Goff Phil: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers Questions to Members 
Goff Phil: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers Questions to Members 
[Volume:660;Page:8950] 
3. 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Does he stand by his comment yesterday “I have been busy running the country. But I am the first to admit it was a bit sloppy”? 
Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister) 
: 
 Yes I stand by my response to the question which asked me how I was unaware that Jackson Mining merged last year and sold its non-uranium interests. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: Does his sloppiness extend to his management of the flagship home insulation programme where an audit has found that 63 percent of the work was substandard and that half of it had serious quality issues including fire safety risks; and what responsibility will he take for that sloppiness and incompetence? 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: No but it is living proof that I have been busy running the country—given that we will insulate four times as many houses in a quarter of the amount of time that Labour did and hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders will thank us for warm homes. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: Was it sloppy or was it more likely to have been irresponsibility and thoughtlessness that led the Prime Minister to name the hitherto anonymous soldier pictured in Kabul as Willy Apiata against all the advice given to him by the Special Air Service and the New Zealand Defence Force? 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: No. There are a couple of things there. Firstly the Defence Force had already made that statement but I am prepared— 
Hon Members 
: No they hadn’t. 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: Well they had. 
Hon Members 
: They hadn’t. 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: Yes they had. They did it 2 hours earlier at a press conference but I was more than happy for them to do so. Secondly for the record both Television One and TV3 had left messages to say that they would specifically ask me because they had recognised it was Willy Apiata. At the end of the day I am not going to spend a week of having two pictures in the paper playing identikit games when it had already been printed. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: Was it sloppy that this time last year he was promising the country 4000 jobs from a national cycleway and now by his own admission he has created only 280 and even they are not up and running yet? 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: No but what I can say is that there has been an overwhelming response to the over 2000 kilometres of the cycleway up and down the country. There are 54 requests. What I can say is that it has been such an overwhelming success that I have no doubt that future National Governments may well look to extend the cycleway and I have full intentions of speaking to the Minister of Finance in the second term of a National Government should we be lucky enough to get one to ask for another $50 million. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: Was it sloppy for the Prime Minister to have promised this country a youth guarantee whereby every young person under 18 would have a job or be in training and education when the reality of what the Prime Minister has delivered is a third of Maori and Pasifika young people not in work not in training and not in education which is a disaster for those communities and New Zealand? 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: No because 2000 young people are going on Youth Guarantee this year and 2000 next year not to mention the thousands that have gone on the Job Ops or Community Max programmes. We know that the real future of young people up and down the country will be secured when we have national standards and they can read and write properly. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: Was it sloppy of the Prime Minister to have described unemployment 2 months ago as being at a level that was a pretty good result given that 168000 New Zealanders are now without a livelihood and that the Salvation Army reported to us last Friday that 30000 more children are now living in households where neither parent is working? 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: No given that New Zealand’s unemployment rate is below the OECD average. Obviously the fact that any person has lost his or her job is an unfortunate thing. Secondly contrary to what the member has been telling people up and down the country in the last quarter of last year there was a very small contraction in the number of jobs. Yes a lot more people are staying in the country. People looking to come—[ 
Interruption 
] No it was actually 2000 people in the last quarter. One interesting point did come out of the Salvation Army report. The report showed that 69 I think or 70 percent—it was either 69 or 70—of young people who live in homes that are based on a benefit are living in poverty. That is one of the reasons why this Government will undertake welfare reform. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: Was it sloppy management on the part of the Prime Minister that the young girl he used as a photo opportunity at Waitangi has now been described by her mother as having been used by the Prime Minister and that his promise that those on Struggle Street would be better off has been the reverse—that they are now worse off—which is because the Prime Minister has looked after the high-income people and not those who are disadvantaged? 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: I do not have the  
Sunday Star-Times 
 to hand as I did yesterday but if I did have it I would be able to read out all the improvements that have happened in McGehan Close which are quite some in number. What I think is informative about the questions from the Leader of the Opposition today is that he has never been around a political leader who could ever say that he or she had made a mistake. Well guess what? Sometimes we all make mistakes.