Williamson Maurice: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliamson Maurice: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 11 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15775. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister for Building and Construction): It is with great delight that I get to speak in support of the Prime Minister’s statement to this Parliament.Hon Simon Bridges: This could go viral.Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: This could go viral yes. What I can say to the House is that given that it is an election year I think it is worthwhile trying to nail down here once and for all what it is that voters actually use to make their decision about how they will vote. I think it is as simple as this—just two straight things. Is it: “Time for a change.” or “Do not change a winning formula.”? For nearly every election I have been involved in over many many years and before that just working as a member of the party there were times when you could see that it was time for a change that there wasa stale old Government that needed to be changed and there were other times when people said that the last thing this country could afford was to change to the alternative and therefore create mayhem again.So on that basis I am going to raise some issues along the way. The first one is for the voters of this country to try to get to understand what the other side’s policies would actually be because for the first time ever in an MMP Government if there was to be a Labour-Green coalition it would not be one enormous big party with the vast bulk of things and a couple of smaller support parties of one or two or maybe four or five; it would be Labour only fractionally bigger than the Greens and the Greens having a huge amount of say—a huge amount of say—in the coalition policy. Whether I agree with some of Labour’s views on economic policy or not is irrelevant. The fact is that you would not know whether you were getting that or not because the Greens have an off-the-planet view about what the economy should look like and how it should be run. Voters should be very afraid of putting at risk the fragile gains that have been made. And they are fragile.Let us go back to when we came into office. We came into office in 2008 with the global financial crisis just beginning to break. I accept that on “Planet Labour” the global financial crisis did not occur. Those members quite regularly get up and say “Look how much higher unemployment is under National than when we were in office.” or “Look at National having run deficits when we ran surpluses.” Well guess what! In 2008 the financial world changed. Some countries went into bankruptcy. The United States fell out of bed as did its sharemarket. We were lucky that the Western World’s economic structures stayed in place. To then say “Well look you’ve got a deficit and not a surplus like we used to.” and “You’ve got higher unemployment.” is not the question.What is so good about the general voting public of New Zealand is that they are not stupid enough to fall for stupid rhetoric like “You’ve got deficits now and we had surpluses.” In fact the vast bulk of the voters whom I talk to now are terribly terribly positive in the fact that Bill English as the finance Minister took us through some of the roughest toughest times that you could ever possibly face and did not do it with a slash-and-burn mentality of throwing out everything that was trying to keep the ship afloat. He did take up some big borrowings—and yes we have got a lot of debt on the books—but he still was very careful and very frugal about new spending and about what we did in terms of trying to get some economic growth back. So I think that the public will judge the economic situation that we are in now as a real plus for the current National-led Government. They will also know that it is terribly fragile. Even if the economic situation was very robust and guaranteed some of the extreme lunacy that would come from a Labour-Greens Government would blow it out of the water. They have got these absolutely crazy schemes. They have opposed just about every measure we have taken—in fact I put it that they have opposed every measure we have taken—to try to settle the economy down.Dr Cam Calder: And so have Labour.Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: Well I am actually talking about both lots. They have opposed the lot. I am talking about Labour the Greens and whatever other Uncle TomCobbleighthey would have to pull together to try to make the thing work. But what I find really interesting—and we have got another example today with the Trans-Pacific Partnership—is just how their institutional memory seems to have been wiped. The public will not fall for that. The public will not have a bar of it. They will not have a bar of it for example in terms of the sale of land to foreigners. Let us take that one—it is a cracker. Phil Goff has even got a member’s bill because he is so opposed—he is so opposed—to selling land to foreigners.However let us have a look at the track record. In 9 years in office Labour sold five times as much land to foreigners as we have—five times.I will give you the best year the very best year—it was 2006. This is my personal favourite. Winston Peters was foreign Minister in the Government of the day and he cannot deny that. He was foreign Minister in the Government of the day. In that one year alone the Labour Government with Mr Peters as foreign Minister in it sold 300000 hectares of land. We have not even broken 120000 hectares in our whole time in office and yet Labour is coming along with what I think the general public would say—and I cannot use the “h” word; I will go with something else—was a double standard.It is a double standard for a party that presided over the Government of this country for 9 years and sold 666000 hectares of land to foreigners to then say: “We’re opposed to selling land to foreigners and this dreadful National Government has sold just over 100000 about 120000.” They are not laughing but they should be. It should be so embarrassing that that is Labour’s policy. Then you get some more like David Cunliffe saying: “John Key came back from Australia with nothing in his hand and didn’t get the rights for New Zealand residents over there—didn’t get them.” What he should have said was that it was the former Labour leader the former Labour Prime Minister who signed away on that when she went over there. Oh no not a mutter not a murmur not a whisper on that one. What sort of a double standard is that?If I had done something and then some years later claimed that it was wrong for the person who did it and it turned out it was me I would be so red in the face it would not be funny. Mr Goff is rabbiting on about something else. How about the free-trade agreement negotiations with China? They were kept under wraps for very good reason until they were finalised. It is the same with the Trans-Pacific Partnership right now. They were kept under wraps for very very good reason—because they are in negotiation.It is a little bit like asking: “How much did you pay for your house?”. Well I would be happy to tell people what I paid for my house once I had signed the deal and the bank stuff had gone through and the mortgage had been set up. But I would not be telling anybody what I was currently negotiating with the seller of it because I would be hoping to get a little bit more here or get them to leave the chattels in here or put in some furniture and of course negotiations are normally always confidential. But again it is to do with double standards. If everything Labour did when it was in office was transparent Labour members would have every right to come to this House today and say: “That Government over there isn’t transparent it doesn’t tell us and we always did.” But the bizarre reality of it is that they do not.So here is my last bit of advice to Labour. I should not be giving Labour advice but I will. The voters of this country actually make a decision based on the things they talk about at the breakfast table—not the sideshows and the bizarre stuff about Kim Dotcom or who leaked what or whatever. There is not a single family that sits at the breakfast table and says: “What do you think about the secrecy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership document?”. They do not. What they do is they get up and say: “Will I still have a job? Will our income pay the bills? Will my kids be getting a good standard of education?”. In the case of every one of those headline elements that matters—in the case of every one—this National Government has delivered fantastic outcomes be it the lowest crime rate in 30 years be it a surplus coming in the Budget or be it a number of things like standards in education and the national standards which are giving parents some good information. Every one of the things that parents talk about at the breakfast table with their families every one of the things that matter to them is heading in the rightdirection. The general view of the public will be that we cannot afford to put this at risk while we have got the lunatics wanting to take over running the asylum. That is it.