Robertson Grant: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 01 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19068. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central):When we were looking at the estimates for Vote Economic Development and Employment we learnt a very interesting piece of information: that to keep the wheels whirring in the mind of the Minister for Economic Development it requires 56 spin doctors—56 spin doctors. Twenty of them are devoted to Mr Joyce alone—20 of them are devoted to Mr Joyce alone making sure that the spin keeps on going. My assessment is that it took the best and the brightest of the 56 spin doctors at the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment to come up with the lines to try to explain why it was that hundreds of thousands of dollars were to be spent on the Motu Bridge only for the dynamite to come along and for it to be blown sky-high within a couple of years to build another road and another bridge across there. That is what they came up with. So here is the line. The line from Gerry Brownlee is that it was OK to build a bridge and then blow it up a couple of years later because it would deliver “instant dividends”. That was the line—56 spin doctors at the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and they came up with “instant dividends”.Well I challenge the Minister for Economic Development to tell me in the Committee today whether or not he could assure New Zealanders that the instant dividends made up for the hundreds of thousands of dollars that have been spent on the “Bridge to Obsolescence”—the Motu Bridge. He cannot guarantee that because it is a terrible terrible mess that the National Party has made trying to indulge in a bit of election year pork-barrel politics and bringing up these ideas that remember had been rejected by the Government. The Government had sent them away. It had said: “No that’s not part of it.” But it comes back to New Zealanders and says this is the regional economic plan. This is the turbocharging of the regions: a bridge that has already been built and that Meng Foon the Mayor of Gisborne said was pouring money down the drain. Steven Joyce challenged me on that quote today. It is right there in black and white from Meng Foon—pouring money down the drain.Bear in mind that this is the hallmark of this Government’s approach to regional economic development. This decision about a bridge to be blown up and replaced by another bridge came in the middle of a consultation process between the New Zealand Transport Agency and the Gisborne District Council about what the important roading developments for economic development were. What is the point Minister in consulting with a region about its economic development when you come to your National Party conference and you just make the announcement anyway? That is the hallmark of this National Government when it comes to regional economic development—Hon Member: Arrogant.GRANT ROBERTSON: —arrogant and out of touch. It is not actually engaging with the regions. It is wandering around claiming there are silver bullets for the economy in oil and gas: “That will be the answer. Everyone get on board every region. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t suit you.” That is not an approach to regional economic development that is going to work. An approach to regional economic development that is going to work is actually getting alongside regions and industries to help them grow sustainable jobs. That is the Labour Party’s plan in regional economic development. We have already put out our economic upgrade and it is based around the three i’s: innovation industry and investment. They will be the core: investing in these regions and investing in those industries to make sure they can thrive.We have already talked about forestry. Forestry is a good example of where this Government has taken its eye off the ball. There have been hundreds and hundreds of job losses in the forestry sector under this Minister’s watch and there is no plan to deal with that. Forestry needs an upgrade. It needs some certainty about the development of skills. It needs the infrastructure from forestry roads. That is what the Gisborne District Council wanted to talk to the Government about: how it was going to upgrade the forestry roads. But no instead Steven Joyce knows best—Steven Joyce knows best. That is the National Government’s economic development strategy: one man who knows better than anybody else and who can dictate to regions. Well that is simply not good enough.This vote we are looking at today covers both economic development and employment. I want to mention something about employment and in particular the complacency of the National Government when it comes to unemployment in certain communities. We have this great slogan of “working for New Zealand”. Well it is not working for New Zealand when nearly a third of young Pasifika women are unemployed. It is not working for New Zealand when 75000 15 to 24-year-olds are not in education employment or training. That is the future of New Zealand. I can guarantee this to New Zealanders: the next Labour Government will make it an absolute priority that every person who leaves school is going into work or further education and training. That is our absolute cast-iron commitment and it is where this Government is letting down the next generation of New Zealanders.It is all very well to stand up in the House as Mr English and Mr Joyce do and trumpet the great economic indicators that are going to show that the economy is improving. Well it is pretty hard to argue with somebody who has made 100 job applications—like the person who came into my office the other day—and cannot get a job that the latest GDP statistics are something great for them. It is quite hard to argue with a family that is struggling to pay its bills that there is a new economic indicator that is going to be good for them. A new economic indicator will not pay a new bill for the car when it comes in and you have not got the money to pay the mechanic. That is the reality for many New Zealanders—that they are struggling to make ends meet and that wages are not keeping up with their increasing cost of living whatever statistics the Minister might want to throw around.When we look at those communities—Pasifika Māori young people and certain regions of New Zealand—this Government is not working for them. This National Government is working for its mates. It is focused on the economic indicators and not on the outcomes in the regions or the outcomes for young people across New Zealand. The Labour Party will have a comprehensive plan that we will be taking to the people of New Zealand to ensure that every young person gets those opportunities and that we encourage development in our regions.I want to pay tribute to my colleague Dr David Clark the MP for Dunedin North for the campaign that he has run on the Invermay Agricultural Centre because that sums up a major issue for this Government. It stands by and it washes its hands of the problems that are happening in the regions. For Dunedin and for Otago that region has been struggling with a loss of manufacturing capability. That is another result of the Government taking its eye off the ball when it comes to procurement policy. So jobs went at Hillside and the economy in the Otago region has struggled and those jobs have been lost. But the one thing that those people in the Otago region said to me when I went down there was that they have got that commitment around research—they have got the university. They can leverage off that; that is where a Crown research institute comes in. Steven Joyce sits there and lets the jobs at Invermay disappear despite the fact that all the evidence shows that that kind of work will flourish and the New Zealand economy will flourish with the kind of work taking place at Invermay. We need proper regional development that builds on the strengths of regions like Otago and builds on something like the Invermay programme.Instead what we have from the National Government is a belief that the recovery from the earthquake in Christchurch is enough to sustain those statistics. It looks good. Unemployment is down in the South Island says Mr Joyce. Well of course it is because we are recovering from one of the largest disasters of all time but that is not a sustainable economic development plan. A sustainable economic development plan should be about creating good and decent jobs right across New Zealand by working with industries like forestry like manufacturing and like information and communications technology to help create those jobs. The Government must be a partner in that not a bystander and not sitting there coming up with silly pork-barrel politics 3 months out from an election to try to make itself feel better. That is not an economic plan.In these estimates we went looking for the National Government’s plan. Steven Joyce will get up in a moment and he will talk about the nice glossy document that he has. Well Mr Joyce it is not good enough. The people in the regions of New Zealand are not impressed by a glossy Business Growth Agenda document. What they are looking for is the commitment of the party in Government to help create jobs to be a partner in their community to support the industries that need support and to provide infrastructure that will actually add to jobs—not to come up with silly roading projects.This particular piece of the estimates Vote Economic Development and Employment is a huge huge disappointment. It does not address the issue of creating jobs. This complacent Government leaves 75000 young people not in work employment or training and more than 157000 people out of work. New Zealand needs a Government with a policy for full employment and that is the Labour Party’s policy. John Key thinks it is too difficult to get to. He says we will have to wait for 4 percent further down the track. That is not good enough. If New Zealanders can work they should be able to work. We need to ensure that we are providing the skills and the training to give people the opportunity to take up jobs in the new economy. We have not seen that from this Government; we will see that from a Labour Government.