Cunliffe David: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: General Debate[Sitting date: 03 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4271. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): The member who has just resumed his seat David Bennett personifies this National Government. Instead of making a logical argument he just gives us abuse. Whether you allow it or not Mr Speaker it is just abuse. This is a Government that is mired in distractions in scandal and in corruption—which is not too strong a word—while New Zealand lacks a plan that will put more money in the pockets of hard-working Kiwi families relieve the housing crisis and get New Zealand back to work.Let me tell you about the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment—what a multi-headed hydra. It was created by the Prime Minister to give Steven Joyce a sandpit almost as big as Bill English’s. It was divide and rule at work balancing the lieutenants to give Mr Joyce an empire. It has been a miserable singular failure. Steven Joyce can micro-manage the portrait and landscape on his slide pack but he cannot oversee cost control on a $43000 street sign. What an embarrassment what a failure of ministerial responsibility and what a failure of cost management in his department.It is no surprise because this is the same department that spent $360000 on luxury couches for its staff. It is the same department that screwed up the negotiations with Skycity which was not helped by the Prime Minister giving the casino a lucky break or two or three or four. It screwed up the discussions with MediaWorks and gave it a $43 million suspensory loan. Oh and what did happen to John Campbell recently when he got a bit uppity with the Prime Minister? I wonder. The Government folded for Rio Tinto—a $15 million roughly bribe to stay in office. That reminds me somewhat of Murray McCully’s exploits building sheep farms in the desert.This is a Government mired in scandal mired in distraction and without a decent idea about how to effect change in our economy. We face a choice ladies and gentlemen. The choice is between muddling through banking on milk powder earthquake rebuilds and bits and pieces or being a country that undertakes a proper change programme for the future. To do that it has got to be high value. It has got to be driven by innovation science and technology.Today in the Education and Science Committee Minister Joyce showed what a complete waste of space the Government’s science and technology programme is. The chief executive officer of the MacDiarmid Institute no less says that the Marsden Fund is a shambles. Only 7 percent of project bids get through and the Minister admitted they have no idea of the overhead costs of the 93 percent that do not.The Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor Sir Peter Gluckman whom the Government just made a member of the Order of New Zealand said the system is beset by “short-termism” and that the Government has no strategy. Shaun Hendy an eminent professor of physics and co-author of a book with no less than Sir Paul Callaghan said that is because they have to go cap in hand for co-funding to the dairy industry because it is the only one that has any money. The science system reinforces the old economy instead of building the economy of the future. That is why we have had a Budget of broken promises and seven deficits out of seven instead of Labour’s nine surpluses out of nine.Chris Bishop: Also not true. $4 billion deficit in 2008—$4 billion.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: There is a growing international deficit as exports go backwards Mr Bishop from 32 percent of GDP not to the Government’s target of 40 percent but in this Budget by its own admission down to 26 percent from 32 percent. That is an amazing snatching of defeat from the jaws of the victory of the post global financial crisis rebound. It is a spectacular failure and we have hundreds of billions of dollars of external debt and savings debt.What is the Government’s solution? Knacker KiwiSaver and take away the kick-start to fund some public relations for beneficiaries that it never believed in in the first place. That is the game of this Budget: spin above substance fiddling while Rome burns. This is a Government without a plan a Government beset by distractions and a New Zealand that deserves better.