Parker David: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Parker David: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 18 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:7778. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to speak in the general debate. According to the National Party this is just about a happy anniversary of 1 year in Government. The speech that we just heard from the Hon Phil Heatley had no substance. It was Crosby/Textor slogans. What did he say? He said “rolling maul” and “avoiding the sharp edges of recession” and he gave no policy of substance. He did not defend the Government’s programme on amendments to the emissions trading scheme and he did not speak to the controversies around the accident compensation system because he has no answers to the criticisms that are being made. 
We have heard in this House this year exaggeration after exaggeration from Dr Nick Smith. He came to this House and told everyone initially that the accident compensation scheme was insolvent using a new measure of insolvency under which the scheme would have been insolvent since the first day it was formed. He has scaremongered up and down the country. He had the newspapers reporting that everyone’s car registration fees would go up $133 per annum; then he said they would go up by $30. Now $30 is bad enough but we have to ask ourselves why the Minister exaggerated more than fourfold. It was because he was trying to present the scheme as fundamentally broken when people know it is not. He is trying to do that because it is the only way he can justify privatisation and moving away from the no-fault liability principles that lie under the scheme. He has been seen through. 
Yesterday 6000 bikers came to Parliament. They turned up and heard Dr Nick Smith. They gave him a hearing and at the end of it they were unimpressed by his flimflam. They said as my deputy leader has said “Belgian Blue manure Belgian Blue manure”—I use a euphemism for the Speaker’s benefit. So the bikers have not been taken in. He had hoped that by proposing such outrageously unfair levy increases for bikers they would say the scheme is so stuffed that they want it privatised. But they did not fall for the bait. They turned up and took a principled approach. They said that no it was not fundamentally broken and no its principles were right. 
Hon Annette King 
: Who’s next? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: They also asked who is next. They asked if the Government is picking off bikers now who will be next. The accident compensation debacle has been a shambles for the Government. It is turning against the Government and we can already see the Government turning back from some of its rhetoric. We can see that Mr Joyce is being brought in to help Nick Smith who is plainly failing in the portfolio. Mr Joyce is being rolled into the negotiations and the Government is softening its language saying to people that it might not be that bad and that we do not need levy increases at that high level. 
But an even more outrageous thing Dr Smith is doing at the moment is in amendments to the emissions trading scheme which will land $110 billion of extra debt on future generations. Treasury says that by 2050 that is what the debt figure will be. What do the Prime Minister and Dr Smith say in response? They write off Treasury as “irrelevant”. What a nonsense! In Treasury’s own regulatory impact statement it warned the National Government that it was rushing the process and that Treasury’s analysis was incomplete. 
It is not just Treasury. It is also the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment business groups environmental groups and the Ministry of Economic Development. In the Treasury paper under which Cabinet agreed to the changes the Ministry of Economic Development also put up its hand and said the changes to the rate of free allocation for major emitters was wrong. It results in massive subsidies from taxpayers to major polluters and debt goes up in a way that is plainly unsustainable for New Zealand in the long term. This visits costs on future generations and it makes a mockery of the Government’s own policy position about New Zealand’s long-term fiscal statement which was released just last month and does not take into account that $110 billion of extra Government debt— 
Hon Annette King 
: $110 billion? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: That $110 billion of extra Government debt occurs as a consequence of this one decision alone. 
Charles Chauvel 
: Fiscally irresponsible. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: It is just fiscally irresponsible. It really is back to the days of Muldoon with a rising debt trap. Muldoon did it through supplementary minimum prices. Dr Smith Mr Key and his Government are doing it through emissions pricing through subsidies from taxpayers to major emitters which are worth more than $100000 per worker per year in the case of some of the subsidies going to major emitters. There is long-term wealth destruction in New Zealand when we see this artificial lift in land prices.