Goff Phil: General Debate 
Goff Phil: General Debate 
[Volume:673;Page:19821] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 When Bill English became the Minister of Finance in 2008 he inherited 9 years of Budget surpluses from a Labour Government. He was so impressed that in his first speech in December 2008 he admitted to the country that the country’s books were in reasonable shape. He said there was a global financial crisis but that this was the rainy day New Zealand had been preparing for. After three Budgets each of which has run record deficits today we had the new financial statement from the Government of New Zealand—the new financial statement. It is just a couple of months since the Budget. The Budget showed us that there would be a $16.8 billion deficit and these financial statements tell us that the gross debt will get worse by over $3 billion I say to Mr English. Gross debt is worse now since the Budget and it is going to be worse by a further $3 billion and we know that the deficit will be $20 billion higher than at this time last year. 
What frightens me and any New Zealander who is interested and concerned about the future of his or her country is that there is no plan to tackle that debt problem. Mr English is a Minister who borrows and hopes because there is no plan unless of course we count the flogging off of New Zealand assets overseas. That is really going to help! I looked at the Budget document because I thought that if we were selling our most valuable assets surely it would show that over time our debt problem would get better not worse. What does this Budget statement produced by Mr English actually show the country? It shows the country that in 5 years’ time the trend of our debt is not to get better; our net debt will double over the next 5 years. In the next 5 years Mr English’s achievement will be to double New Zealand’s debt. 
Where is the plan? I am not the only one asking that question because Jenni McManus in one of the Saturday newspapers wrote an article after interviewing the 40 top business leaders in this country—the natural constituency for the National Government right of centre. What did they say? They said overwhelmingly that they had “no confidence that the Government had a clear economic strategy or vision to guide its policy-making.” That is the judgment of 40 top industry leaders. What else did they say? They said that this National Government has squandered its opportunities and that it has been “tinkering around the edges instead of tackling the big … issues”. I say to Mr English that when unemployment is at 40 percent among young Maori in Northland he has no plan to tackle that. I say to him that when 10000 houses need to be rebuilt in Christchurch and the number of apprenticeships is going down and the number of industry traineeships is going down there is no plan to upskill New Zealand. I say that if we want to get out of the hole that New Zealand is in by making a smart innovative economy then we increase research and development expenditure; we do not slash it like Mr Key and Mr English did in cutting the research and development tax credits that were so valuable for the future of this country. 
Those industry leaders are right: there is no plan. It is not a plan when New Zealanders are faced with a rising cost of living to increase that further with a GST increase that the Government promised never to introduce and then give tax cuts to the most wealthy people in this country while low and middle income people did not get enough to meet the increased cost of living. That is not a plan to improve the situation of New Zealanders. It is not a plan to increase the well-being of our economy by selling off assets that are more valuable to keep in terms of their dividends for New Zealanders than they are to flog off to foreigners. It is not a plan I say to Mr English to sell off New Zealand farmland increasingly to overseas buyers. When we see another $33 million worth of land in Dipton being flogged off to German investors I ask Mr English where his plan is for New Zealand to own its future.