Joyce Steven: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Joyce Steven: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Advance Copy - Subject to minor change before inclusion in Bound Volume.] 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Transport) 
: 
 Here we go: members on the other side are once again showing that they have not learnt the lessons of the last 2 years. It is interesting to listen to Labour members in this Chamber. They constantly put the cart before the horse. They keep thinking up new ways to spend more money that as a country we do not have. That is Labour’s solution. It was Labour’s solution for the 9 years it was in Government it was the solution that got us into this mess and it would be the solution Labour adopts at the end of this year if it gets back into Government. That would be a disastrous situation for this country. In fact it would be economic vandalism. 
Let us look back in history to the so-called boom times of the previous Government when we had runaway consumption government spending and property speculation. We had a tradable sector that was in reverse for 5 years. Labour members never talk about that situation but that is actually what was going on. Inflation hit 5 percent just before Labour left office. We were in recession in this country before the global financial crisis came and when the global financial crisis came the tide went out. As Warren Buffett is fond of saying when the tide goes out we see who is swimming naked. The previous Labour Government was swimming naked and it was not a pretty sight. As well as that terrible thought when we became the Government we inherited a decade of deficits projected forward for 10 years because of Labour’s horrible increase in spending. In the last 5 years of the Labour Government it increased spending by $2.8 billion more every year. So it was $2.8 billion the first year then $2.8 billion plus $2.8 billion the second year and then $2.8 billion plus $2.8 billion plus $2.8 billion the third year. That is correct; Labour managed to push up Government spending by 50 percent in 6 years. Labour Government members were economic vandals then and they are economic vandals now. 
The National Government has come up with a very strong plan to build for stronger growth in this country. It is interesting that Labour members cannot decide whether they do not like the plan or that National does not have a plan. They are still flip-flopping between those particular lines of Opposition argument. It is either that they do not have a plan or that they do not like the plan but they cannot make up their minds. We have a very strong plan. Let us be blunt; Labour members do not like it because it is the solution for real growth in our economy. They do not have those solutions. They ignored them for 9 years when they were in Government and they want to ignore them again and to go back. They talk about foreign ownership. They want to go back and hock themselves off to the foreign banks so they can spend some more money and make themselves more popular in the short term— 
Grant Robertson 
: How much are you borrowing? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: —in exactly the same way they did when Mr Robertson was in the Prime Minister’s office. They were spending money like there was no tomorrow. Labour members just want to go back and do that again at the end of this year. Thank goodness there is no sign that the people of this country will fall for that a second time. There is absolutely no sign of that. Members on the Labour benches will have to come up with a new songbook because there is no sign that the people of this country will fall for that rubbish twice. 
We have a plan to build for stronger growth and it starts with building stronger Government accounts. We have to have tighter fiscal control which will stabilise and reduce our Government debt and which will lead to lower exchange rates and interest rates over the cycle. Opposition members will not do that by having a little group get-together and saying it is terrible that the exchange rates are high; it is actually done with practical economics which takes the pressure off the Reserve Bank to lift interest rates and for exchange rates to rise. Those guys in Labour do not understand that. 
The second thing is that we have to build exports in this country. We are a trading nation. Members opposite forgot about trading for 5 years. We have to get back to focusing on building exports. How do we do that? We cannot just magic companies out of thin air with a task force which is basically what Labour tried to do over 9 years. We have to send out talented Ministers like McCully and Groser to lead our discussions on free-trade agreements which we are doing. As I said we have to get the exchange rates right and we have to encourage business and give business confidence. How do we do that? We have to show we understand business. We have to build business confidence by controlling the costs of doing business and by reducing red tape in the business sector like with the Resource Management Act the Building Act and some of the things that have been done in local government in Auckland. We have to deliver more competition in the utilities market like electricity which Mr Brownlee has been working on. We also have to deliver things that provide flexibility in the labour market encourage employers to employ and give people the opportunity to have those jobs. People will look back on the debate about the 90-day probationary period and ask what all the fuss was about because it created great jobs in this country. People will not be interested in the ideological rubbish from the Opposition. 
We have to build infrastructure for growth. I heard the pending leader of the Labour Party Mr Andrew Little on Radio New Zealand last week. 
Chris Tremain 
: He’s got to get into Parliament first. 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: Well he is on Radio New Zealand so I suppose he is almost there. He was saying that the Government should build some infrastructure. Hallelujah! Hallelujah to Mr Little! The Government is investing massive amounts in the national electricity grid and massive amounts in the roads of national significance—indeed according to the Greens way too much. We are investing in the KiwiRail turn-round plan and in ultra-fast broadband and rural broadband—a whole range of things. In fact we have ring-fenced some spend—although past Governments have said they could not afford to spend on infrastructure—to commit to that infrastructure so that when we come out and get stronger growth we do not have the bottlenecks that we had going in. That is the foresightedness of this Government. 
We also have to build skills for growth. This is where Labour members really are telling porkies with all this rubbish about the Government cutting this and cutting that. The Government is spending more on early childhood education than has ever been spent before in this country. That is a simple fact. It is a simple fact and no matter how many times Labour members say that it cannot be true and that the Government is cutting it all they have to do is look at the books. We have more places in tertiary education in this country than we have ever had. We will have 16000 or more places than there were 3 years ago. Who was in Government 3 years ago? It was Labour. Labour was in Government 3 years ago and there were 16000 fewer places at universities than we have today. 
We are building skills for growth and we are building savings and investment. The plan is to lift minority stakes in State-owned enterprises. Labour is against that too. Labour members think that somehow the State-owned enterprises will be sold off overseas. They have a little problem there with percentages for a kick-off because 51 percent in Government ownership is more than half—at least it was when I went to school. It really is time they sorted out their maths in that respect. At least 51 percent is being held by the Government of the day. As the Prime Minister says priority will be given to New Zealand investors so that New Zealand mums and dads can share in the upside for these companies. It gives these companies the opportunity to invest overseas which they cannot do now. It really is a win-win for all parties except for the ideologically bound members over there on the Labour benches. 
We have a plan. Labour does not like the plan. Labour would rather we went away and did not have the plan. Labour’s plan is to spend more money. Labour’s plan is to find a money tree and to just keep cutting the money off the money tree. That is the extent of its plan. It is economic vandalism. 
In the first month of this year—this election year—the leader of the Labour Party shot right through the roof on the economic desperation index with a couple of billion dollars of promises for more spending. This was before the end of January. He is making promises worth over a couple of billion dollars yet he has no idea where it is coming from. He has some plan to soak the rich or something like that. Of course he does not realise that labour mobility was another thing that killed the economy through the 2000s with the 39c tax rate that sent a whole bunch of people overseas. But that is OK; he is proposing something like a 50c tax rate for the top earners in this country so we would lose all the people we need for our hospitals and schools. We would send them all overseas. This is remarkably reminiscent of Labour in the 2000s. There is no surprise there because those members from the previous Labour Government are all still over there and are all running the same song. In fact they are fighting the wrong war. They were fighting the war when they all had money to burn in 2005. They were fighting not the last war but the one before it and now they have to wake up and get into the second decade of the 21st century. They are acting like economic vandals. 
Labour members are also being xenophobic. I heard the Leader of the Opposition say yesterday that it was outrageous that some Germans had bought a little bit of rural land in the South Island. That shows the desperation of this Opposition. Those members have to work out that New Zealand is interested in how we grow the economy and we have to do that before we start working out how to spend the money that we do not have. 
This Government has a plan to build stronger growth. This Government has a plan to build a brighter future for this country. New Zealanders support the plan and that is what we will be focusing on this year.