Cullen Michael: Adjournment 
Cullen Michael: Adjournment 
[Volume:650;Page:19286] 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House) 
: 
 I move  
That the House do now adjourn until Tuesday 7 October 2008.  
For those on their first time through such a motion this somewhat Gilbert and Sullivan motion is moved even though in fact the House could not meet on Tuesday 7 October in order that the processes around the dissolution of Parliament can occur. The dissolution will occur at 3 p.m. on Friday of next week. 
I want to begin as is traditional in this case by thanking the staff of Parliament and in particular the Clerk and the Clerk’s Office; the security staff; the messengers; the ministerial and parliamentary staff who do so much work for us; and the drivers for the Ministers. They all have contributed to the way in which this House runs. 
I particularly pay tribute to retiring colleagues on both sides of the House. Minor party members do not seem to retire in the same way that major party members do. I begin with your good self Madam Speaker. Your moving on from this place is a great loss in my view but a great regain for academia. 
I pay tribute to Clem Simich. In the unlikely event that there was a change of Government I would have looked forward with some pleasure to Mr Simich being the Speaker of this House. Unfortunately apparently his services were no longer required. He was seen as somewhat surplus to requirements because of his age; the older I have got the more I have begun to think that in fact age brings some advantage around this place as opposed to disadvantage. 
Of course I pay tribute to Marian Hobbs. This is the first time I think that Parliament has lost three of the four presiding officers in one go due to their retirement. Marian has brought in a short space of time a quite extraordinary new style to presiding in the Chair. One understands now why she was such a good principal of Avonside Girls’ High School in Christchurch. 
I pay tribute to all of my other retiring colleagues in the House. On the other side of the House I mention Mr Blumsky and particularly Katherine Rich who as the daughter of an old friend of mine I have always been relatively light on one may have noticed compared with other members of the National Party caucus. But I pay tribute particularly to my own friends and colleagues on this side of the House. Steve Maharey has been an important part of the Labour caucus and Labour Cabinet over a long long period of time and Paul Swain is another long-term friend. I will not mention the rest of my colleagues; I am supposed to say a few other things in this speech as well. 
I think this Parliament has been a very interesting one in two particular respects. One is that we have begun to see reinforced in this Parliament an MMP tradition about how Parliament works. It works quite differently from the way that it worked under the first-past-the-post system. Much much less time is spent trying to dig in on extremely long battles down to the wire there is much more simply stating one’s position and there is perhaps a little loss if one likes of debate but actually a surprising amount of business is passed with minimal use of urgency overall compared with what used to be the case under the first-past-the-post system. If colleagues actually look back over the last 3 years I suspect they will be quite surprised to see how much has been done particularly given that we have not had a statutes revision bill this year; those bills always cheat by upping the body count in terms of Acts of Parliament that have been passed—everything this year has been of significant substance. 
The second aspect is that contrary to all expectations what has been a multi-party arrangement has survived in Government not simply for a full term but for actually slightly longer than a full term—we have carried on for slightly more than 3 years in this Parliament. Again I think we are beginning to learn how to work the MMP electoral system to provide stable Government—if occasionally exciting Government in terms of some of the internal debates that occur between the parties that are part of the Government.I pay particular tribute and give thanks to the support parties which despite occasional difficulties have provided for that stability and that continuity which is important from a public perspective. 
This Parliament has also seen some very major changes. One is the passage of the legislation for the emissions trading scheme. New Zealand is at last catching up with the great majority of the developed world in addressing the issues of climate change. I still get these extraordinary comments from business people about why we are leading the world when in fact nearly all of Europe has nearly lapped us! That gives the impression that we are leading the world but what we actually have to do is to sprint a long way to catch up with the rest of Europe. And finally Australia is catching up in that regard. We can expect the United States to do so as well with the change in the presidency. 
We have seen also of course the enormously successful introduction of KiwiSaver certain fiscal consequences of which should become apparent on Monday week; the Kiwi Rail buy-back; the completion of the Working for Families programme; and the roll-out of 20 free hours’ early childhood education. We will see the introduction of fair tax cuts next week which are biased towards those on lower incomes compared with those on higher incomes as far as any progressive income tax scale is capable of actually doing that. And of course we have seen very significant growth in infrastructure spending. 
But the story of this year of course has been particularly a story about the economy. We have seen international commodity price inflation. Price inflation in New Zealand Australia the UK the US and elsewhere in the world has been approaching 5 percent this year though it is likely to come back quite quickly in the latter part of this year as oil prices fall back again and as the global credit crunch starts to bite into economic growth around the world. We have seen obviously this economy as we now know—we have known it for months really—being in recession although in fact the second quarter figure is slightly better than nearly all market predictions of minus 0.2 percent. I think it would be a very foolish person who would want to take a bet that the figure for the third quarter which we are now in would be anything other than negative as well. 
But nearly all projections still say the economy is likely to start picking up from the fourth quarter of this financial year and certainly by the beginning of the next financial year subject to one very very important caveat. If the United States is unable to address its internal financial crisis if—which I think is extraordinarily unlikely—the US Congress is unable to agree on a rescue package and I think it will agree on one in a matter of days then there is a very serious risk that the international financial credit crisis will actually roll out into a broader economic crisis and a major slow-down in the world economy. We have seen only a relatively moderate slow-down so far in the world economy. Yes a number of countries are in moderate recession but nobody is talking about anything more than that at the present time. New Zealand simply is a cork on the ocean in that regard. We are unable to influence the play out of the financial credit crisis in the United States. 
It is very important for us because the restoration of confidence in the international financial markets is crucial for New Zealand business as we move towards many businesses needing to refinance their offshore debt and needing to do so at prices that they can afford. That means a steady hand moving forward within New Zealand even through a period of great uncertainty. What we do know and it will be revealed in detail on Monday week is that the slow-down in the New Zealand economy has been deeper than was forecast at Budget time. The impact of the international credit crunch and some errors by Treasury in terms of forecasting mean that the deficits that we are forecasting for the next 4 years will be very much larger than they were at Budget time. That means whoever is sitting in my seat after the election—whether it is I or somebody else—will have to go through a significant period of fiscal restraint and there is no room for substantial major growth either in spending above what is forecast or in cutting of revenue below what is forecast over the next 3-year period. This is not going to be a period for fiscal adventurism moving forward. 
So this election will be about trust versus the supposed desire for change. “Trust” because of course Helen Clark has demonstrated the ability to be a superb political manager to deliver what she says she will and not to deliver what she says she will not deliver which is at least as important in politics—not to visit people with nasty surprises on made-up excuses. Against that we have basically a promise not to change any policies which is a very strange position for an Opposition party to take; the extraordinary series of flip-flops; the inability of Mr Key to stick to a question and an answer for more than 2 seconds at a time; and the re-run and re-run and re-run of Monday’s TV interview which encapsulated within 10 seconds everything that we are learning and that the public is starting to say more and more about Mr Key. Was it $25000 to $50000 or was it $100000? If only Fran Mold had said: “Are you sure it was only $100000?”; I am sure we would have got a different story again at that point. You see Crosby/Textor can take him only so far. Once he is out on his own and answering questions he is on his own and he must be able to answer them honestly and truthfully himself. 
Then we have the fresh new faces. Look at them! The fresh and new Mr English Mr Williamson Lockwood Smith Murray McCully and Allan Peachey the rising young man of the National Party backbenchers! Goodness me! The party opposite says: “We present something new and fresh; the thing is we just can’t remember what it is and we hope that nobody will ask us what it is before election day.”