Maharey Steve: General Debates 
Maharey Steve: General Debates 
[Volume:618;Page:14391] 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. We are in the midst of the estimates debate. For those who are at home listening today that is the debate that takes place in Parliament when the Government outlines what it wants to spend its money on and we would hope that Opposition members would rise to say what they if they were given the opportunity would spend the money on. The Government’s agenda has been very clear. This is it: we want people to get a job and go to work. We want to have a very strong economy. We want middle and low income households to be able to afford to pay the rent raise the kids and get out there and afford all the things that go with being a New Zealander today. We have said that we want to have good strong public services like the health system the education system and the care and protection systems for young people. We want to ensure that we are housing people well and we want our economy to be out there exporting around the world—to create the kind of economy that we all want. That is what we want to have and it is working. 
I have heard speaker after speaker from the Opposition side of the House start their debate and they have been forced after 5 short years of outstanding Government by Labour to say that it is not luck but outstanding management by the people on the Government side of the House that has led to an economy that is performing. There is a very low rate of unemployment more people than ever are employed more operations are being done there is better education more people are in education more people are housed small towns are booming and the regions are growing. That is the picture and even the Opposition now has to say that it is the picture. 
Perhaps that is why we have not heard one single idea in the estimates debate from the National Opposition that tells us what it would do if it were able to spend the money. What we have had to do is to go back and look at those members’ real agenda. I will touch on only some of it but this is where they have been going. This year there has been the Orewa speech. The agenda there was clearly social division. Those members say that is not the case; they do not want to turn Maori against Pakeha they say. But having lit the fuse have they given us one single idea of what they would do? Having lit the fuse of racial division what would they do if they got into power? We do not know that; they just want to have the argument. That is wrong. Simon Power has said that what he wants to do is to allow the Americans to tell us what our foreign policy should be. We are a sovereign independent small feisty self-determining nation and we will tell people what we want to do. But the National Party wants the Americans to tell us what to do. That is wrong. On crime those members tell us they want to spend the money on prisons and all the things that punish people but they have not one single idea about overcoming the causes of crime. They are tough on crime and pathetic on the causes of crime. They have nothing to say about where crime comes from. They are trading on fear and that is wrong. 
The National members tell us they want to roll back to the 1990s’ economic agenda—the one that gave us an 11.9 percent rate of unemployment emptied out the regions stopped us growing and drove up our national debt. That is the agenda they want to return to. They want to do that because of their ideology and because a few of their friends in big business want that. That is wrong. We are about to hear National’s next big speech which will be about welfare time-limited benefits people being put on work for the dole and work-capacity testing of the kind that had to be cancelled in the last decade. National members will attack the most vulnerable people in this country to try to win power. That is wrong. National is a party that is so bad and so wrong that Mr Sowry and Lynda Scott are already leaving. They are getting out now while they can; they do not want to be part of it. I want to say that some of the other leading lights are being driven out of National because they have a conscience. They come from places like Rangitikei.