Groser Tim: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Groser Tim: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:645;Page:14213] 
TIM GROSER (National) 
: 
 I rise to support John Key’s no-confidence motion. In justifying the no-confidence motion I wish to focus on several words within it particularly the words “tired and bereft of ideas”. It has been quite a nice summer except for those unfortunate citizens who have been caught up in certain parts of rural New Zealand suffering from the drought. For those of us who have not had to experience that personally I think we would have to say that it has been a very pleasant summer. 
One of the pleasant things about the last 8 weeks is that we have been spared being told how grateful we should be for having a Labour Government in place and that this is as good as it will ever get. But today we were told it will get better because all those dullard blue-collar workers are going to Australia. So it will improve further. For 8 weeks we have been spared the normal Labour Party view. 
I will say this about the Government: it is nothing if not consistent. It is consistent fundamentally because of the point I opened with: after 8½ years it is totally bereft of new ideas. Watching this Government is a little like watching a soap opera. With most soap operas—even good soap operas—one has to watch quite attentively at the beginning to pick up on the rhythm themes and underlying plot but after a while one can actually tune in about once every 2 months without any loss of comprehension about what has gone on in the process. We have a Government that is like a soap opera that frankly needs to be turned off. Yes there are bewildering character changes but that does not change very much. In the last 8 years there has been a massive number of new Ministers. 
We have talked about the issue of housing in this debate on the Prime Minister’s statement. By our calculations this is the 10th Minister of Housing in the life of this Government. There is probably more prospect of peace breaking out in the Middle East during the life of this parliamentary session than of Maryan Street our latest and 10th Minister of Housing getting on top of the issue of housing affordability but we wish her luck. We certainly hope she will do a little better than her nine predecessors. 
 I will get back to the plot. Labour members have absolutely nothing new to say. What they say involves constantly repackaging existing proposals some of which have been out there since the dawn of time. Yesterday the Prime Minister set some stellar records here. As our justice spokesperson pointed out in a press statement today the Prime Minister proposed a charter of victims’ rights back in 1994—14 years ago. 
This Government is obviously responding to the political reality that there is deep concern out there in the New Zealand community about the issue of violence and about the lack of balance for victims’ rights. So once again we get the regurgitated proposal that the Government will fix it. But we come back to the question that John Key put down and it is the central question: why would anyone in this country believe that a Government that has had 8½ years to address these problems can now be entrusted with the confidence of New Zealanders to solve the problems it has evaded for 8½ years? That on issue after issue is the central question facing the New Zealand electorate. 
I come back to housing. The grateful nation was told by the Prime Minister that there will be a shared equity scheme. That is great; we will have a shared equity scheme. The only problem is we think—I do not want to be categorical about this—that this is the 12th time we have been offered a shared equity scheme. It is like a political version of the children’s game pass the parcel except that every time one Minister gets shoved out and a new Minister—in this case the Minister for Building and Construction—gets put in instead of unwrapping the parcel the Minister is asked to put some new packaging around it put a nice new political bow around it and pass it on. There is nothing inside the box but eventually the Minister will pass the box on to his or her successor who will go through the same old ritual again. 
From time to time we have to recognise that a new idea may actually be required to fix a political problem—to scratch a political itch. I am not going to blow National’s research at this point but the National Party is accumulating a large list of ideas that we have seen taken over in exactly those political circumstances. I will give members just one example tonight. It is of course the concept of turbocharging the voluntary sector. 
We had a situation in which the Government up to 2007—I am talking now about John Key’s first state of the nation speech 12 months ago—had consistently ignored the fact that there was a growing underclass and that the Government’s delivery mechanisms were not producing the goods. One spectacular example of this is the fact that 54 percent of Maori boys after years in the compulsory education system are emerging with no qualifications whatsoever. So National put on the table a policy of turbocharging the voluntary sector and 12 months later out it pops in the Prime Minister’s voice. 
I was intrigued by the previous Labour speaker who spoke about the rewriting of history. It reminded me of an old concept that was said about the royal house of the Bourbons who were said according to historical legend to imagine the past and remember the future. I really think that describes the underlying attitude of this Government—this political soap opera if you will. In its most extreme form there is Mr Anderton. In its most extreme form it involves an imaginary version of New Zealand’s economic history over the last 15 years—and it does not even meet the test of chronology—but we all know that from about 1991 the following things happened. 
First the rate of economic growth in New Zealand tripled. In the last 3 years of the 1990s the rate of labour productivity growth averaged 3.5 percent. That is a stellar rate. That is productivity not economic growth. Economic growth in 1999 was 4.3 percent. Labour productivity growth—[ 
Interruption 
] They do not want to hear the facts. They are still imaging the past and remembering the future—that is the reality. They do not want to hear the facts because the facts get in the way of the fictional vacuum that those members have built around themselves. But the facts are that in those last 3 years of the 1990s the rate of growth of labour productivity averaged 3.5 percent. If we were able as a country to sustain that rate of productivity growth wages in this country would indeed catch up with Australia’s and the growth rates would indeed catch up with those in the top half of the OECD within about a decade and a half. 
Had this Government understood that there was so much wind in the sails of the New Zealand economy and if it had actually kept the process moving forward this country would be moving places and taking its rightful place back inside the top half of the OECD and we would not be losing 75000 New Zealanders to add to the approximately one million New Zealanders in the diaspora—the greatest diaspora of the developed world—that we are suffering from today. We would not be suffering from the fact that 80 percent—four out of five—of the New Zealanders who are leaving are under the age of 40. They are the people on whose shoulders the future of this country should have depended. Had Labour members not imagined the past and started to remember the future they would have understood the historical responsibility to carry on that process instead of going back to soft-core populist policies that have undercut that amazing potential for growth. That is in fact the reality and people do realise that. 
Let me now pass to the other side of that phrase—the “remembering the future” side. The Prime Minister announced yesterday that New Zealand is recognised as a leading nation in stepping up to the sustainability challenge. That is a very intriguing proposition. We know that the United Nations Environment Programme has even given her an award. Actually what this really tells us is more about the United Nations framework which has an enormous capacity and preference for rhetoric over substance.