Prasad Rajen: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Prasad Rajen: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Advance Copy - Subject to minor change before inclusion in Bound Volume.] 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker and likewise to you. The battle-lines for the upcoming November general election could not be clearer after the speeches yesterday from the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. Mr Key’s Government is asking the country to trust it while it plans to sell assets already owned by New Zealanders to private investors and corporates. As sure as night follows day that plan will result in overseas ownership in a relatively short period of time. That is a fact and in their speeches members opposite have not excised that fact from the debate at all. Overseas ownership will happen and it seems that the other side knows it and is quite happy with it. 
National Governments have always been keen on hocking off assets rather than creating them. When National did try to create some assets once under Think Big— 
Shane Ardern 
: Most of them were sold under Labour. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: The member’s own electorate had some benefits out of it. Think Big felt flat on its face except for one or two successes. Most of its projects were unsuccessful and it took years for that debt to be paid off. 
The Government is asking the country to trust it when it guts early childhood education. It believes that costs have increased so much that the level of support provided is now unsustainable. That is what members opposite have been saying. The Government is not telling New Zealanders under what conditions the subsidies will be increased. Maybe the next speaker might take up this matter. When will it be OK for us to support our families with children whose parents have to work and require early childhood education and childcare for their children? When will that happen? The Government is not telling New Zealanders what level of support is acceptable for working parents with young children requiring care. Maybe the next speaker will tell us that. All the Government is telling New Zealanders is that what was available under Labour is now unaffordable so it will cut it. That is what the Government members opposite are telling us. 
The Government is asking the country to trust it when it scraps home help for thousands of elderly people. What a mean-spirited Government. Does it really care about these people? For hundreds of them thousands of them that little bit of care and assistance that made life bearable has been cut. The Government has denied victims of sexual assault access to counselling and it has dumped thousands of people from access to surgical procedures under the accident compensation scheme. The Government is asking us to trust it when it makes those kinds of cuts. 
The Government is asking New Zealanders to trust it when it cuts over $50 million from industry training and uses it to fund the shortfall in university places. The Government effectively has no plans for upskilling New Zealand’s workforce because it has dumped the $180 million skills training strategy developed by industry and institutions together. They should be at the table. They are the workers. They developed it; they agreed on it. It was funded by the previous Government. That was not good enough for the anti-worker Government opposite so it cut it. National should be ashamed that half of all Maori and Pacific teenaged girls leaving school are unemployed and not in further education or training and the same is true for more than a third of the boys. 
Shane Ardern 
: How could that happen after 9 years of Labour? 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: Well what is the answer from members opposite? New Zealand has seen previously what happens when the Government is prepared to write off a generation of young people. National has done this before while in Government. It is not concerned about young people migrating from underachievement to unemployment and to crime. Those members talked about crime a lot in the election campaign but when there is an opportunity to actually ensure that the bedrock assistance required by our young people and our children is there they are not interested. When National cut assistance from a previous generation of youth it took a long time for those young people to recover and many never recovered and we may still be reaping the downside of that. The fact we are revisiting those risks on the present generation of young people beggars belief. 
Sometimes it feels like this Government is playing a game. This is most evident in health. Day after day when questions are asked and the answers are given it is a game. The Government has presented its targets for elective surgical procedures emergency department waiting lists and cancer treatment times as progress when in many cases this progress is absolutely manufactured. What happens is cuts are made in one area of the hospital and the resource is moved to another area to increase performance there and the Government says: “Look how well we have done.” But the Government is not intellectually honest enough to show us the full picture. No that would be too difficult. After National’s 2¼ years in Government people are beginning to suspect that it has no plans for increasing the workforce to address these issues and it is becoming very very hard to trust. Why should people believe this Government which already has a track record of a long and growing list of broken promises? 
Many will remember that State services were not going to be cut. John Key said that he would cap the number of State servants but it has already been cut. In the next period National intends to drive it down further. Now all of a sudden the Public Service has become bloated inefficient etc. etc. Well National has cut it before and subsequent Labour Governments have had to rebuild the Public Service. National promised not to do it but that is what it will do. 
This Government promised that GST would not be increased. No matter how the Government tries to resile from that promise by circumscribing the context in which it was made no one believes the Government. Higher GST is disproportionately affecting the less well-off and those on limited incomes. That is the group that this Government does not care about. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Show some courage and promise to reverse it. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: Dr Smith has seen plenty of figures. He knows where those people are. He can talk to them in his electorate. He can go and see those who are on a limited income and ask them what the effects of the tax switch and the GST increase are and he will know. If the member keeps on talking to just the wealthy in his electorate then maybe he will not see that. 
Essentially this Government does not have a plan that the country can identify with and accept at all. Perhaps what is most alarming is that this Government does not have a heart. No one believes that the Government has an intimate understanding of the pain that many New Zealanders are feeling and that many more will feel as these cuts bite deeper. The plan that has been presented is formulaic predictable. That is what conservatives do; they do not create but cut slash and burn give tax cuts and expect the market to perform. It never performs and somebody else has to come back and fix it. 
Labour’s vision is for a society where everyone has the potential to achieve to their fullest. Labour believes in investing in people. Labour believes that it is our families who produce our workers and they must be factored into everything we do. We believe that focusing on just the economic side of the argument the investment side of the argument is not enough. It has happened before and in the end our people suffer difficulties emerge and our society is less safe in the long run. We believe in a strong economy we believe in creating jobs but we also believe in supporting our families and our communities that partner capital to develop a great society. Let the speakers from the Government side balance that equation. At the moment they are talking about just a few factors in the economic area. Labour believes that we should all contribute in a manner consistent with our means and accepts that in many cases we need to invest in our human capital to get a return as a society. Our policies will be fair. They will not ask some people to wait until good times return to get attention. We will use all our resources for all our people. 
The battle lines have been drawn; the battle will unfold this year the unbalanced approach of this Government will be exposed and we will see what happens on 26 November. Thank you.