Barker Rick: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Barker Rick: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:645;Page:14152] 
Hon RICK BARKER (Minister of Internal Affairs) 
: 
 I see that the National Party is suffering from a similar problem to that of many of the overseas shows being produced in the United States: it obviously has a writers’ strike on. It has only one writer who has written the same speech for all of the National members and they have just mucked around with a few of the words. They are so stressed and pressured that the only thing they can start their speeches off with is the motion moved by John Key. That takes about 5 minutes of their speech but then they have about 5 minutes more which they have to make up by using the other lines. They go on about the issues that matter—that is what they talk about—and about how Labour has abrogated its responsibilities. 
Let us take the National members’ own rhetoric for what it should be and examine the issues that matter. What could be more important to New Zealanders of working age than having a job? That is fundamental. When I came to Parliament in 1993 160000-plus people were unemployed. That was the National Government’s legacy. National had gone through this country and had slashed and burned and that had caused mayhem and chaos not just to individuals but to families and communities. Lianne Dalziel made a fabulous point when she spoke tonight about the depressed state of her area of Aranui. We could multiply that across New Zealand. I could talk about Flaxmere and other members could talk about many other communities that were devastated by the National Government which brought in the Employment Contracts Act cut Government services cut Government spending cut benefits and pushed up State house rentals all of which impoverished individuals impoverished families and impoverished communities. 
At the end of the 1990s New Zealand was a desolate country. Kids had no opportunity to get a job. Parents were turning up at my office and asking what their kids were going to do for employment in the future. Young people were going to university because they saw that as the only option to going on the dole. They were getting themselves university qualifications at ever-increasing fee rates. They had to pay interest on all those costs and when many of them came out of university they had to take on jobs—if they could—such as taxi driving and so on which were well below their skill level. New Zealand was depressed. 
The Labour-led Government took those issues very very seriously and what have we seen? We have seen the number of people on the unemployment benefit drop from 160000 to below 20000. We have seen young people get apprenticeships again. When I left school in the 1970s young people like me were going off and getting an apprenticeship. I should have done that at the time but I did not. Then through the 1990s how many kids did we have in apprenticeships? Almost zero because the National Government abolished the Apprenticeship Act. What do we see now in New Zealand? We see young people leaving school getting themselves a trade and a skill and getting themselves a future. That is what the Labour-led Government has done. 
Let us talk about something else that is really important. Let us talk about families. National got stuck into New Zealand families in a way that was unbelievable. By pushing up State house rentals to the level of market rentals and not increasing people’s incomes it impoverished families. Families were under great stress. People had high-earner stand-downs; they had long stand-down periods before they could get the dole. There were redundancies for which there were no redundancy payments and people were taxed and taxed. There was general disillusionment in families. What do we have now? We have Labour giving families tax cuts through the Working for Families package. Yes I say to Lindsay Tisch there have been tax cuts before. He has not been listening to the speeches that have said that over and over again. Lindsay Tisch and his fellow members of Parliament voted against tax cuts for working families. We have brought in the Working for Families package which has helped families enormously. 
We have helped to cut costs for families. We have for example cut doctors’ bills and prescription costs. In the 1990s young people were not receiving the health care they should have received and were entitled to receive simply because the cost of a prescription and of visiting a doctor was too great. We have fixed that. I have a personal example. I went to the doctor several months ago because I was ill. I saw the doctor went off and had a test came back and got a prescription. I paid the doctor’s bill and paid for the prescription and I had change from $20. That is what Labour did. Everybody can afford to go to a doctor and get a prescription under Labour. That was not possible under National. Under National doctors’ bills were $40 $50 and $60 a pop. No one could afford to go to the doctor without having to go to the bank manager to get a loan. National wants to take us back to that. I say to National members that they will make our day when it is time to get on the hustings because we will remind the public of all the things I have said and of all the things that National did. 
Labour is concentrating on the key things: jobs families and people. We have done an enormous amount. Yes it is fair to say there is no perfection in New Zealand yet. There is a lot more work to do. That is why New Zealanders need to elect another Labour-led Government. We have much more to do. People may think about the periods of time in which they were growing up as I do. I think about the 1970s and those early days when everybody could get a job and it was a great time—it was easy to get jobs and kids could get apprenticeships. I have to say that through most of my life I remember things being quite different from that. The 1980s and particularly the 1990s were very very difficult. 
The young people who are growing up today will have a completely different view of New Zealand from the one we had in the 1990s. They will remember being able to leave school and get a job. They will remember having the choice of not just one job but of plenty of jobs. They will remember having choices about what they wanted to do for a career. Whether they want to go to university go into training or get an apprenticeship they have options. They also know that if they are sick they can go to the doctor and get help immediately. They know that their families have had the stress and pressure taken off them by the Labour Government bringing in the Working for Families package. They know that the Government has built houses and given people affordable houses with income-related rents. They will be able to remember a very positive mood in New Zealand because this is a period of time in which New Zealand has experienced the longest most sustained period of growth since the Second World War. 
I can remember growing up in boom-and-bust times. Muldoon would open up the bank accounts the year before an election and 2 years after that we would be on rehab. The place would grind to a halt. Then there would be another cycle of it. But we have now had 8 years of sustained growth. We can do better and have longer periods of sustained growth but it requires good sensible economic management which I am pleased to say has been the hallmark of this Labour-led Government and Michael Cullen is to be congratulated on that. 
There is a lot of work to be done and there are many things to be achieved. So when we talk about aspiration and our record I can say that Labour has that in spades on both counts. We have an aspiration for this country to do better. I never thought when I came here in 1993 that I would see a period when New Zealand’s unemployment rate would be as low as it is today. I never thought I would see as much progress as I have seen in 8 years and having seen it I believe that we can do substantially better yet. There is energy and enthusiasm in this Government. We have a belief that New Zealand can do better and must do better and we want to lead that. 
For two really good examples of that energy let us just look at the announcements made by the Prime Minister today. The first was about the non-governmental organisation sector: a huge commitment of $400 million over 4 years to non-governmental organisations. It is a substantial sum of money that will make sure they have the resources and the capacity to continue to deliver services for their communities. We are also going to tackle head-on the issue of affordable housing for young people. The Prime Minister was exactly right when she said the issue is about supply and we are going to put our minds to making a difference to that. The public knows that when Helen Clark says she is going to move on an issue things will happen. The public have seen that many times. Helen Clark has a reputation for delivering on her word and she will do so on this issue—of that there can be no doubt. This Government has delivered on its word in many ways. 
I will just make a point to Lindsay Tisch about people in Australia. I say to him that it makes me mad when I hear people like him say things are very bad in New Zealand. What Lindsay Tisch needs to remember is that when his party was last in office in 1999 the minimum wage was $7 an hour. A friend of mine who lived around the corner from me in Hastings a qualified tradesman was being paid $7.30 an hour as a carpenter. Someone else who lived around the corner and worked as a truck driver was being paid $7.20 an hour to drive a $200000 rig. People in Australia were being paid $16-20 an hour for doing the same job with four weeks’ annual leave and superannuation. What has this Labour Government done? We have raised the minimum wage. We have put so much money and resources into building and construction around this country that my carpenter friend is now on $30 an hour and the guy who is a truck driver is on $22 an hour. They have 4 weeks’ annual leave and they have superannuation. 
We have made huge advances and people will remember that when they come to election time. They will remember what things were like under National in 1990 and they will remember what they are like in 2008 under Helen Clark. They will like that a great deal and they will vote I am absolutely sure for the continuation of this great Government.