Anderton Jim: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Anderton Jim: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 21 July 2010. Volume:665;Page:12537. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon JIM ANDERTON (Leader—Progressive) 
: 
 We have just heard from the former spokesperson on the eradication of political correctness. He wants to know why we were not making any noises. It was because we were asleep. 
This is a Government with no plan and no new ideas but with lots of smiles from Mr Key who is starting to look like a poor man’s Wizard of Oz. He is like a travelling magician who pulls out every other trick every other time that the one before did not work. But we can only trick Dorothy and the Tin Man for so long because the people of New Zealand are starting to see there is no plan. There is no way back to Kansas. 
What has the “Wizard of New Zealand” pulled out of his bag so far? We have had the 2025 task force which was meant to show how we could catch up with Australia. What happened to that? Nothing. Don Brash failed to deliver but “There’s no surprises there.” as the Kiwi kid says about the Aussie kid in the TV ad. Don is still being kept on to give another report next year yet he has run out of money already. That is some trick for the former Governor of the Reserve Bank who is in charge of New Zealand’s monetary policy. He runs out of his budget in the first year of the task force. 
Then we had the Job Summit. How is that going? There are no new jobs. Unemployment is on the rise. The Government that my colleagues on my right and I were in halved unemployment to 4 percent when we went out of office. This Government has increased unemployment by 50 percent already and it is still rising. Now the rate has almost returned to what it was under the previous National Government. We cannot blame that on the recession especially when the only idea to save jobs was a 9-day fortnight. That was meant to save thousands of jobs by getting people to work less so that they were paid less and businesses stayed afloat. That was the idea. At most it saved 100 jobs for the whole of New Zealand. 
Then John Key came up with another wizard idea. Employees could sell the fourth week of their holidays. That means that the solution to New Zealand’s problems is to get people to work longer. Previously the solution was for people to work less and now it is for them to work longer. Then National had this great idea of a 9-day fortnight. Employees were going to work less still and get paid less as well. What a magician’s sleight of hand it was to suggest that employees have the choice to sell their annual leave. In my book it is just working an extra week and getting paid for it. It is not exactly rocket science. But this scheme will save New Zealand and catch us up to Australia. Oh really? Why not take Christmas Day tomorrow and then decide to sell it and go to work anyway? Would that fix the problem? We would catch up with Australia then! 
Then we had the cycleway. This was meant to create jobs. The cycleway was the great new innovation for New Zealand. Tourist industries were meant to pop up all along the cycleway. All we have seen so far is pictures of John Key on a bike smiling as always. It will take more than a pushbike and a cycleway in New Zealand to fix up the New Zealand economy. But however now we have the answer; it is mining. We will dig up the country just like Australia is doing and we will catch up to Australia. What happened to that idea? It was another flip-flop because the smiling Prime Minister does not want to be unpopular. He discovered that this idea was not all that popular. Actually 40000 people in Queen Street convinced him of that. So that is not going to happen. 
If John Key and his Government were serious about growing the economy they would not pay just lip-service to the farming sector. That sector is our largest economic earner. The truth is that agriculture makes up 43 percent of New Zealand’s exports. Is there anything about that that John Key does not understand? Let us compare that with tourism which he took the portfolio for. Tourism makes up 17 percent of the economy. He did not take agriculture which makes up 43 percent of the economy. Gee that is a no-brainer. We want to really lead the economy so we take an industry that is less than half as important as the one we do not take and then we do not mention it. John never mentioned farming in the 2008 post-election Speech from the Throne—he never mentioned it. He did not mention it in 2010 in his speech to Parliament at the beginning of this year. I am a member of Parliament for an urban electorate and I mention agriculture all the time. Mind you I was told by Helen Clark to mention it and I did; I was a good Minister. 
There is nothing wrong with supporting tourism but there is a heck of a lot wrong with not supporting farming and ignoring it. If John Key thinks we can grow the New Zealand economy while ignoring the farming sector and building cycleways he is dreaming. What kind of mickey mouse economics smashes the Fast Forward fund for research in the primary sector and cancels the tax credit for business in favour of a cycleway? We do away with the New Zealand Fast Forward fund we do away with research and development rebates for business but we replace them with a cycleway. Now that will work. Yeah right!