King Annette: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
King Annette: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Advance Copy - Subject to minor change before inclusion in Bound Volume.] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 The Prime Minister’s speech at the beginning of a political year is often eagerly awaited by commentators the media politicians and even by some of the public and I suppose even more so in an election year. The speech is seen as the Prime Minister’s chance to put forward his Government’s vision to outline his plan and programme to make New Zealand a better place in which to live to show that he has command of the issues that we face in the very unstable world that we live in to give reassurance to the vulnerable members of our society—children disabled people the sick the elderly—and to show that he is in touch with the real issues that New Zealanders face today. There is always a certain amount of expectation about what will be in the speech and of course for this speech we had the usual hoopla and hype about this showcase piece. In fact one commentator went so far as to predict that the Prime Minister’s speech would plot the course that the Government would take and acquire a strategic direction. 
I have to say to that commentator that he must be feeling very very disappointed. We did not get a vision we did not get a plan and we did not get a strategic direction that would perhaps give us a brighter future maybe. Or what about a direction that would turbocharge the economy or perhaps something that would be ambitious for New Zealand or maybe even something about catching up with Australia—let alone something that would give us a step change for New Zealand? What did we get? We got a hastily cobbled-together announcement that the way forward the breakthrough the way to cut through the issues was to restructure the Public Service. We were told there are too many employees and a bloated Public Service so National will get rid of a few public servants and replace them with a few consultants—in fact a lot of consultants. You see consultants do not count when we are counting up public servants. It is the old National Party trick: smoke and mirrors; smoke and mirrors. It is the usual merry-go-round that National runs when it is in Government. 
This morning on  
Morning Report 
 John Key could not even name which departments were on the block how many jobs would be lost how much would be saved how much the restructuring would cost or even when it would be done. We then had to listen to a chorus of the usual sycophants saying it was an amazing plan and we had an amazing Prime Minister. If I have ever heard anything like the emperor’s new clothes it was listening to all those people. They had been rung up and told to put out statements that said how wonderful the plan was. 
Well I say that what we got from John Key was more like a political circus. He walked the tightrope between lies damned lies and statistics. He juggled the latest unemployment figures. He even dropped the ball on job creation. The unemployment figures are ballooning. They are now at 6.8 percent with 265000—I will say it again: 265000—people in New Zealand officially jobless according to the latest household labour force survey. What did John Key say about that? He said people should relax. He said they should not give up hope as it is just a survey the information is old and the survey is notoriously volatile. Then we had the doozy of them all which came from the “Minister of Unemployment”. She chimed in and said a slow recovery fits the Government’s focus on the economy. Do members know what we say? Hear hear! That is what we say. The Government’s focus on the economy has been about gimmicks and slogans and it is no wonder that the economy has been slow to recover. 
Unemployment in New Zealand is going up; unemployment in Australia is going down. Today just before we came into this House—in fact as we came into this House—the Minister released the latest unemployment and benefit numbers. She has had them for 5 days. She slipped them out as we came into the House and what do they tell us? Almost 100000 more New Zealanders are now on all main benefits since 2008 under that Government. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: That’s their welfare reform policy. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: That is the Government’s welfare reform policy: to put more people on the benefit. 
John Key did acrobatics over the rising cost of living and the drop in real wages that has occurred under his regime. He said people are getting more when they are getting less. He said prices are going down when they are going up. He said people are better off when they are going backwards. I am very very sure it is a long time since he walked down McGehan Close and talked to the people there. If he did he could have heard what they had to say about this National Government. They said it has done little to help the poor: “He’s just making everything better for high earners and not the low-income ones … Bread milk everything that we need that is a basic necessity for us is going to be more expensive. It’s going to be harder for us to feed our kids.” So whom do we believe? Do we believe John Key or do we believe the ordinary struggling family that lives in the street that he made a feature of at the last election? 
Then John Key did the high wire act over his plans to sell off our State assets. He told us we would own more of our own country if we sold a few shares to mum and dad investors who already own those assets. I do not quite understand that. How will we own more if we sell to mum and dad investors something that we already own? I would really like him to tell us how that works. Mind you it is a risky move. It is a risky move by the Prime Minister because he has removed his usual safety net: the U-turn that he does when things get a bit politically hot. He has said he does not give a damn whether New Zealanders care about selling the assets; he is going to sell them. 
To complete the political circus John Key has acted like the clown. I am not talking about his mincing down the catwalk; I am talking about the poor joke that he has played on the most vulnerable members of our society: children in this country of New Zealand. They received a fleeting mention as a postscript a sort of afterthought in his speech. Someone said to him that he had better throw a few lines into the speech about some kids because Labour has set out a comprehensive policy to lift our children and our families out of poverty; to give every child in this country a good start— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: All mush. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: —to put support at the beginning of their lives I say to Dr Smith and not to waste millions of dollars on putting them into boot camps 14 and 15 years later; and to value caring for children. We value those who care for nurture and look after children and we do not reduce that to only the rich those who can afford to stay home and look after their children while struggling low and middle income families and sole parents are told that they do not count. 
If this Prime Minister truly believed in a real future and if he had put forward a vision for this country it would have been about growing the economy and growing jobs so that people could go into them and gain the dignity that comes from work and opportunity and it would have been about giving a future to our children. It is not about just the economy; it is about the economy and giving people a future in this country. He would have taken notice of his Chief Science Adviser Professor Gluckman. He would have gone to Anne Tolley and told her to reverse the cuts in early childhood education. The $250 million - odd he is stripping out of early childhood education must go back in because our young children matter in this country. It is a right for them to have education. 
Why is it that when this Government made its first cut it picked on the smallest most vulnerable kids who have no voice in this country in that Government? They have no voice at the Cabinet table in this Government. The first moves that it made were against those who have no voice. John Key should have listened to his adviser Dr Gluckman. He should have addressed child poverty in New Zealand. The shame of that Government and of that Prime Minister was to say in this House before Christmas that they had no intention of eradicating child poverty in this country. Child poverty is a shame for this country and when we were in Government we lifted 130000 families out of poverty through Working for Families which John Key called “communism by stealth”. But I notice that he is scared to get rid of it.