Swain Paul: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
Swain Paul: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:632;Page:3718] 
Hon PAUL SWAIN (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 The great opportunity of this debate is for the public to have some view of comparison between and to weigh up what the Labour-led Government is doing and the proposals put forward by National. It was a bit rich for the previous member to talk about State-owned enterprises because that is clearly where one of the differences lies between the two parties. National would go back to flogging off those enterprises but the Labour-led Government has said that no it will retain them. 
When Dr Brash made the following comment in 2003 everyone thought that it sounded a bit refreshing. He said that he did not want National to show fear of the electorate by watering down its message. The big problem of course is that unless National waters down its message it is not electable. That is the huge dilemma National has and everyone recognises that. 
On the subject of State-owned enterprises for example it is interesting to hear what Dr Brash said a few years ago back in 2003. He said there were some things he would not sell like Transpower for example but he could not quite see the logic of the Government owning a business that was operating in a very competitive environment. Did we hear much about that during the election campaign? I do not think so. Did we hear Dr Brash go out and say that National would flog off State assets again? No he did not say that. He said first of all that National would get rid of Kiwibank. Then I seem to remember National members saying they would keep it. Then they talked about flogging off Landcorp but when the pressure went on they said that oh no they would sell only one or two farms. 
So the problem National has—and the public has—is that the public does not understand what National is on about. In my view that move is quite deliberate. National does that quite deliberately because if it told the public exactly what it wants to do in relation to flogging off State assets—and I will refer to that a bit later; it was completely avoided in the speech made by the previous speaker—then it would be unelectable. So it is a case of the old “tell the people something before the election and do something else after the election” trick. I tell members that the New Zealand public have had a gutsful of that. That is why they do not trust the National Party and that is why National will not be back in Government for a very very long time. 
Let us compare National’s approach with the incredibly productive and constructive approach this Labour-led Government is taking. We have the three main themes around economic transformation around families and around building national identity. The Budget itself and the estimates build on the things that have already been done. What are the key things this time? More funding is going into transport. After many long hours of arguing by very good and capable former Ministers of Transport who have been arguing for transport issues now for many years—one is sitting next to me and another one is close by—what do we hear from the National Party? It wants to cut taxes but at the same time it does not tell people that in doing that it will have to cut money from roading. 
It goes back to the old National Party economics. Something I have never understood about the National Party is that it believes that somehow we can cut taxes—cut revenue—and spend more. I have never quite understood that. It is something the National Party has tried to kid the rest of New Zealand about but of course the fact is that people do not believe it. That is why National Party members are sitting over there and we are sitting here. 
We are unbundling the local loop and there is a whole new phase around industry training picking up on the fact that in the 1990s it was completely demolished. Bill Birch brought the apprenticeship system to its knees and we have had to completely reconstruct that. We are also doing things around student support and research science and technology and we have a whole export-led innovation programme. 
So when people weigh up what this Labour-led Government is doing they can see quite clearly that this Government is trying to take New Zealand forward. The National Party wants to take us back to the 1990s where the National Party told the public one thing in 1990 and then did completely the opposite thing through the “mother of all Budgets” in 1991. Those are the things that the public of New Zealand remember. 
The reason why the National Party does not want to come clean to the public about what its message is and what it will do is that if it did it would not be electable. That is the difference. The Labour Party does what it says and the National Party confuses people by not doing what it says. It knows that if it does do what it says it will never be back on the Government benches again—and thank God for that.