Mackey Moana: Address in Reply 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Mackey Moana: Address in Reply 
[Sitting date: 07 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:109. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I want to go back to a comment that Bill English made because I think it bears repeating. It was just one of those off-the-cuff comments that he made when he was doing his little routine after my colleague Grant Robertson’s very good speech. He said that Grant Robertson had spent all his speech talking about issues that “don’t matter to New Zealanders”. Now what did Grant Robertson spend most of his speech talking about? Child poverty—child poverty. What a telling statement from the Minister of Finance that the National Government thinks that child poverty is an issue that does not matter to New Zealanders.  
Then we had the new Minister Jo Goodhew. She spent a large part of her speech talking about how National spent the last 3 years protecting the vulnerable. Well I would like to know what Jo Goodhew’s definition of “vulnerable” is because I cannot think of any vulnerable New Zealanders who were better off at the end of the last National Government than when National was elected in 2008. Maybe she was talking about vulnerable National Party donors because they were certainly looked after in the last 3 years of the National Government. Maybe she was talking about all those vulnerable foreign multinational companies because they certainly were looked after under the last 3 years of a National Government. Maybe she was talking about those poor vulnerable Australian insurance companies that are about to benefit from the privatisation of accident compensation. National is certainly doing a good job of protecting them over the next 3 years. They also fall into the category I suspect of vulnerable National Party donors but we will never know because the National Party refuses to disclose who donates to its election campaigns.  
When you look at what National did in the last 3 years you see unaffordable tax cuts that overwhelmingly went to those who did not need them—those who needed them the least. How can the Minister Jo Goodhew stand up in this House and say that National protected the vulnerable when to pay for those tax cuts the Government cut funding for Women’s Refuge? Mr Ardern is a very sensible member. How is cutting the funding for Women’s Refuge protecting vulnerable New Zealanders? It was all to pay for tax cuts that went to the least vulnerable New Zealanders. How are cuts to early childhood education protecting vulnerable New Zealanders? How is it good for children in this country that National has now told us it will increase class sizes? How is that protecting the most vulnerable New Zealanders? How does rising child poverty in this country fit with National’s claim that it has protected vulnerable New Zealanders?  
Is it not interesting that the reaction from the National Party to a TV3 documentary on child poverty was not “Oh my God we should do something about child poverty.”; it was “Oh my God we should stop New Zealand On Air from funding documentaries about child poverty and we should not let them be played in the week of an election campaign.”? God forbid that we talk about an issue like child poverty in an election campaign! It is very telling that their reaction to that documentary was not “Let’s do something about child poverty.”; it was “Let’s shut down talking about child poverty because we know it’s worse under our watch and we know we have absolutely no plan to deal with it.”  
I remember John Key’s Speech from the Throne after the 2008 election. This was when he was aspirational for New Zealand he was going to be turbocharging the New Zealand economy and we were going to be aggressively coming out of recession very very soon—of course failing to mention the fact that in large part he would have been able to do that because Labour left the books in a good state. The International Monetary Fund said that if it had not been for Labour paying off our Government debt and saving that money for a rainy day New Zealand would not have been in the good situation that it was in to deal with the global recession. The National Party likes to say that you know New Zealand went into recession before the rest of the world. Yes we did because we had droughts—because we had droughts. That is why we went into recession early.  
In fact New Zealand was in a very good position after the 2008 election because of the resilience that Labour had built into the economy. Unfortunately that was squandered by a Government that had no plan to deal with the major issues facing our country over its 3 years in Government. But that was the idea: John Key was going to deal to unemployment close the gap with Australia and bring New Zealand aggressively out of recession and back into surplus. He was going to be straight up with voters; he was not going to mince his words.  
What happened? Well he failed on every single count—every single count. He is almost like a child waiting for Santa Claus at Christmas. I suspect he woke up every morning just hoping that the free market had fixed the problems overnight and he would not have to do anything because a free market fixes everything. Well it has not and we have gone backwards comparatively in the world because we have had a do-nothing Government for 3 years. The only thing it has done is protect those people who support it—protect its mates and its cronies. They are the only people who were protected under the National Government over the last 3 years.  
Instead of being straight up with voters John Key now says that we have to accept that we live in a dynamic environment—we live in a dynamic environment. He is not straight up with voters any more. In terms of Australia last year saw the highest ever net migration to Australia. Unemployment is up by 50 percent; 157000 New Zealanders are now out of work. And for the first time in 13 years not only did we get a credit downgrade but we got a double downgrade—a double downgrade. So much for turbocharging the economy so much for being aspirational and so much for aggressively coming out of recession.  
In last year’s Speech from the Throne after the recent election what I could see was that the Prime Minister had learnt the lesson of making these commitments and then actually being held to account for them. What he did in this one was not make any commitments. He did not make any commitments and did not make any kinds of promises that he could actually be held to account against. There is still no plan for the economy; that was evident in the Speech from the Throne. If you consider today we had the very first question time since the election—the very first question time. The Government had the opportunity to ask itself lots of questions that highlight all the great policies and plans and exciting new ideas that it has because it is recharged and ready for the next 3 years. What did we have? Another question for Maurice Williamson on SmartGate. That is normally a question that we get in the third week of a sitting session when the Government is struggling to come up with questions. The first question time of this new Parliament and already they have to bring out the Maurice Williamson SmartGate question. That tells you something.  
Alfred Ngaro 
: It was impressive. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Well he did have a new angle on it this time which was adolescent facial features. It was a new angle. I am not saying it was not interesting. But the reality is—with all due respect to the wonderful people at the Customs Service—that there are slightly more pressing issues facing this country than whether 16-year-olds’ faces are still developing and whether we can let them use SmartGate at our international airports. 
This was an opportunity for the Government to tell us what it is going to do over the course of this year and to highlight its plans. But of course it does not have a plan. 
 The reality is that the opportunities are there. The opportunities are there for the Government to do what it said it was going to do 3 years ago but has failed to do: to aggressively bring our economy out of recession to get people back into work and to improve our education system—not destroy it which is quite frankly where this Government’s policies are going. But again in the Speech from the Throne there was nothing. There was no plan and—this time the Prime Minister has learnt—no commitments that he could actually be held accountable for at the time of the next election. He failed to meet any of the commitments he made in his last 3 years of Government so this time we heard absolutely no commitments.  
I invite members to look at the plan that Labour put forward at the last election because our tax package would get New Zealand back to surplus at the same time as the National Party was promising without selling our assets—without selling our assets. But it requires tough choices to be made.  
The Government says it has a mandate on asset sales; it actually does not. When you add up the percentage of the vote that was gained by all those parties that opposed asset sales including those that did not make it into this Parliament because they failed to reach the 5 percent threshold more than 50 percent of New Zealanders voted for parties that had policies opposing asset sales—opposing assets sales—so there is no mandate for it.  
The Government talks about its Future Investment Fund. I had a school principal in Gisborne say to me that 21st century education is not a one-off cost. Saying that we are going to sell off our assets to put a bit of money into schools on a one-off basis just shows how little the Government understands about education because 21st century education is an ongoing cost and you can sell those assets only once. Once they are gone they are gone. Assets built up by generations of New Zealanders which this Government has no mandate to sell—once they are gone they are gone. Particularly in the case of the power companies we will see power prices going up. People are already struggling to pay the power bill and we will see power prices going up when those assets are privatised.  
It is short-changing future generations. Future generations are asking where the National Government’s plan is to deal with the cost of an ageing population. Where was that plan in the Speech from the Throne? The fact is we cannot keep putting it off. It is all right for John Key—he will get his superannuation—but what about younger New Zealanders now who are looking and thinking that there is no way given the ageing population that New Zealand superannuation at its current level is sustainable if we do not make those tough choices? There were no tough choices made about that about child poverty or about any of the other issues facing New Zealand. It is about time the National Party members when they get up actually started outlining what their plan is for New Zealand.