Bennett David: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBennett David: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 13 April 2016. Volume:713;Page:10480. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID BENNETT (Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee): It gives me great pleasure to lead off this debate and these are great times to be a New Zealander. These are the best times to be a New Zealander because not only do New Zealanders have a great Government that is looking after them—a great Government that is delivering for them now—but they have a Government that is setting them up for the future and building a strong prosperous country that is connected open free and in a very strong economic and social position for our people to enjoy the best times to be New Zealanders in this century of New Zealand and the Asia region. New Zealand will do extremely well in the future and these financial statements we are looking at today are the basis of the strength that this Government has delivered for New Zealand.Not only have we delivered a surplus to this country—a surplus in the most difficult of economic times—but also we have delivered strong economic growth for New Zealanders. Jobs are aplenty. New Zealanders are finding work. New industries are being created just as we speak. Our ICT sector is growing compoundly. We are seeing big growth in our exports of fruit vegetables and other products like that. New Zealand is in good shape and that is shown in the financial statements of this country when we look at them and when we looked at them in the Finance and Expenditure Committee. New Zealanders know that they are enjoying low interest rates. They know that they are enjoying the sound economic management that this Government has delivered and that is giving New Zealanders choice. They are seeing the options that are in front of them they are making choices about their future and they are looking to this country with a positive and strong opinion of its future.Other people are coming to New Zealand to make it their home as well. They are seeing the advantages of this country and its stable economic management its social strength in the way that we look after people and provide education and health services and our interconnected and open approach to life. Those are the things that you will hear from this side of the Chamber during this debate. We will talk about a strong Government that is delivering for New Zealanders about a Government that is focused on the economic matters that challenge our country and the world at this time and about a Government that also has a heart and is looking after the social connections that our country needs in making the reforms through our Government. We have seen just recently in the Child Youth and Family space how those reforms have been promoted and how they have been supported by our countrymen and women. They understand that this is a Government that is doing things and doing things for the success of our country going forward.Today we saw another example of that with small businesses. The initiatives in that area show a Government that is doing good things for the country going forward and a Government that has delivered. On the other side the members of the Opposition will talk about envy. They will try to make a lot of accusations and build up all these cases for some kind of conspiracy theories which will see them harking back to their past as conspiracy party theorists. That is all they have—that is all they have. They have no economic policy. They have no theory that New Zealanders would support. But when they do come out with theories and things that they want to do—let us have a look at some of the things that the Labour Party would like to do like setting interest rates. It is setting interest rates from the Labour Party leader’s chair. Setting interest rates is one of those things that is not possible for one individual in a political party to do in a modern economic environment and no political party worth its salt anywhere in the world would agree to doing that.We see that members of the Green Party want to build a communal bank out of Kiwibank and take it to the next level you could say with their $100 million contribution. That will be quite ineffective as well and we will see no policy from the Green Party other than more envy more anger and more frustration at being in Opposition for the whole time that it has ever been in this Parliament.From the New Zealand First Party we are going to hear how there should be no migrants to New Zealand. Those members will undervalue those people who have made New Zealand home. They will talk about conspiracy theories because that is all that their leader knows and that is the approach that they take to New Zealand—an approach of failure.