Roy Eric: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Roy Eric: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:629;Page:1117] 
ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill) 
: 
 This debate began as the debate in response to the Prime Minister’s statement but it has become somewhat broader since that point. I listened to the Prime Minister and I actually took some notes because I was looking forward to hearing some vision expressed that we could grab a hold of and say that it was the vision for New Zealand or it was not. But in reality we had a great deal of backslapping from the Prime Minister congratulating herself and her team on achieving—well we will get to that—and assuring us that there is no problem. 
I can perhaps understand the pressure that the Prime Minister is under. My mind goes back to the election campaign of 1999 when Labour came into office. I well remember one Hon Trevor Mallard fronting on TV and saying: “Labour will bring a new standard of accountability.” Do we remember that? Yes we do. So we all had an expectation that there would be a change. There was—it was a change for the worse. We have documented chapter after chapter of Ministers forgetting where they lived issues about painting and speeding and a whole range of things. Never have we had a Government that has had to stand down so many Ministers for a variety of reasons. But I do not want to dwell on that: right now the issue is clear. 
Hon Marian Hobbs 
: You people never ever stood down. 
ERIC ROY 
: I can tell Marian Hobbs that the issue is clear. We have a Prime Minister who used the leader’s allowance inappropriately. I have been listening to the debate on this. The Hon Lianne Dalziel said: “Well what about those Brethren people? What was the tie up for that?”. I do not have a clue whether there were Brethren people in my patch. I suspect that there might have been because they were pretty disturbed about what this Government was doing. But let me put on record that they were not recruited by the National Party and if they were in my particular patch I did not know about them. [ 
Interruption 
] This is the issue: election after election we have had the combined trade unions the meatworkers union the nurses union the teachers union—union after union—supporting the Labour Party. A good question is: what are the linkages around that? We are hearing: “Oh this thing has happened with the National Party but oh no it has never happened with us.” Well I have to say that the National Party is clearly a babe in the woods at getting other people to promote it. We do not do it yet those members actively do so. 
My colleague Phil Heatley made a comment about the issue of the Labour Party leader’s budget being wrongly spent. Why do the Labour MPs not have a whip-round and top it up? Firstly that would certainly overspend the budget. There would be no question about that whatsoever. But the maths are wrong. The rate for this sort of activity is 30 pieces of silver and 50 times 30 pieces of silver does not come to $440000-odd. So the maths are wrong. 
I now want to address the Prime Minister’s comment that the economy is in good shape. If we look back at what happened at the election we see that a blue tide went through the provinces. It is a well-known fact that the first people to feel a downturn are those in primary industries and exporters. Where are they located? They are located in the provinces. Doug Woolerton said that we can farm our way out of this. Well let me give the House some numbers that show how things are turning to custard in the primary sector. I was still farming quite actively up until about Christmas. In November I sold some lambs at $67 which is $10 down on the same lambs last year. In December I sold some lambs that were bigger than the ones I sold in November and they were $57—$10 less. Last week I sold some more lambs. They were bigger again and they are now worth $47. Is there a crisis out there in the primary industry which is the lead export earner for New Zealand? Yes there is and it is not just in lamb. 
Chris Auchinvole 
: Dairy products. 
ERIC ROY 
: Dairy products are back 12 percent on last year. Wool has gone from disaster to crisis. The venison industry is an embarrassment. 
David Bennett 
: Apples. 
ERIC ROY 
: Apples. It just goes on and on yet Government members are busy slapping themselves on the back and saying: “We’ve done a lot of good stuff and it’s great.” Tomorrow the Waimumu Fieldays open. They are the Mystery Creek equivalent for the South Island. I predict right now—and members can come back next week and correct me if I am wrong—that the sales will be down dramatically. I make that prediction now. That is another test of whether the economy is going forward or back. I tell the House right now that it will be down tomorrow. It will be back a long way. 
The reality is that farm income grosses will be down on average somewhere around $60000 each. Most of that comes off the bottom line. The cheque books get put away. The service towns the provinces the places like Invercargill which I represent are starting to hurt yet the Prime Minister says in this House that there is no problem and that the Government is doing a great job. The plea from the provinces which started before the last election said quite clearly: “Notice what is happening. You are ignoring the engine room of this economy. And not only that you are putting some impediments in place. You are not dealing with the issues we need to deal with. We don’t want to be over-taxed. We don’t want a whole lot of compliance costs. We want the Resource Management Act fixed. We want these issues dealt with.” I know that the Hon Jim Anderton the Minister of Agriculture—now this is leadership—wrote to Federated Farmers and said: “Give me 10 issues I need to deal with.” Is that not leadership! He does not have a clue about what is needed. So I will be very interested to see what his responses are. 
There is another issue and this is the real nub of the matter that the Prime Minister raised. We are very proud of our film industry and I am proud of it too. It has done well. I have just come back from the United States. Everyone is talking about  
The Lord of the Rings; The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe;  
and 
 The World’s Fastest Indian  
which I am proud of. I am probably the only one in the House who has met Burt Munro and currently knows a number of his grandchildren. We are all proud of him down there. Gerry Brownlee made a good point today. Burt Munro would not be able to do what he did in the 1960s and 1970s. He simply would not be able to do it because we now have a restrictive society with a Government that says: We know what’s best for the people and we ain’t going to fix the things that are impediments to you doing your own thing.” 
Let us get back to the film industry. Yes we are proud of it but what has happened to keep the industry in New Zealand? It was given a break. It was given some carrots to stay here. The question that I want answered is this: why do we pick a winner in the film industry and not pick the winners at the Waimumu Fielday tomorrow? Both those groups are in the productive sector and those people who are inventive— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: A subsidy! 
ERIC ROY 
: No we do not want a subsidy. We want a tax break. Clayton Cosgrove should listen to me. Labour is overtaxing this economy at a time when the primary production sector and the exporters are coming to their knees and are being overtaxed. What do they want? The answer is quite clear. They want Labour to address overtaxing. They want Labour to address the fact that this Government says it knows best—that it will manage it will control and it will get people to do what it requires. 
The first 5 years of this millennium have been the best years for maybe three decades—maybe in a lifetime—and this Government has sat on its hands and congratulated itself. Those 5 years have been the best 5 years that this economy has had and it has been largely because of the reforms of the 1990s which essentially I am proud of. I do not have time to go through them all. But this Government has sat on its hands and I believe sadly that history will look back and judge what has happened. History will say that this was a time of great prosperity but that the Government sat back and congratulated itself and did nothing to drive the economy. It is a sad commentary that this Government is more interested in singing its own praises than dealing with the issues that will drive and grow this economy.