Ardern Shane: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Shane: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 12 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15862. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country): I would really like to stand up and support the Prime Minister’s statement for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is this: it annoyed the Labour Party so much and it also annoyed the Greens so much. That is a reason to support it in the first place.Let us start by talking about why we should support it. The economy has grown by 3.5 percent from September 2012 to September 2013 and has been forecast to continue to grow in that light. When you compare that with what is happening internationally it is now being described as an economy that other people should take note of. You need to ask the question why that might be. There have been 66000 new jobs. More people are employed now than there were. The growth in young employment that is thosewho are either studying or in some kind of educational activity or in employment is 89 percent. That is an amazing increase from where it was.When you start asking the question why all of these things are happening you start to look at what the drivers are in the economy. Obviously in Taranaki where I come from the Taranaki - King Country electorate things like energy have had enormous growth in the life of this Government—in the very recent life of this Government I would have to add if you take the kind of gestation period these kinds of industries need to get going and start to get established. When you look at what an alternative Government might look like it is a Government that would put a handbrake on all of these developments. It would bring all of these developments to their knees.I know that colleagues in the House will not be surprised by the fact that I am now going to mention the primary sector. If you look at the biggest driver of the New Zealand economy now and into the future you will find that it is the primary sector. I know that surprises the Labour Party and certainly surprises the Green Party. In fact they go almost into meltdown when they learn that when they hear that. The fact is that the growth in the New Zealand economy now and some time into the future will most likely come from the primary sector and in particular the dairy industry which is the biggest part of it.What have our opponents had to say about these sectors? What are the comments from the Labour-Green Opposition? Well they have said that the sector is based on bulk commodities that they export in huge volumes with no added value and very very poor investment in manufacturing. How wrong could you be? The comment they add to that the one they continually add to that is that it is at the expense of the environment—it is at the expense of the environment. So let us run through those boxes because perception can often be greater than fact.The perception of course is that the Green Party is made up of a bunch of hippies who smoke marijuana wear sandals and are sackcloth-wearing morris dancers. Most of us know that is not actually true. There is at least 1 percent of them—at least 1 percent of them—who do not fit into that category. I mean they may wear jackets but they do not wear sandals—1 percent of them. They certainly wear jackets but not sandals. So the perception of the Green Party is actually not right. In fact when you look the supporters of the Green Party you will find that a lot of them are urban professionals. One of the real ironies I guess of the Green Party is that the members themselves come from urban New Zealand. Most Green Party members come from urban New Zealand. They do not come from rural New Zealand; they come from urban New Zealand.The Green Party perpetuates the rant that the agricultural sector is a sunset industry and will not have a future going forward. How wrong is that? When you look at the amount of investment in manufacturing in New Zealand you find that actually the biggest investment in recent times has been a new powder plant a new development in Darfield in Canterbury—a big powder plant built by the dairy industry. It is not producing bulk commodities as the Opposition would have us believe. It is producing very sophisticated food ingredients and sometimes nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals at the very high end of the production chain.Let us have a look at what the Green Party also says. There is an old saying that has been around for a long long time and it goes “Physician heal thyself.” The Green Party members live in urban New Zealand and we know that some of the most polluted waterways in the country are in urban New Zealand. We know that; the science backs that up. The facts are that that is the case. So why do they not start at their own back door? Actually I know one or two greenies who do not even recycle. How bad is that? They do not recycle. So the reality is: go and fix your own backyard before you marginalise and pick on what is a minority group—that is the agricultural sector—inthe way that you do and totally denigrate them in the way that you do because you are factually wrong and it is time someone challenged you over it.Let us have a look at the combination of the Green-Labour Opposition and what it would do if it were in power. Well the first thing it would do is introduce a capital gains tax. The Opposition members have told us that. They have said that they are going to do that. The second thing is a methane emissions tax. The third thing is a higher personal tax. The fourth thing is a higher company tax. The fifth thing they will do is they are going to reverse the 90-day trial period on employment. Then they are going to put in place restrictions on nitrogen use. Then they are going to put in place restrictions on water use.Iain Lees-Galloway: He’s making it up as he goes along.SHANE ARDERN: No no. All of these things are absolutely what the Labour-Green Opposition has said over the last 3 years that it intends to do. It will do that.Let us have a look at what the flow-on effects of that will be. The flow-on effects of that will be that those young aspirational want to be average New Zealand dairy farmers will not achieve their goal. They will not get there. And if they do not get there then what happens? What happens then? What happens if they do not achieve their goal? What happens then? First of all the economy starts to fail. Secondly what you end up with is overseas corporates that are more interested in buying New Zealand land because young New Zealanders cannot compete with them. So what is going to be the response from the Opposition to that? What is it going to do about that? What will its policy be?Let us come back to what this Government has done. What this Government is doing is actually making that dream much more of a reality. So the young people who are aspirational and who are coming through these industries—and these people are not unique to dairy; they could be from any one of the primary sector industries such as wine horticulture viticulture or meat and wool—can now see an opportunity and a pathway to achieve their goal which is to own the average New Zealand farm or business as it may be.What would our opponents do about those people? The first thing they would say to them is that to have the $4.5 million that they must have to be able to get a 50 percent equity basis in the average New Zealand dairy farm which now costs $9 million they are going to tax those people. They say that those people are greedy capitalists. They will do what they can to put as many hurdles as they can in those people’s way. In doing that the Opposition will achieve the exact opposite of what they hope to achieve which is economic growth for the low socio-economic areas of New Zealand because the only way you can lift low socio-economic areas out of poverty and do those things that the Green Party and the Labour Party campaign on all the time is to have an economy that can sustain jobs growth and opportunities for those people. That is something the Opposition Labour Party cannot and has never been able to understand. That is without jobs through growth business investment and opportunity you will never achieve your goal.The real irony of that is that the environment ultimately suffers as well because without money you do not get investment in environmental outcomes such as the riparian margin planting that is going on in Taranaki and such as the science and investment that is now going into our global alliances—greenhouse gas emission alliances etc. That kind of investment dries up as well. That type of philanthropic activity that goes on in society does not exist and you get environmental degradation as well. So what we have is a black and white comparison this time round—that is growth prosperity jobs progress and good environmental outcomes versus deterioration in everything.