. Dr Cullen said that it was among the lowest debt levels in the developed world and he is right about that. He also said that it is low enough that if we face a financial shock it is not a big problem. That was at 23 percent of GDP debt—John Key specified 22 percent. So that is laughable. 
The question for Labour is what its plan is apart from dirty tricks. What is it? What are the big plans that Helen Clark talked about? Barry Soper has said that he has been told things by the Prime Minister that would be very damaging in public. What things is she saying to journalists behind closed doors that would be very damaging in public?