Goff Phil: Debate on Budget Policy Statement 
Goff Phil: Debate on Budget Policy Statement 
[Volume:670;Page:17051] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 In this the third year of a National-led Government New Zealanders are getting rather tired of this National Government blaming the consequences of its own economic mismanagement on other events and on other people. 
Let me begin where Mr Foss began: with the people of Christchurch. I had 2 hours down there this morning standing in the liquefaction with the stench of sewage. I talked to two or three dozen people who for 15 days have not had power water sewerage or even access to decent toilets. One gentleman I talked to said that his next-door neighbour is 84 years old. He is an ex - Royal Air Force pilot. He has a heart condition and he is on drugs. Each morning and sometimes in the middle of the night he has to walk 300 metres up the road before he can find a Portaloo. That really is not good enough for the people of the eastern suburbs. Our sympathies go to those people but they need more than our sympathy; they actually need active intervention and active government. Fifteen days after the earthquake people should not be living in those conditions. 
I say to Mr Foss that it is no good blaming the earthquake for New Zealand’s perilous economic position. I have in my hand last week’s  
BNZ Weekly Overview 
. What does it say? It says that before we even had the earthquake the data was showing a recessionary finish to 2010 and a recessionary start to 2011. It says basically that we were back in recession before the earthquake struck. That makes New Zealand one of just two countries in the developed world that is facing a double-dip recession. 
I say to Mr Foss that he needs to look to his own Government’s actions or inactions to explain that. How does one explain it when New Zealand is getting the best prices in 38 years—the very best prices—for its export products? Mr Foss knows that because he is a farmer. He is getting a bigger wool cheque a better lamb cheque—he is smiling and grinning now—and a better tax cut. He has personally had hundreds and hundreds of dollars a week in tax cuts. 
I will tell him about what it is doing to the rest of New Zealand. It is no good Mr Foss blaming the previous Labour Government. Bill English will take the next call. On 18 December 2008 in this House he stood up and he said as the new Minister of Finance that the books of this country were in reasonable shape. He said the Government was saving for a rainy day—it was not his Government; he had become just the Minister—and that rainy day had come. Mr English picked up a country that had zero net Government debt. There was no comparison to the countries of Europe that were heavily overburdened with debt. He picked up a country that had one of the lowest rates of unemployment in the world yet today in the third year of this National Government 700 additional New Zealanders every week are losing their jobs—every week they are losing their jobs. 
Do members know the shameful thing that shows that this Government is so out of touch with ordinary New Zealanders? Mr Key said that people going to food banks—and the number of them has trebled or quadrupled—are taking lifestyle choices. I tell Mr English about one of the people whom I spoke to this morning. His wife lost her job in the earthquake. She will get 6 weeks’ payment but what happens after that? Their mortgage repayments will not halve but their income has. That family like so many other families who never in their lives have gone to a food bank will possibly be looking for additional assistance. It is not because of a lifestyle choice but because their income is halved and their cost of living has gone up. I say this to you Mr English— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I have allowed the member— 
Hon Bill English 
: Don’t you know the Standing Orders? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I am on my feet. I have allowed the member to get away with it a couple of times but in debate members must not refer specifically to other members as “you” because it leads to disorder. I apologise to the member; he must not do that. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: I say this to Mr English: it does not help people who go to petrol stations each week and pay more than $100 to fill up their petrol tanks who go to the supermarket every week and pay more and more money for everything they buy and who have to pay more for the Government charges that Mr English is imposing on them. It does not help those people that this Government has contributed to their increased cost of living through a GST increase but has not delivered on what Mr Key promised which was that everyone would be overwhelmingly better off because of the tax switch. 
Mr Key is better off. He is better off by $1000 a week. He has given himself $1000 a week in tax cuts. Of course he feels that everyone is better off. But how about talking to the guy down the road who is a cleaner on the minimum wage? He got 25c an hour—25c an hour—from the tax cuts which does not come close to meeting the increased cost of living. His family is suffering. His family is being pushed into poverty because of tax cuts. The National Government has looked after its wealthy mates and itself but has not looked after middle-income people or lower-income people. Those people are being squeezed. 
The Government has failed because it has no plan. It has no plan about skills training. The head of Business New Zealand said to me that the Government has not put together a skills programme. He is not a friend of the Labour Party or an enemy of the Government; he is a friend of the Government—he is telling the truth. There is no plan. When we are thousands of skilled tradesmen short at the end of the year; when we cannot build the houses in Canterbury that people desperately need; when we cannot put the businesses back on their feet because there is a skills shortage; and when costs go through the roof because of that skills shortage maybe the National Government will reflect on the lack of a plan to train people in order to get the 7 percent of Cantabrians who will be out of work back to work and rebuilding their city. That is a huge gap. 
Maybe Mr English will think about research and development when he thinks about why the clever innovative companies are not coming through and providing the high-skill high-wage high-tech jobs. Mr English has cut research and development by 50 percent. National does not have a skills programme. 
Hon Bill English 
: That’s not true. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Mr English says that is not true. Ask Sir Paul Callaghan. He will tell Mr English what is true and what is not true. National has cut research and development. It has cut the skills programme. 
National members say we have to save more yet after 2½ years of a National Government it has no plan for saving. Except for the fact that National closed down New Zealand Superannuation and is not contributing to it the only thing that is keeping the books afloat at the moment is the return on things like the Superannuation Fund and State-owned enterprises. Yet the Government has stopped funding superannuation and it wants to sell off State-owned enterprises. 
The Government does not care about what Kiwis think. Two to one Kiwis are telling this National Government that they do not want to sell the assets that generations of New Zealanders have built up. Selling the assets is bad for Kiwis and it is good for foreign investors. The foreign investors will laugh all the way to the bank. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Who sold Telecom? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Mr Williamson interjected. He worked for Air New Zealand. National said that selling Air New Zealand would be good for the country. It was run into bankruptcy. Labour learnt and never sold a single asset in the 9 years it was in Government. But this National Government will sell it off. National sold off New Zealand Rail to its mates Mr Fay and Mr Richwhite and they asset-stripped it and ran it into the ground. They bought it cheap and sold it for too much. We needed New Zealand Rail back for an infrastructure programme. 
National has learnt nothing. It listens to nobody. It does not listen to New Zealanders when they say they do not want those assets sold. It does not listen to the hundreds of New Zealanders who are writing to me every week about the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill and saying they do not want it. Those New Zealanders tell me that it is not what National promised. People who have been card-carrying members of the National Party have been absolutely betrayed by a Government that has broken its word and is acting just to retain its power with the help of the Maori Party. New Zealanders are fed up with that sort of arrogance. This Government has failed and on 26 November this Government will go.