Cosgrove Clayton: General Debate 
Cosgrove Clayton: General Debate 
[Volume:665;Page:12989] 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 Before I begin the substantive nature of my speech I want to join the Minister of Defence and others in passing on my condolences to the family of Timothy O’Donnell and also our thoughts to those soldiers his comrades who were injured. Briefly I just want to say that as a Minister along with other colleagues I attended the farewells for soldiers that the Minister of Defence has referred to. I also recall welcoming soldiers back at Christchurch International Airport. I recall seeing two emotions in the eyes of family members. On exit it was an emotion of fear for their loved ones and of hope that they would return and on return there was a look and sound of sheer joy that their loved ones had returned home. I simply acknowledge that. 
I want to talk briefly today about what I see as some of the great things about this country that we need to preserve—our jobs our health system and looking after our elderly folk. But to do that we require something called a plan and something called a vision. Today I was going to start by saying that the National Party had no plan but it has articulated one plan in the House today. It was articulated by that spin doctor extraordinaire Steven Joyce and it is called “the brush-off”. It is the brush-off to the 160000 New Zealanders who now do not have a job. Middle-class men and women as well as working-class folk now some for the first time in their lives are bucketed out of work facing a mortgage foreclosing on them and not knowing how they will make ends meet as they look their wife or husband and their children in the eye. The plan for them as articulated by Steven Joyce and this Government is the brush-off. 
I know Gerry Brownlee well. He was a woodwork teacher at St Bede’s College and a builder I am told—of what I do not know. It could have been an outhouse a hen house or a doghouse. As a practitioner of the workings of wood even he would know that in order to build a solid structure one needs something called a plan. Gerry Brownlee of course was restricted at St Bede’s College to the chopping board; that was the nature of his skills. But one needs a plan and one needs a vision. 
What is National’s plan and vision? It ain’t got one apart from today called the brush-off. We had the Job Summit—a fizzer. We had the cycleway. It was going to be the nirvana for New Zealand and create thousands of jobs we were told. How many did it create? Seventy. National has brushed off that one and swept it neatly under the carpet. It does not want to mention that one again. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: She’s saying it’s not even 70. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: The member down the back says it is not even 70. I stand corrected. 
Then Gerry Brownlee articulated that the great plan for New Zealand the great aspirational vision was not a cycleway or a Job Summit; it was to dig big holes where no one wanted them and dig up gold as if there were gold in them there hills. What happened to that plan? It got brushed off. It got swept right under the carpet real quick—reversed ditched and gone even before lunchtime. The only reason for that of course was that New Zealanders said no. 
There is no Job Summit there is a cycleway to nowhere and mining is gone. So what do we have? Do members remember National articulating its plan to reverse the trend of Kiwis going to Australia and overseas? In the last 3 months more Kiwis have gone overseas; we are almost in danger of depopulation if this trend carries on. What is National’s vision for that? Nothing. 
Then there was the plan to close the wage gap between Australia and New Zealand. This was a centrepiece of National Party policy. Gerry Brownlee and John Key articulated this live-or-die stance day after day. What do we see now? After 18 months of a National Government the wage gap is growing—it has grown by $50 a week and it is exceeding that as we speak. What have we had as a plan a vision or some sort of aspiration to deal with the problem that has arisen? Gerry Brownlee got up in the House like a human jelly whom we are trying to nail to the wall with a sledgehammer. He minced around the place and tried to get himself out from under the rock he put himself under. He tried to disembowel figures get any statistics and put anything on paper to try to explain why he failed why there was no plan and why there was no vision. But the Government has one plan which it has articulated today: to brush off all the bad news brush off 160000 unemployed in New Zealand and sell out every Kiwi that it made a commitment to before the election.