Joyce Steven: Address in ReplyText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeJoyce Steven: Address in Reply[Sitting date: 29 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:349. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development):Firstly as this is the first time I have had the opportunity to speak can I congratulate you Mr Speaker on your reappointment as Speaker of the House. Can I congratulate your new Deputy Speaker Chester Borrows and can I also congratulate the two Assistant Speakers Trevor Mallard and Lindsay Tisch.It is fair to say that since the Speakers have been installed in the last week I have had a number of New Zealanders approach me and raise the issue of the Hon Trevor Mallard’s appointment as Assistant Speaker. I have been giving some thought as to how I could explain such a venerable member of the House having the opportunity to become an Assistant Speaker and a presiding officer and I decided the best way to explain it is that Trevor is the yin to Lindsay Tisch’s yang. I think that is probably the best way that we can raise it. He is the slightly different chalk to Lindsay’s cheese.Since I last had the opportunity to speak here we have had an election. In that election campaign it is fair to say that the Opposition was resolutely focused. The Opposition was resolutely focused on the issues that do not matter to New Zealanders. In a carefully spaced-out campaign—and sometimes it did feel a little spaced out—we had a Matt McCarten special. First we had the “Vote Positive” slogan which was the last time we saw anything positive from the Labour Party until election day. The rest of the election campaign was brought to us by the letter “b”—that is by the books by the blogger and by a big Bavarian. That big Bavarian did rather loom large over the election campaign. Then of course we had the moment of truth—the moment of truth. Remember the moment of truth? It quickly became unfortunately the moment of ’struth when it was discovered by the Opposition too late in the day that bringing in four or five foreign “dignitaries” to tell New Zealanders how to vote 5 days later was perhaps a slight exercise in futility. We have seen again today that the Opposition is still going at it and can I say on behalf of the Government benches long may its approach last. Long may its approach last. May it bang on about bloggers right through until 2017.Actually I do not want to say this but perhaps a reference to Albert Einstein’s quote—a semi-paraphrase if you would—that the definition of futility is repeating the same approach time and time again and expecting to get a different result. But never mind because the cavalry is coming! The cavalry is indeed coming! The four horse people of the apocalypse—Robertson Parker Little and Mahuta—are riding to the rescue as we speak. It is a reasonably tortuous course to be fair. They started off heading in the direction of Wellington but they sort of took a dip to Nelson then down to Dunedin and I think they are going back north after that. According to the Labour Party grandee Brian Edwards whom I must admit I have never quoted before they are cavorting around the country conducting a pillow fight. He went on to say that actually it is hard to be a Labour Party supporter let alone a Labour Party advocate when your team behaves like a flock of drunken sheep which is slightly unfair of course but only slightly.The election campaign was a referendum more than anything else on how New Zealand was going in the world. I think the result from New Zealanders was reasonably clear. The reason for that is that they have seen New Zealand performing relatively well compared with the rest of the world over the last few years. We have seen a big expansion in our economy relative to most OECD countries. We have seen tens and tens of thousands of jobs created in the last 12 months—in fact the fastest labour market growth since 2004. Despite the manufacturing crisis we have seen manufacturing in expansion now for some 25 months. Business confidence and consumer confidence have been very strong. In fact this month business confidence has doubled again after the pre-election period.Probably most telling Kiwis are voting with their feet and staying in this country. Our cost of living increase is pretty low. The latest figures have come out and actually said that the cost of living increased just 1 percent in the last year. That means after-tax wages are definitely rising faster than inflation when prior to the global financial crisis that was the other way round. Our mortgage interest rates are just off 50-year lows. House building is up and we have got our balance of payments deficit down. So it is actually now about what is going to happen over the next few years. I for one am very strongly positive about New Zealand’s future.I would like to take a moment to talk about a couple of sectors of the New Zealand economy that are actually doing very well despite the story of a high New Zealand dollar and those are the information and communications technology and the high-tech manufacturing sectors. There is a lot of talk in New Zealand about the “need for diversification”. From time to time there is a lot of talk from various Opposition politicians that somehow it is as if all we do all day is ship low-quality products offshore which I have to say is a little insulting to companies all around the country but actually the truth of the matter is that whether you are talking about the primary sector or the high-tech sector the level of innovation in New Zealand is actually quite stunning.We saw last week that New Zealand’s top 100 companies in the technology sector reached for the first time $7.6 billion in turnover which has been a $1 billion increase in the last 5 years. So during the global financial crisis during the struggles of Christchurch—a number of these companies are located in Christchurch and some of them had to change premises and so on—and during all that period with a high New Zealand dollar their turnover in New Zealand dollar terms has gone up by a further $1 billion. They now export nearly three-quarters of their entire annual revenues. So we are seeing very big growth and very encouraging growth and we are seeing the diversification that New Zealanders often talk about. The thing that is really driving all of this is research and development and innovation and this is what we are seeing more of. This is what this Government is very much truly supporting. So that is encouraging but actually the story of innovation is much much wider than that.I recall again prior to the election campaign I think it was one of the Greens’ co-leaders saying New Zealand’s primary sector needs to innovate. He actually said it just before the Fieldays occurred in the Waikato. As I was travelling around Fieldays there were a number of highly offended farmers who wandered up and said: “This guy needs to come just once to Fieldays and have a look at what is going on in this country.” These days farming is by definition actually a data-driven industry. That is what is going on and I think one of the challenges for the Opposition has been that its members failed to get out much in the last 3 years and as a result have not seen what is actually happening.So as we look forward we have to ask ourselves at this time as we look at the Address in Reply what New Zealand’s future is all about and how we make ourselves successful. This Government believes that New Zealand’s future is all about boosting our connectivity internationally about taking advantage of our opportunities on the world stage and about backing our businesses to get out there and succeed in a globalised world. One of the things we are very passionate about is opening up markets for our exporters and giving our companies—which we rate and which we back—the opportunity to sell in markets all over the world. We know that if they get that opportunity on an equal footing they will succeed. That is why we are in favour of such things as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. That is why we are in favour of doing a deal with Korea. That is why we are in favour of the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Government Procurement. It gives our companies the opportunity to show that we can foot it in much bigger markets in the world.We are also going to continue to increase our investment in support of innovation and continue it. There has been some criticism of the idea of backing businesses with research and development support but let us remember that New Zealand companies have to go offshore before they are out of nappies. They do need some assistance to get themselves started on the world stage and once they get started they get out there and really kick along.We also need to keep focused on skills and capital and we need to remember that in this day and age both of those are portable and a responsible Government will look to provide the settings that encourage people to locate themselves in this country and to invest in this country. That is what New Zealanders saw during the election campaign and that is why they voted in support of this Government. Right across the board including in our infrastructure space the involvement we are taking with natural resources is very important. This country’s business sector—from small businesses to big business—saw a very important thing during the election campaign and a very big contrast between the two sides. This Government was all about what we could do to encourage business and the Opposition was unfortunately all about what it could do to business.