Tabuteau Fletcher: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTabuteau Fletcher: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 13 April 2016. Volume:713;Page:10491. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I just acknowledge the Minister in the chair Bill English for having now taken two calls in this debate. I was raised well I like to think in that you acknowledge your elders and their experience and there are very few in the Committee who have more experience and more knowledge about New Zealand and its economy than the Minister. I fully acknowledge that. So it was particularly frustrating to sit here and be told that we have gained a surplus this wafer-thin surplus based on the grinding down of Government departments—the conglomeration of super-ministries brought together to create efficiencies within the Government’s day-to-day operations so that it can cut and cut and cut costs. More than that it has ground down the very daily lives of the average New Zealander. I talk about health I talk about homes and I even talk about infrastructure in Northland.In terms of infrastructure and growing the Northland economy to promise 10 bridges was a wonderful thing to do. It was wonderful to say it but where is the follow-through—where is the follow-though? It is not there. It is an artificial surplus—cuts here cuts there—so much so that for me this example just highlights the ludicrous nature of the situation. A Department of Conservation (DOC) ship—a DOC vehicle—took the big oil industry players out into our deep-sea oceans so that they could further explore deep-sea oil drilling in New Zealand. It was DOC that was facilitating the exploration by these big oil companies which want to go out and explore oil exploitation off New Zealand shores. The mandate was: “You guys need to make more money. Create your own revenue. It’s not good enough to ask the New Zealand taxpayer to do it.” Well the Government will not do it and so here we are today talking about artificial surpluses.Let us accept that the Minister’s words are true and that there was a surplus. The reality is that that surplus is a short-term short-minded focus on balancing the books today. The question that that Government over there needs to be asking—that those members on that side of the Chamber need to be asking—is what is the true long-term cost to New Zealanders of trying desperately to gain this surplus? What will that do to those who are raised in substandard housing? What will that do to those who are suffering so poorly in terms of their health and who are not able to find real alternatives in our public health system so that they can come back and contribute to the economy? What will it do to the lower-income earner who now resorts to crime because they literally cannot feed their family? They resort to desperate desperate measures that we would call unacceptable but when you reflect the situation is just unacceptable. There is no strategy here. There is no long-term strategy and I think the chairman of the Finance and Expenditure Committee highlighted that very point brilliantly. Long-term strategy? No.In terms of having a long-term strategy to grow the economy Mr Joyce for example is travelling around the world trying to find foreign investors to come and buy up New Zealand’s assets. That is his investment strategy. I stand here and acknowledge that in doing so Mr Joyce—if he finds those investors—will increase New Zealand’s GDP but that highlights the farcical nature of taking GDP as a measure of a country’s success. As those GDP figures go up through investment and business undertaken within our borders the profits simply go offshore. Incomes will fall because in most of our trade agreements—for example with China and within the Trans-Pacific Partnership—there are provisions for bringing in labour from offshore and they do not have to comply with local employment legislation. So we are talking about cheap labour being brought in from offshore to facilitate the profits of foreign companies that are then taken offshore. It just makes no sense. GDP will increase—that is a given; it is accepted—but what will that do for everyday New Zealanders? Nothing. In fact it will make us worse off. The inequality problem that New Zealand has been facing for decades now will continue to grow and this Government has done nothing to address that.I just want to address some of the comments from the chairman of the Finance and Expenditure Committee and from some of the other members on the other side of the Chamber. It was not Mr Bennett himself but some of the members have used pretty words. They have used wonderful rhetoric to describe a New Zealand economy that is doing well and that is strong—it is fantastic. That is the picture that is being painted on that side of the Chamber—it is wonderful. But the reality is that when we came to the point—and the crunch came in the by-election last year for example—it highlighted the fact that our regions for example are being completely neglected by this Government. For Mr Joyce to go around the country and come up with these regional development plans with no money behind them and then for them to be disabused of any common sense or any benefit from the people within those communities just highlights the dearth of actual strategy that this Government has to grow our regions. It wants to grow Auckland. You know it is a big city—let us get up with the modern world. Well the reality there is that average incomes in Auckland have fallen since the party on that side of the Chamber came into Government. That is a reality. It is just unacceptable.In his contribution earlier Mr Bennett said to the Committee that we are enjoying the lowest interest rates this country has ever seen. I think he does not realise that that underpins the farcical nature of the comment. First of all there are two points to make around that. Interest rates are not low by international standards; they are ridiculously high. That is creating huge pressures for our foreign currency exchange. Our dollar is so overvalued it is not funny and it is undermining the very industry—and I mean the export industry—that this Government purports to want to support. By failing to manage our official cash rate and our foreign exchange the Government is undermining every effort that private businesses are trying to take to export overseas. It is ridiculous.The second point is that it is simply an indication of how badly the economy is struggling. Low interest rates are indicative of a time of low growth constraints and—[Interruption]The guys who are yelling abuse at me need to listen to what I am saying: interest rates are high by international standards. What we are seeing is this ridiculous juxtaposition where—by contrast—they are too high by international standards but here in New Zealand the Government is not doing enough for local businesses and interest rates need to come down. It is just absurd.Immigration—those guys label us as xenophobes for wanting controlled immigration policies. We simply need to manage the flow of people coming into New Zealand so that we actually get skilled labour where we need it. This uncontrolled inflow that we are seeing now is a band-aid on the New Zealand economy. It is a band-aid because it simply covers up the reality that GDP per person—the income of a New Zealander here an individual New Zealander—is going down and it is not going up. That is the band-aid that immigration is for this country. The fact that pretty much two-thirds of it is going straight into Auckland so that the infrastructure there cannot cope is just absurd. Earlier today in the House Mr English was asked about what conditions—