Bennett David: Address in Reply 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Bennett David: Address in Reply 
[Sitting date: 07 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:114. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 It is a great pleasure to speak in the Address in Reply debate this afternoon. I would just like to follow on from the previous speaker who made a very good point about New Zealand agriculture and the strength that New Zealand agriculture displays as the main income producer for New Zealand. Following on from that I think not only do we have to be proud of the industries that are involved there and the history of investment and hard work that has gone into making those industries so successful but we also need to look at the attitude I think that those industries display. It is an attitude of hard work resilience backing themselves being prepared to take risks and also looking for challenges and meeting those challenges and accepting them. Those are common fundamental principles of any economy where there is success. If you look at the industrial growth of China for example you see that they have a very similar success story. They have met the challenges of producing products and have done it in a way that has exceeded their competition and many other countries have failed to keep up with them and paid a dear price economically. 
That leads on to the situation that New Zealand faced and most of the Western World faced in the last few years. There is a deep recession in Europe. New Zealand was in recession before the rest of the world thanks to our previous Labour administration and the US is struggling to get through the recessionary pressures that are in the world at the moment. I challenge this Parliament to look at it in terms of an East-West divide. Maybe on the Eastern side of the political equation or the world they may have actually looked at things in a more long-term and reflective manner than the West has. Maybe the East has got something that the West needs to learn and that is that government is not about promises for one election to the next. Government is about building futures and futures are long term. We in the West tend to think an election is a time when we can go and buy votes. You have parties going out there promising all these things—promising to people who may be seen as vulnerable that they will change that; promising that their policies are the way to solve the problems—when maybe just maybe we need to take a more Eastern perspective and look at it with a long-term vision and actually look at government as a long-term driver and look not at our individual gain per election but at our long-term gain over time. 
That I think is the thing that the European countries have not done. They still face countries that go from election to election and from promise to promise. Can we buy the votes of those voters to stay in power? This is something the Labour Party was very good at doing in the previous administration. But the world has moved on. The world needs stable government the world needs government that is long term in focus and the world needs government that has a strong economic base. Those economic fundamentals are something that we as a country may not pick up explicitly but implicitly the people of our country know that. In their day-to-day lives they know that they can lose their job if the company they are working for does not perform. They know that the services they will get from the Government depend on the ability of the Government to earn revenue and deliver those services. The days of borrowing just to deliver services are gone. The days of a country having to earn its way are the future. That is a very strong driver that our people understand but often our politicians do not understand and the Labour Party did not understand it at the last election. It did not understand what people were actually going through on the street and that is why it did not connect with the people on the street. We as a Government and as a country need to have a much longer-term vision. We need to look forward at what our country needs to deliver. I see the Green members shaking their heads— 
Phil Twyford 
: In disbelief. 
DAVID BENNETT 
: No in support. They understand and they advocate that in an environmental context. It is a shame they do not do it in an economic context and also a social context. But in an economic context which is one of the major issues that we as a country have to deal with at the moment—environmental as well but economic as well—that requires long-term planning that invests in infrastructure that makes the right commercial decisions so that New Zealanders can grow their economy grow their businesses provide those jobs and provide the environment for us as a country to then afford to deliver the social services we all treasure and want to see enhanced. That is the challenge for this Government and for future Governments. The challenge of the past has been in terms of what we can promise for a 3-year cycle; the challenge of the future is to look forward to what we need to do to deliver a stronger economy and a country and environment going forward. The National Party is committed to long-term growth we are committed to long-term planning and we are committed to making sure this country takes advantage of its opportunities. That is the difference between us and the Opposition. 
The Opposition I bet will stand in this room for the next 3 years looking at short-term things. It will be looking at short-term issues with a short-term vision. We do not have a short-term vision; we have a vision that is the right vision in the current economic environment. It is one where we are investing in the infrastructure that this country needs. We are building the roads we are putting the broadband in and we are giving those assets to our people so that long term they can grow. That is very much the economic model you see in successful countries. Whereas the Chinese at the moment are building roads and building infrastructure the Russians are building roads and building infrastructure and the Indians are building roads and infrastructure the European countries of Italy and Spain are talking about how they can manage their debt. They are not looking at the economic fundamentals they need to and until the day they measure themselves and look at those long-term interests they will not compete in the modern world and they will fall further down. 
But New Zealand has the ability to compete. As Mr Ardern said we have got an agricultural economy that is poised to be in the right place at the right time. We are beside the major economic markets that this world will have for the next generation or so. We are close to them. We have never been close to them before. We made our money in the 50s but we made it by being far away from those economic markets. Now they are close so we have to take advantage of that. We also have to be able to look at the transfer of skills and the ability to be part of that neighbourhood. We cannot look at ourselves in isolation. If you want to have an isolated New Zealand that does not grow and does not achieve well then you are going to hold your people back and we cannot afford to do that. New Zealanders need to be able to invest in things and get that technology so that they can grow and have the standard of living that they desire. And this Government will deliver that through our plan because we will responsibly manage the Government finance we will build a stronger economy we will look at the delivery of public services and also we will rebuild Christchurch so that it is an integral part of the New Zealand plan. And that is a long-term focus which is something most Western economies do not realise and do not accept at the moment. That is what is needed for this country to grow. It is the success of us going forward and with good leadership we will achieve that. Thank you.