Cunliffe David: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Cunliffe David: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:670;Page:16684] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 There was nothing new in Shane Ardern’s speech except slandering the Labour Opposition. Labour has a vision for a better future where every New Zealander counts and where New Zealand’s economy is going forward strongly. Let me reaffirm that Labour will have a fully costed economic package that will not add to net debt and that will reduce net debt across the cycle. The National Government has failed New Zealand and has failed New Zealanders and we can see hope dying in the eyes of New Zealanders up and down the country. Welcome to National’s recession. 
Until yesterday people thought the only double-dip Bill English was into was his own housing allowance. Yesterday he discovered two more double-dips. He thinks Australia is in a double-dip recession—where has he been—and he has finally admitted that New Zealand is heading for a double-dip recession. He has no one left to blame. He cannot blame the world economy because world markets are rising. He cannot blame the previous Labour Government because Labour has been out for 2½ years and he has had the reins. This is National’s recession. National took a bet. The bet was that China would grow and Australia would grow and that all we had to do was stand still and our export prices would grow and New Zealand would be brought back up on to the rise. Well some of that happened. China did grow Australia did grow and we had a 30-year high in export prices. But what has happened in New Zealand? Unemployment is back up to 6.8 percent with more than 150000 unemployed. Prices are rising faster than wages. New Zealanders at the bottom and in the middle are doing it tough and are worse off today than they were 2 years ago. 
That pressure has a human face. In National’s recession the failure is best captured by McGehan Close. Do members remember McGehan Close? It is the street where John Key campaigned whose poverty he manipulated and whose residents he made promises to. They have now said that he has done little to help the poor. “He’s just making everything better for high earners and not the low-income ones. Bread milk everything that we need that is a basic necessity for us is going to be more expensive. It’s going to be harder for us to feed our kids.” 
Hon Annette King 
: Wow! 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: Wow! That is the voice of New Zealand. That is the voice of hope dying in the eyes of a generation—as one young person in four is unable to find their first job on leaving school; as one Maori woman in two is locked out of the labour market; as young New Zealanders cannot finance their way into their own homes; as young New Zealanders see our family silver being flogged off before their eyes; and as young New Zealanders are being told that they will have to pick up the tab for the baby-boom superannuation because National does not have the bottle to pay into that fund. Hope is dying in the eyes of the young generation and they will not they know own their own future. 
Where are the jobs? They were not there for Petarina Slater who did 150 interviews and could not find a job. They were not there in my electorate for the Serbian scientist who has a PhD and is delivering Countdown supermarket pamphlets because that is the only job he can get. They are not there for the specialist doctors who are driving cabs around New Lynn because they are locked out of the medical profession. They are not there for the economist from Sri Lanka who is doing basic clerical work for a State-owned enterprise because that is all he is allowed to do. They are not there for the Samoan man who lost his job at a factory in South Auckland and cannot afford a State house. He moved in with his brother and now 16 children are living in a three-bedroom house in Kelston. They are not there for the family who live around the corner in a garage and whom I visited not long ago. The Samoan man is now working in a bakery thanks to some help from our office. Those jobs are just not there for New Zealanders up and down this country. 
I tell Mr English that the double-dip is happening in New Zealand not in Australia. Australians are doing fine because they had a good old-fashioned Labor Government that invested in stimulus job creation research and development; and getting things moving. They were not flogging off the family silver and getting stuck in a rut of their own making. In 2008 John Key told the grand lie that New Zealand— 
Hon Simon Power 
: Mr Deputy Speaker— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I know what the point of order is going to be. Speaker’s ruling 42/5 states that one cannot imply that someone has lied. I ask the member to withdraw and apologise. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: He made the grand promise— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I have asked the member to withdraw and apologise. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: I withdraw and apologise. He made the grand promise that New Zealand would catch up with Australia. When he made that promise the wage gap was 34 percent of GDP per capita. Do members know what it is now? It is 37.5 percent and rising every year—on the Government’s own numbers. If members do not believe me believe the 36000 New Zealanders who left for Australia last year alone. That happens to be a higher number than in 6 of the 9 years of the previous Labour Government. The number of people in the exodus is going up. Hope is dying in the eyes of New Zealanders. Food prices are rising faster than wages and more New Zealanders are on the unemployment heap. This Government laughs. Hekia Parata laughs. She laughs because she has use of an LTD and is on a quarter-million-dollar salary. She is sitting pretty and she is getting out of touch with Mana. That is why she is not the MP for Mana. Members opposite might be reminded that laughing does not last when New Zealanders are suffering. 
Even those in work are doing it hard. Last year wages rose 1.7 percent and inflation was 4 percent. It does not take a PhD to work out that people are nearly 2.5 percent worse off. Wages went backwards on average by 2.5 percent; they were cut 2.5 percent under National. That is simple; it cannot be argued with except that Bill English tries. He manipulates the numbers to say that since National was elected wages after tax have gone up. My colleagues have asked me how he does that. Firstly he took a starting date before National was elected—in the year in which Labour was still governing. Then he added back in the effect of Labour’s Budget 2008 tax cut. Then he used a different data series than the comparison with Australia. Then he dropped in National’s tax cuts which the country could not afford and has had to borrow to fund. When we take the proper New Zealand income survey data it shows that average incomes grew about 5 to 6 percent per annum under Labour. Under National they have grown 0.4 percent for the average wage and minus 0.75 percent for the median. So the incomes of 50 percent of New Zealanders at least have gone backwards since National was elected. One cannot argue with those numbers; that is the data. I say: “Welcome to National’s recession.” It is the one in which there is no global financial crisis left to blame and where National has had its hand on the tiller for 2½ years. 
Where is National’s plan for jobs and growth? Its plan was to take away the research and development tax cuts and appoint a Chief Science Adviser. Its plan was to take away half of the grant fund to the Ministry of Economic Development. I tried to ring the economic development agency in Waitakere and I could not get through. Why? Rodney Hide abolished it! He simply abolished it. In the super-city legislation there is no economic development agency left in west Auckland. The Government does not care. It would rather prevent Maori from having an elected seat on the super-city council and spend $5 million on an advisory board. Can we have that money to create jobs in west Auckland? That would be very very helpful. 
The problem for National—and members opposite are looking at their feet because they do not like the truth—is that they are still in the grip of Reagan-Thatcher-Chicago school economics. The theory goes: “If you just cut— 
Hon Simon Power 
: That man would have been 100 this Sunday. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: Mr Power should listen to this. “If you just cut the Government sector enough a million flowers will bloom interest rates will drop the current account will be beautiful and everything will be right in the garden.” You know the latest international data shows that for every one public sector job two private sector jobs are created: one on average for procurement from public sector activity and one more from the multiplier effect of lifting aggregate output. The multiplier—that is what economists discovered after the last great depression—says that when the Government gets in and helps people get confident and they themselves invest. They hire people they build things they make things and they sell things and we get out of the doldrums. We get out of the rut. Why have those members forgotten the lesson of the 1930s—the lesson that Forbes and Coates taught us. It took Michael Savage to put things right. It took Michael Cullen to cut New Zealand’s debt to zero. Government members complain that New Zealand was left a pile of debt; but there was a credit of net debt when Labour left office.