Tremain Chris: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTremain Chris: General Debate[Sitting date: 13 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14633. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon CHRIS TREMAIN (Minister of Internal Affairs): There is a strange smell that is starting to permeate across the Chamber. It is the kind of smell one gets when you walk across the high tide mark after a big storm. It is the kind of smell you get as you walk through a forest. It is that smell of decay of rot of dead wood. Today the Leader of the Opposition got to the heart of that. He backed up the rejuvenation that is going on on this side of the House as eight to 10 of our MPs make the decision to move on to other things. We allow fresh bright ideas to come into this party. On the other side though the smell is permeating—that dead wood.What we are seeing 5 years on from the start of this Government is rejuvenation change and new policy happening on this side of the House. And on the other side? Dead wood—dead wood policies and dead wood politicians. When we come to the election in just a few months’ time towards the end of next year the public will be sitting there saying: “What is on offer here? A party that after 6 years is bright with new ideas and fresh people or one that after 6 years has not changed. It is still full of dead wood politicians.”On that note I can say I was proud to attend the policy day up at Premier House just last Friday. We walked into Premier House—a caucus full of a huge vibe of confidence and a resetting of our policies going forward. In that regard we talked long and hard about the four key objectives that we set as a party when we came into office: firstly to return the Government’s books to surplus; secondly to create a more productive and competitive economy; thirdly to build better public services; and fourthly to rebuild that beautiful city of Christchurch which I do not think anyone in the House would oppose. But in every one of those policy areas it was exciting to be able to talk about the future about new policies to add to those ones that have been implemented to date.Let us have a look at some of the results that we have achieved over the last 5 years in regard to those key policy areas. There is 3 percent annual growth. That provides our country with a huge future for children like mine aged 17 15 and 13 who are looking to get into tertiary education and to go forward. An economy now with 3 percent growth going forward is absolutely fantastic.On top of that we are also going to set a pathway to return to surplus. It is wonderful to see the Labour spokesman on finance supporting that and actually predicting that we were going to do better than we ourselves thought. I have got to say that that was actually really good—a fantastic situation. Returning to surplus getting our accounts back in order—a great thing. It is also good to see the IMF endorsement of the way we are tracking. The accounts are in a good position moving forward.Business confidence is strong consumer confidence is really high and immigration has turned round from where we saw it. Net positive migration—in September alone an additional 2700 people moved to New Zealand. More people are arriving than departing. That is positive.But what is best of all is that we are seeing the trend of unemployment continuing to fall. This time last year unemployment was 7.2 percent. It got down to 6.4 percent and just in the September quarter it was down to 6.2 percent. We have still got work to do; I accept that. But if we see that trend in economic growth continuing that 2 to 3 percent—it is one of the best economies in the Western World—then I predict that next year we will see that unemployment number go down to the 5 percent range. So that is absolutely fantastic.Put that together with the new ideas that we were creating at Premier House last Friday and put that together with the rejuvenation of our caucus strong new faces coming in with fresh positive ideas—what that presents is a party that is going into thenext election with a spring in its step. Compare that with the Opposition—a bunch of dead wood politicians with dead wood policies going nowhere and offering no future in any capacity to New Zealand. If I was the Leader of the Opposition I would be worried with the polls going nowhere north anytime soon and with a caucus full of dead wood politicians.We understand that we are in a great position heading up to that election. It is going to be a fantastic time and I cannot wait for it. Thank you.