Cullen Michael: Adjournment — Sittings of the House 
Cullen Michael: Adjournment — Sittings of the House 
[Volume:651;Page:1035] 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Labour) 
: 
 I join my colleagues in thanking everyone who works on behalf of all of us around this place. I particularly thank my own and my colleagues’ former ministerial staff. We often talk about the trauma of Ministers transferring and leaving office but it is actually just as bad for many of the staff as well. I am grateful that nearly all of my non-political staff have found new appointments. Perhaps it is a pity that the one who is working for Rodney Hide did not go to work for Gerry Brownlee instead. He might have been saved quite a lot of errors over the last couple of weeks. Indeed when I heard Mr Dunne referring to Parliament as a village I was tempted to interject and ask what that would make Gerry Brownlee but I will leave it at that. 
I also say that there was a slightly surreal air when listening to Mr Dunne talk about the trauma of a change of Government. Of course Mr Dunne’s perpetual political career of a highly leveraged political buy-out continues unabated under the term of this Government. Let me assure him that there is a difference. When Government members leave office their staff pack their boxes. When they arrive in Opposition they unpack the boxes themselves. That is one of the key differences that occurs almost immediately in that regard. 
Let me congratulate the National Party upon its election victory which was a comprehensive one in the election campaign this year. But I think its members should be very careful about misinterpreting the basis of that election victory. The election victory was based on what one might call slightly indelicately the “underwear principle”; that is it was time for a change. It was not won upon the basis that one wanted different underwear; it was simply a time for a change of underwear. What that meant was that one cannot claim that people were voting for a 90-day provision in employment law or that they wanted higher-energy-using incandescent light bulbs or whatever it may be. 
In fact practically none of those issues were ever mentioned by all the people I met. There were two issues that by far dominated the debate. One was just that people felt that it was only right and proper in a democracy that the Government should sometimes change. They felt it was bad for democracy for the same Government to continue for ever in office. It was as simple as that. People had no particular reason and were pushed to find reasons when asked to do so. The second issue undoubtedly in Auckland in particular and especially amongst ethnic communities was of law and order. Everything else was way down below that in terms of the issues that people were deciding upon in this election campaign. It is not a mandate for any particular policies that National has put into operation. 
Today with the release of the half-yearly economic and fiscal update Government members got a serious reality check. Their response was to curl up into the foetal position and hope it would all go away. The National Party lived through this year in a self-created bubble of fantasy one in which New Zealand did not have a debt problem. Well that is news! Who created the debt problem? New Zealanders created the debt problem over a long period of time. New Zealanders are the people of New Zealand and we have one of the highest rates of debt in the world as a proportion of GDP because we have not been saving. I do not know who said that. I think it was— 
Hon Annette King 
: Mr Hayes. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: It was Mr Hayes was it? Who created it? If he was referring to Government debt this outgoing Labour Government left one of the lowest debts as a percentage of GDP in the developed world. We halved the debt that we found despite the National Party criticising every Budget I presented for actually running too big a surplus. So members should not talk to me about debt and who created it and where we are going in that regard. 
Those members went around saying that the economy was in such a good state that they could promise whatever they liked and they out-promised the Labour Party by well over $2 billion. That was not according to us but to the  
New Zealand Herald 
’s 
running total which it then abandoned because it became too embarrassing to keep running up the total as the National Party’s promises continued to pour out. How is Mr English paying for these promises? He is paying for them out of the $1.75 billion annual allocation that he now says was not there for a prospective Labour Government. He keeps saying that we had allocated every precise promise year by year—no. Some were coming out of the $1.75 billion annual allocation just like all of those members’ promises were supposed to be coming out of that allocation. Even after the briefing the Government got after the election Mr Key said there was nothing to worry about the Government did not need to change a thing it was not Armageddon and everything was all right; it would just carry on and everything would be sweet and lovely. 
That self-delusion seems to continue unabated now that those members face the stark reality. The numbers in today’s release are already out of date. The mid-point forecasts in today’s release are already out of date. The assumption of trading partner growth is actually very close to the bottom scenario. That means that gross debt will rise within the forecast period from 17 percent when we left office to 38 percent of GDP. That is higher than what the previous Labour Government inherited in 1999. In the projection period beyond that it is forecast to rise to 57 percent of GDP—right back to where we were in 1990. No wonder Mr Muldoon was Mr Key’s boyhood hero! This is a Government whose current fiscal projections look like what we should have had under Muldoon. But of course he never gave us proper fiscal projections because he was scared to do so as he knew what they would mean. 
According to today’s projections the entire fiscal progress made by Labour over 9 years will be more than wiped out in the next 4½ years and the Government has no plan to deal with this at all—no plan. It says it will bring infrastructure forward. The only thing those members can cite is an extra $1.2 billion over and above what we were spending on broadband. For what? To bring fibre-optic broadband to the home. Why? To drive productivity. What does bringing fibre-optic broadband to the home have to do with productivity in business? How does granny downloading photos of the kids faster increase productivity? How does helping those people who use the Internet for pornography to download it faster have anything to do with productivity? How does helping people to play computer games on the Internet faster have anything to do with productivity? It could theoretically actually lower productivity in the New Zealand economy if that is where we are going. And of course—[ 
Interruption 
] I may have just sparked off some personal reflections in that regard; if so Mr Speaker I withdraw that particular element. 
The one thing the Government announced is that it will not proceed with increased investment in rail. It sort of said it would review it but did Mr English go to the KiwiRail board yesterday and say: “No more money for you and no more borrowing for the KiwiRail system.”? What was the advice that the Government should have got and that I got? It was that if there was no further increase in investment over the next year or two within a year KiwiRail would not be able to deliver existing services to existing clients because its rolling stock would be so out of date. It is older than Mr Hayes in terms of the useful life of that material. There is a massive investment programme that we would have brought forward because investing in rail increases efficiency increases productivity and saves us greenhouse gas emissions. 
What has the Government done about skills? It has not brought forward the integrated skills strategy in the workplace. It has done one thing; it has removed the requirement for national standards to be reviewed by the Regulations Review Committee. That is its entire contribution to upgrading New Zealand’s skills. It has withdrawn KiwiSaver savings; it has demolished that. It has withdrawn innovation funding. That is the programme of growth. 
There is no plan other than the promise: “This will be addressed in the 2009 Budget.” So Mr English is already going out and getting himself measured for the tracksuit for the “Father of all Budgets” in May 2009. National members should never have been so foolish in the lead-up to the election. They did not tell people what they must have known was true that the— 
Hon Member 
: Like you didn’t tell us about ACC! 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: I was being more pessimistic than the National Party about the future of the economy. I heard debates where Mr English said: “No it’s all right. Don’t worry about that. We don’t need to worry.” Well let me paraphrase something I once said that is often misquoted. Let me say that it is now National members’ problem. They won. We lost. Digest that and come up with a plan!