Goff Phil: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 11 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15786. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): I have spent the afternoon in the House listening carefully to the speeches made by the Government members and what actually surprised me more than I thought it would was the sheer arrogance and out-of-touch nature of what they have been saying. You know this is a Government that is so out of touch that when two-thirds of New Zealanders vote in a referendum to say that the Government’s policy is wrong the Prime Minister gives them a two-fingered salute. That is how arrogant the Prime Minister is. He totally ignores the clearly expressed views of New Zealanders on the question of asset sales. New Zealanders do not want to see their country asset-stripped. They do not want to see the assets the institutions that were owned by all of us as New Zealanders now being owned by 1 percent of New Zealanders and a whole lot of foreign investors and that is what is happening.Then they consider the Prime Minister on another set of recommendations from the Electoral Commission. The Electoral Commission is an independent body. It made recommendations that included that there should be no more coat-tailing—an MP who wins an electorate seat being able to bring a whole lot of other MPs in with them even though the MP’s party does not get to the threshold level of 5 percent. It was the Electoral Commission that made that recommendation yet this National Party relies on two discredited members of Parliament one facing electoral charges before the court; the other who deliberately leaked a document contrary to the ministerial oath that he took to preserve the confidentiality of the Executive Council. And National wants them back. It wants them back despite the fact that the public does not want them. That is arrogance; that is out of touch.But what is also out of touch is that I have not heard a word from the National Government on the sorts of issues that I hear my kids my family my electorate and my friends talking about and that actually worry them. You know when you consider it I come—and you come Mr Assistant Speaker—from a very lucky generation. Our fathers went to war. They went through a Depression. They did not get a chance for an education but by God they worked hard to give their kids a chance. They really worked hard to do that. Their goal with the helping hand of the State was to enable their kids to achieve the Kiwi dream. What was the Kiwi dream? The Kiwi dream was that everyone had opportunity—not just a lucky few but everyone had opportunity. I and my benchmate here David Shearer went to a school called Papatoetoe High School a public school just down the road from King’s College. We got an education that was the equal of a private school education. It gave us kids from a working-class background a chance to go forward.We had a health system that meant that when we were young my parents never took out health insurance for us because the health system was there when we needed it. You could get a prescription. You could get in to the doctor. You could afford that. You could get into hospital. Of course we had the aspiration that we wanted to own our ownhomes. That is part of the Kiwi dream. At 23 or 24 I was able to buy my own home. It was fantastic. When I look at my kids two of them—the two boys—have now got a home of their own. They could not buy in Mount Roskill. Why not Mount Roskill? It is a working-class suburb. Yeah like hell it is! The median price of a property is $650000. You know they are on good wages. They are tradesmen. They work hard for their living. They got their skills they do their overtime and they were looking at paying seven or eight times their annual income for a house. For my generation—I paid two and a half times my annual income; I could realise the Kiwi dream.In each of these cases the State was there to give us a helping hand. We did not rely on it. It was not dependency but if you wanted to get into your own home your parents might get a loan from the State Advances Corporation at 3 percent or they could capitalise their family benefit. You could realise that dream. Eighty percent of Aucklanders could realise that dream; now it is barely touching 60 percent. More people are being locked into renting because the Government does not care about those who are struggling to get ahead and who are working hard to get ahead. In fact it is going backwards.We have heard all the fine words from the Government and from Maurice Williamson. We did not hear anything about the fact that in the last 5 years New Zealand educational standards compared with other countries in the world have gone backwards. What is this Government’s answer? It is to give charter schools five times the payment per student that it gives public schools—the charter schools. It is not interested in public education and strengthening it; it is not interested in the majority of New Zealand kids but it will give the big handouts to the private schools and to the charter schools. That is not the answer.I worry about my kids. I worry about their generation because they are going to have to meet the cost of us baby boomers going into retirement and there are a whole lot of us. When dad came back from the war you know he wanted what he had missed out on for 5 years. He decided to have his family and to expand his family—and good luck to him—and thousands of other New Zealand men did the same thing. But we are all retiring at the same time. My kids who will not be able to retire at 65 will be supporting me for a very long time. My dad turns 93 the week after next. He has been retired for 33 years. He knows and my kids know that that sort of policy is unsustainable and that we have no intergenerational equity.What I think Labour did that was a really good idea was to give a helping hand to those having families. None of my kids have kids yet. How can they have babies of their own when both incomes are going to pay off the mortgage? So Labour comes along in a family-friendly way and says that OK instead of the mum having to go back to work and put the kid in a creche when the baby is only a few weeks old she will have the opportunity to have paid parental leave for 6 months. What a great idea—help thousands of New Zealanders and encourage our kids to have kids of their own because they can afford it and it can give them the chance and the opportunity that they need. What is wrong with giving that benefit of $60 a week to the families that are middle income as well as to low-income families for the first year and then targeting the lower-income families to help them with those basic costs—the napkins and the food? It just gives them a helping hand. Mum and Dad got six bucks a week from the Government way back in the 1950s. That is at least $60 now. This is not generous; this is just acknowledging that having kids is expensive so you give people a helping hand. That is what the community is about. That is what the State is about.Those are the positive things. We can create a really good New Zealand. You know I am in this place because New Zealand gave me a chance. I want to see our kids in thenext generation get the same chances that you and I did. That is what we should be here for but it is not happening.I just want to finish by talking about the Prime Minister’s trip to Australia last week. There were two big issues on the agenda. One was that the monopoly supermarket system in Australia of Coles and Woolworths which together control 80 percent of the retail trade are not selling New Zealand products as part of their home brand simply because they are made in New Zealand. They are banning New Zealand - made products. You know Mr Assistant Speaker you and I can remember that 30 years ago we brought in Closer Economic Relations. What does Closer Economic Relations say? Well I have got the agreement here in my hand. It says that it is about eliminating “barriers to trade between Australia and New Zealand”. That is article 1(c). It is about developing trade between New Zealand and Australia under conditions “of fair competition”.The Aussie supermarkets have done what our Government wanted the opposite of. They have put up new barriers—not tariff barriers not quota barriers but behind-the-border barriers—that stop our producers selling their goods in Australian supermarkets. John Key said that he does not think that that is against CER. Of course it is against CER. CER was explicitly about gaining entry and about fair competition. I wanted to see my Prime Minister go across to Australia and stand up for the rights of New Zealanders. Instead I saw on television that Tony Abbott stroked him like a cat—stroked him like a cat. He flattered him and in return the Prime Minister behaved like a pussy a wimp. He did not stand up for New Zealanders. He forgot one thing: the only thing the cat gets is to swallow dead rats. That is what New Zealand has had to swallow because John Key did not stand up for the rights of New Zealanders.There is another set of New Zealanders. It is the 300000 that he has chased to Australia because they could not get opportunities here. The Australian Government last year passed the National Disability Insurance Scheme and every New Zealander paying tax in Australia is levied specifically to pay for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. That is fair enough. There is one thing wrong. They pay the levy but they are not entitled to the benefits. It is like you Mr Assistant Speaker paying your premium to an insurance company but not being able to claim when you need help. How can that be fair and why did John Key not stand up for the rights of New Zealanders? That is not too much to expect from our Prime Minister. He failed and he has failed to do the right thing by this country here and abroad.