Shearer David: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Shearer David: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 09 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:2086. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID SHEARER (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. A thousand New Zealanders a week are travelling across the Tasman to Australia—1000 a week. And that is despite that Government’s assurance when it came into office that that flow was going to be stemmed. Nothing has happened. In fact 1000 a week is a record for New Zealand. There have never been more people going across the Tasman to Australia and not coming back. Many of those people are our best and our brightest. The people whom we spend thousands and thousands of dollars educating are travelling to Australia to help Australia get richer. What we have in terms of hope for those people is a finance Minister from this Government delivering we hear a zero Budget. Well I can tell you a zero Budget means that there is zero more money coming. That means there is zero growth in the economy. That means there are zero more taxes coming. That means inevitably there are zero more ideas or any new ideas.  
This is a zero Government which is giving our young people zero hope which is causing them to go across to Australia. Australia has grown at about 10 times what New Zealand has grown over the course of this Government’s term in office. Two percent growth on average compared with less than 5 percent—that is what the statistics show. If you have that sort of differential inevitably—inevitably—you are going to get young people and everybody moving across from New Zealand to Australia. The result is that what we are getting back here—it has been lauded and boasted about by our finance Minister—is that we have a great place to invest in except that this great place is based on low wages. So the Australian companies that want to come into New Zealand are coming here to take advantage of our low wage rates. Inevitably what is happening is that our people are going over there for higher wage rates. And if Government members think there are not higher wage rates over there then they have got another think coming.  
The only one idea that the Government seems to have which is inculcated in this Budget is to sell our assets. Selling our assets is the only big idea that this Government has come up with. The only trouble is that nobody knows quite how big an idea it is because the Prime Minister said a year ago that it was going to be $10 billion that we were going to get back from the selling of our precious power companies. And then it was $6.6 billion. And then it was $6 billion. And then it was well a guess and not even a best guess at that. And that best guess has rubbed off on to the Minister for Social Development because she guesses around about a billion dollars might be saved from her ministry but she cannot quite tell us. So this entire Government is based on guesses. 
Not only that but our power companies return more than the cost of borrowing. They actually return more than we are going to sell them for. And what was the promise at the election? Well the promise was about the mums and dads in New Zealand—the mums and dads. Gosh that is a cutesy saying is it not? What does that really mean? It means the people who have got money to invest in shares which is not absolutely everybody but is probably the people who got the benefit from the tax cut that this Government handed out last year. The mums and dads are going to be at the front of the queue except that there is no guarantee in the legislation that they are going to be there—there is no guarantee at all. The foreign ownership would be a minority but there is no guarantee that that is going to be the case either.  
If we look at Contact Energy as one example Contact Energy is owned by foreigners to the tune of around 66 percent. So two-thirds of our Contact Energy power company is owned by foreigners but we have not got the courage to be able to say to New Zealanders—to follow through on the promise from last year to follow through on the election promise—that mums and dads are going to be at the front of the queue. So here we have it: 1000 people—1000 people—are going from New Zealand across to Australia every week in record numbers.