Hipkins Chris: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hipkins Chris: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Sitting date: 29 January 2013. Volume:687;Page:7532. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 While listening to John Key’s speech all I could think was that if that is the best the National Government can do bring on the next election because New Zealanders have been waiting. They have been waiting for over 4 years heading on towards 5 years now— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: We’re in the sixth year. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: We are in the sixth calendar year of this National Government and New Zealanders are still waiting for that brighter future that John Key promised them. Remember that? He was ambitious for New Zealand. He was going to deliver us a brighter future. He was going to stem the exodus to Australia. How has he gone on those? Everything was going to get better under John Key yet— 
Moana Mackey 
: Turbocharged. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: He was going to turbocharge the economy and yet every major indicator of Government performance under this National Government has gotten worse. And what do we get from National now? It is all someone else’s fault. It has got an excuse for everything and a solution for nothing. It has no new ideas about how to address the major problems that New Zealand is facing but it has an excuse. Everywhere we turn it has got an excuse. 
It has put Steven Joyce in charge of Novopay. He quickly went from “Mr Fix-it” to “Mr Excuses”. It took him a week—a week—to stop claiming he was going to fix Novopay and to start blaming everybody else for it and telling teachers: “Actually I’m not here to fix it; the bad news is it is all going to get worse.” It took him only a week to get to that point. 
Listening to the introduction of John Key’s remarks what are the big ideas? Well the big things that he could point to were a Cabinet reshuffle where the bright hope for the future is Nick Smith and warrant of fitness changes. That is going to turbocharge the economy. Of course deregulation works so well in the building industry and that is what the Government wants to do now for the automotive industry. That is its big idea. 
The one thing John Key did not say which he could have said was that the Government is going to make a list of all of its lists. Every time John Key delivers another speech in Parliament we get another list another set of priorities another group another set of themes. When is it actually going to start delivering on all of these goals and targets it sets? We have not seen any evidence of any progress so far to date on any of that. 
John Key alluded to the Talking Heads song “Burning Down the House.” I am interested to note that that comes from the album called  
Stop Making Sense 
. Well John Key did not need to be told that; he was already well and truly there. But I have got another Talking Heads song for John Key that is actually far more appropriate. It is called “Road to Nowhere”. That is exactly where we are going under this National Government. We are on the road to nowhere under the National Party. John Key gave exactly the same speech last year exactly the same speech the year before and exactly the same speech the year before that. And what has the Government delivered? Nothing. All the priorities have been the same. Five times now we have had to listen to John Key talk about them and five times he has failed to actually be able to point to a single result. For 5 years we have been listening to this and yet no results. New Zealanders are getting sick and tired of waiting and at the next election they are going to deliver their verdict on this National Government. 
John Key told the country that he has asked his Ministers to lift their game. Well what has he been doing for the last 4½ years? Clearly he did not seem to mind that they were underperforming. Then of course at the next election New Zealanders are going to look at John Key and they are going to ask: “Well what would another term of National look like?”. As well as the complete absence of any ideas who would John Key be relying on to prop him up? We have got John Banks the man who had the audacity to come to the House this afternoon to talk about handouts—John Banks talking about handouts! We have got Peter Dunne the man who was single-handedly responsible for ending the planking craze. Then there is Colin Craig whose highest priority appears to be to maintain gender-segregated toilets. That is what John Key’s future Government is going to look like. 
Then we turn to education and of course we on the Opposition benches are so relieved that John Key has left that great communicator Hekia Parata in place as the Minister of Education. We are very very pleased that Hekia Parata will be continuing as Minister of Education. Let us go back over a few of her greatest hits. She made her grand splash as Minister of Education by telling parents that she could improve the quality of their kids’ education by putting more of them in every class. That was Hekia Parata’s great solution. That was a policy that even Anne Tolley had the sense to know was not going to work and was not going to be a good idea. Hekia Parata told us at the time that improving the quality of teachers was important and even mooted the idea that teaching should be a postgraduate profession so one should have to have a postgraduate qualification before entering the classroom. And then promptly within the next very short period of time she introduced these very shortened teaching qualifications for someone to move into teaching that are actually a lot less than an undergraduate degree. Then of course she introduced the idea of charter schools—something National was working on before the last election but did not put in its manifesto—where teachers would not have to be registered or qualified at all. 
What was Hekia Parata’s next great triumph? Well it is difficult. At this point the list starts to become quite extensive but let us start with Christchurch schooling. Having started what was quite a good process—and I will give her credit for this: she started quite a good process by engaging the community and getting buy-in to the idea that change was required; the Government did quite a good job of that first part of the process and I will give it credit for that—the Government then completely pulled the rug out from under it by putting up a whole series of very concrete proposals that then became just ideas and then they were concrete proposals again completely destroying all of the goodwill towards change that had been built up in Christchurch. 
Then we had the Novopay debacle. This is not all Hekia Parata’s fault of course; Craig Foss shares some responsibility as does Bill English. 
Hon Amy Adams 
: It was the Labour Party. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: It was the three of them who signed off on the implementation. Oh now Amy Adams thinks it was the Labour Party’s fault because after 5 years the best the Government can do is blame the previous Labour Government for something that it has done that it put in place. The process of selecting a new payroll system—yes that started under the last Labour Government but after 5 years clearly this Government did nothing. Clearly this Government did absolutely nothing in that area despite the fact that it is its members’ signatures that will be found on the pieces of paper hitting the go live for Novopay. And still all the Government can come up with is excuses and not one solution. Up and down the country thousands of people are still waiting to be paid and all the Government is interested in doing is pointing the finger and saying: “It’s not our fault. It’s gonna get worse. There’s nothing we can do.” That is all those thousands of people are getting from this National Government: excuses. It is not good enough; they want solutions. If all the National Party can do is come up with excuses it should hand back the salaries. We will happily take over and we will fix the problem—any day. Any day National wants we will happily fix that problem. 
What else happened in education? Well the Government decided: “Oh gosh things are getting a bit difficult. We need a scapegoat. Blame the officials. Sack the Secretary for Education.”—the one whom it hand-picked to implement the agenda that it selected. All of the things that the Government pointed out had gone wrong under the Secretary for Education stem back to policies that Ministers had put in place. What happened to the idea that Ministers are the ones who are accountable—that the ones who put their names on the ballot paper ultimately are the ones who have the responsibility and the accountability? That does not exist under this National Government any more. It has still got John Banks down there—no responsibility there. It has got Hekia Parata sitting over there—no responsibility being accepted over there. And Nick Smith—the guy who had to resign from Cabinet because he abused his position to get preferential treatment for one of his mates—got restored to Cabinet in this latest reshuffle. There are no ideas or notions of responsibility and accountability in this Government—oh no none at all. The best that it can come up with is bringing out a few retreads. 
New Zealanders know that on all of the fundamental measures this Government is failing. With unemployment at 7.3 percent clearly the Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment has got a bit of time on his hands to dabble in other people’s portfolio areas. With deficits being run up every year this Government seems to think that it can take the focus off that. With the exodus to Australia continually increasing suddenly it is not talking about that any more. It is a Government with no ideas it has run out of energy after only 4½ years and at the next election it will be replaced.