Joyce Steven: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeJoyce Steven: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:12069. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development):I appreciate that Mr Robertson is doing a leadership application at the moment but it does not change the fact that his intellect continues to be a mile wide and an inch deep. This Mr Robertson just throws masses of platitudes at the world and talks about all this stuff but he does not actually have any sort of plan. He knows nothing about what is going on in the world.To give you a little bit of an example right now 80 percent of all 15 to 19-year-olds in New Zealand are in education—80 percent of them. Mr Robertson does not want to know that. There are actually only 15000—still more than we would like but only15000—people who are not in education and not in employment who are 15 to 19-years-old. That is less than 5 percent of the total cohort of 310000 people. The reality is that we are doing the things that Grant wants to do and he has not actually bothered to look so he just flops around like some platitudinous leadership applicant for the Labour Party and tries to suggest that he could actually do something about it.The other reality is that he says “Talk about the record.” Well as for the record of this Government let us compare our growth rate in 2012 with the EU’s. Well they went backwards we went forwards. Let us compare it with the UK’s. They went backwards New Zealand went forwards. New Zealand was one of the fastest-growing economies in the OECD in 2012 and no platitudinous spin by our dear friend Grant Robertson—applicant for leadership of the Labour Party—can actually hide that whatsoever. Were we faster growing than Japan? Yes we were. Were we faster growing than Canada? Yes we were. Were we faster growing than the US? Yes we were. We were growing faster as an economy. We are one of the fastest-growing economies in the OECD which is actually quite a miracle when you look at the state of the place in 2008.Grant Robertson wants to forget but actually New Zealand went into a domestic recession before the global financial crisis. It was a shameful situation. Before the global financial crisis the Labour Government of the day had sent New Zealand into its own recession over that period. There you have it. You have the Labour Party’s applicant for leader Grant Robertson out there saying: “I am concerned about the regions. What we need is a plan.” He does not read anything that is going on currently he knows nothing about what is happening in tertiary education—which let us face it he was in for his entire life before he went to work for the old Prime Minister Helen Clark—he knows absolutely nothing about it he never does the reading and he never does the work. He spouts on about apprenticeships despite the fact that the Government is actually spending more on them now than ever before and actually tries to pretend that he knows something about the economy. Well I will tell you what the country would rue the day that Grant Robertson was let anywhere near an economic lever—it would rue the day.As for his little parrot friend Mr Clark actually spouting something about the economic record for the last 50 years you actually have to say more than that even though he thinks being a polly actually means being a parrot rather than a politician. Thank you.