English Bill: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeEnglish Bill: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 01 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9214. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Prime Minister): The debate on the Prime Minister’s statement is an opportunity to I suppose listen to and learn from—if you do not have anything else to do—the Opposition. We have learnt one or two things. I think the first is that when Labour talks about the Kiwi Dream it is dreaming of 2005 to 2008. I think that is now pretty clear. We have been assailed for the last few sitting days of the House with the best thinking from Grant Robertson and Andrew Little’s finest hour which was low debt levels in 2008 and interest-free student loans in 2005. There is nothing we have heard that indicates their thinking has grown up from that point. In fact their best efforts then came straight out of their days as student union leaders like most of the front two rows of the Labour Party.Labour’s dream is Helen Clark as Prime Minister handing out more goodies to students and claiming that Labour got Government debt down. Well Government debt was low then; of course other things were not. Interest rates were 10 percent and Government spending had grown by 50 percent in the previous 5 years. And that is another thing we have learnt from this debate that Labour intends to do it all again if it becomes the Government—the same things. You have just got to look through the list of extravagant spending promises to see that.We have also learnt something else though: the centre of gravity for critics of the Government is now the thuggish left. Because of the increasing irrelevance of Labour and the Greens—mired in their dreams of 10 years ago—the thuggish left is taking the stage. And in fact increasingly the incoherent people who throw things are dragging the Greens and Labour to the left. The most obvious example we are familiar with is Labour’s position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). A once moderate market-minded social democrat party is now opposed to free trade—or at least I think we are allowed to sell to other people but they are not allowed to sell to us because Andrew Little said that he is going to renegotiate some of it. I think that is the bit: “We will keep the bit where we can sell to other people but we will negotiate out the bit that says they can sell to us.” Or maybe it is the other way round; I just cannot remember.But the Parliament will deliver the Labour Party a chance to look decisive and that is during the TPP legislation which will turn up here and its members will have to vote one way or the other. They cannot as I once saw a member do stand in the middle between the Ayes and the Noes lobbies and hope that the bells go so that they do not have to vote. And I think that is where we will see Andrew Little on the day.The other example is the Greens. The speech from Mr Hughes was the nastiest personal attack I have heard in this Parliament in 25 years—shameful from a member and a party that said it would not do that sort of thing. It is becoming increasingly preoccupied by how to look more angry than the thuggish left who throw things. That is what the Opposition is competing for. And the votes are moving round no doubt among Labour and the Greens depending on which appeals most to the angry incoherent dumbed-down left.And in the meantime as the Prime Minister outlined in his statement the Government continues to deal with the challenge of underpinning moderate growth in this economy while there is an ongoing level of global uncertainty. It is hard to know whether it is more than it used to be; there is a different set of preoccupations now which the Opposition says means global recession is coming. But whether there is more or less of it we have continued to focus on ensuring that the structure of this economy is resilient and on ensuring that it provides opportunity.I just want to actually point out something I thought the Opposition might have pointed out today: the minimum wage went up—it is going to go up; it has not gone up it will go up on 1 April—at the same time as beneficiary families with children will get the first increase in their benefits above Consumers Price Index in over 40 years; on the same day. Since National became the Government and a National-led Government came in the minimum wage has gone up 27 percent; inflation has gone up 11 percent. The minimum wage has gone up 27 percent; inflation has gone up 11 percent. We now have the smallest gap in the developed world between the minimum wage and the average wage and one can argue—some would actually—that it is probably a bit too close. The fruits of consistent moderate growth are being shared out across New Zealand. The average wage itself of course in the last 12 months has just gone up over 3 percent—in a year when inflation was 0.1 percent. There cannot be too many more relevant measures for New Zealand households than real increases in their benefits if they have got children; in the minimum wage; and in the average wage—consistent real increases in the value of those incomes.So what most of Mr Hughes said about that was simply wrong. And I do not mind disagreeing with people but wilful ignorance on the part of the Greens about what is happening in our environment in our economy—and you know you would think you may expect a bit of graciousness about the Kermadec park; you might have. It is the largest protected piece of ocean on the planet about which the Green members are meant to be so preoccupied but they spend so much time creating carbon dioxide emissions flying around the planet that they have not even caught up with the fact that the Kermadec Marine Reserve has been created. Those members do not have to acknowledge the National Government because we know they do not because they have become so mean-minded; they just need to acknowledge the presence of the reserve about which so many people are so happy.We will continue with the economic programme the Prime Minister outlined and it includes some real challenges. It is fantastic to be part of a team that has the energy and the focus to get into the hardest issues this economy now has to address: fresh water and how we have intensive agricultural production and improve the quality of our water because that is what we are going to be able to achieve; and the regulation of our housing market—New Zealand’s biggest asset class. Just look at the number of people who turn up to meetings in Auckland about it. That tells you how relevant our concerns are and their concerns are to this Government because we need to ensure that our housing market does not create macro-imbalances: higher interest rates than we need unfairness by locking people out of the market and very big fiscal cost—the $2 billion a year we spend subsidising rentals in the housing market.Those are just two of the issues; there are any number of others before this Parliament that will show real progress this year like the review of Te Ture Whenua Maori Act when that gets here before too long—a hundred-year wait for significant reform that will allow the better use of much Māori land. Is it politically high profile? Not particularly. Does it matter? Absolutely along with those other complicated issues. And they are all a bit controversial. They are all a bit challenging. They all need a lot of consultation and explanation. And the Prime Minister is leading a Government that has every intention of boring into those issues and that is before we get to the hard-core difficult social issues where most of our Government spending goes.And if anything sums up the Labour Party’s lack of relevance it is that its proposition about free whatever-it-was for students shows no understanding of anything that is going on in the analysis of social policy these days anywhere in the developed world—it is straight out of the 1970s. So I was wrong. I thought the Kiwi Dream was 2008 but actually now that they are getting back to Norman Kirk—