Bishop Chris: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBishop Chris: General Debate[Sitting date: 16 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9809. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS BISHOP (National): It has been a sad 7 years for the Labour Party but yesterday marked the nadir of its trashing of its proud economic record—forgetting the lessons of history and trashing a once-proud economic legacy. Yesterday was the day that the Labour Party jumped the shark. Yesterday was the day that marked the absolute culmination of its return to the politics of nostalgia a return to the halcyon days of the 1970s. Well actually the 1970s were not a great time in New Zealand and it took the Labour Party and a Labour Government to sort it out.I want to briefly canvass the three areas in which Labour is trashing its legacy. Firstly let us talk about trade and openness to the world. It was the Labour Government of the 1980s that slashed tariffs and that courageously ended all State support for our farming sector. It was a Labour Government—the fifth Labour Government—that signed the China free-trade agreement. Why? Because it knew then as it does not know now that New Zealand’s competitiveness and New Zealand’s future prosperity depend on our engagement with the outside world of selling more to the world and being connected to the global economy.Now what do we find? We find a Labour Party that is fundamentally opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement which it started when it was in Government which Phil Goff and Helen Clark kick-started on the eve of the 2008 election campaign and trumpeted during the campaign as one of their signal economic achievements. Well now we find the Labour Party—with the honourable exception of Phil Goff who because he is running for the Auckland mayoralty is somehow allowed to support the TPP agreement. Even though we know that David Shearer and other MPs inside the Labour caucus also support it now we find the party position is that it is opposed to the TPP agreement. There is not a Labour Party leader still alive who does not back TPP: Helen Clark Phil Goff Mike Moore—all these leaders who knew that New Zealand’s future depended on being connected to the world backed the TPP agreement apart from the modern-day Labour caucus.Recently we find Labour descending into gutter politics. Firstly we had Phil Twyford’s disgraceful smear campaign last year against people with Chinese-sounding names using Rob Salmond’s Bayesian analysis to somehow justify it. And today we have Andrew Little going out to the Hutt and criticising ethnic restaurants talking about how: “I’m not sure if we should have Indian and Chinese restaurants. Perhaps we could source the domestic labour from New Zealand to make Chinese and Indian food.” This is as Phil Quin the Labour activist said on Twitter a regressive and depressing view of New Zealand.Let us talk about monetary policy. In the 1980s the Labour Government established an independent Reserve Bank one of Labour’s proudest achievements. Why? To take interest rate decisions and monetary policy out of the hands of politicians. Now what do we have? We have Andrew Little brain-farting his way to Parliament talking about how we have to put the control of interest rates back into the hands of politicians. Pressured into it by the media he suddenly decided to announce that the Labour Party will if necessary legislate for interest rates to be decided by politicians.This is a recipe for disaster. It was a recipe for disaster in the 1970s and it will be in 2016 or 2027 or whenever the Labour Party happens to get back into Government. This is something that the Labour Party is going to come to regret. We know that Labour is nervous about this because all the Labour Party MPs got sent an email from their leader’s office saying to them: “Don’t meet with any banks or the Bankers’ Association without running it past us first.” So we know that they are pretty embarrassed about this and they are leaking like a sieve.Thirdly let us talk about tertiary policy. Phil Goff sits over there. Phil Goff was the Labour Party leader who introduced student fees. The other day I went back and looked up the education amendment legislation of 1988. Why was Phil Goff and the fourth Labour Government introducing student fees which were the precursor to the student loan scheme? Why? Because he wanted to broaden access to tertiary education. He wanted to increase participation. He wanted more people to go to university. Great policy and the student loan scheme is one of the most progressive forward-thinking and equitable public policy schemes ever devised by any New Zealand Government.But now what do we have? We have Andrew Little Chris Hipkins and Grant Robertson returning to their roots and doing what they do best which is going back to student unionism and pumping up more money for student support. It is ineffective it will be inequitable and it will not work. This is a Labour Party that is stuck in the politics of nostalgia and wants to take New Zealand back to the 1970s not forward.