Parker David: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Parker David: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Advance Copy - Subject to minor change before inclusion in Bound Volume.] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 Revisionist— 
Hon Bill English 
: Apologise! 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Well “Apologise!” says Mr English having criticised the election result of the Labour Party at the last election. He seems to conveniently forget that in 2002 he presided over the worst defeat ever—worst defeat ever—of the National Party. What did he get? Twenty-one percent! But of course he is not very good with figures this Minister of Finance because he overlooks that. He overlooks that.  
Similarly Mr Bennett’s contribution to the debate was to say: “Be thankful we’re not Greece.” It is a similar line to that run by Mr English. He says we are not as badly off as Greece. Well why is New Zealand not as badly off as Greece? Because the last Labour Government ran surpluses every one of which was opposed by Mr English when he was Leader of the Opposition by Mr Key when he was Opposition spokesperson on finance and by Mr Brash. All of them opposed the surpluses of the Labour-led Government which were supported by New Zealand First and the Greens and at one stage the United Future party. Those surpluses were all opposed by National.  
Mr English you even forget the comments that you made shortly after the 2008 election when you had the good grace to concede that “This is the rainy day that Government has been saving up for.” because your Government—sorry the National Government—inherited amongst the lowest government debt in the Western World. In fact net debt was zero. Net debt was zero. Gross debt was 17 percent. Even after all of the problems of the earthquake and the global financial crisis New Zealand should be back in surplus in 2014-15. It should be and I think we will be or close to it. Even National cannot so mismanage our affairs that we do not get back to surplus by then.  
Even then New Zealand’s government debt will be amongst the lowest in the developed world. But we still will not have cured our fundamental problems which relate to imbalances in the economy. Mr English talks a good game when it comes to rebalancing the economy but he has not done it; he will not pull the levers that are open to him to cause the economy to change. That is clear from the Government’s own projections. The current account deficit goes up every year. Far from having cured this deficit being the difference between the cost of our imports and our interest bill and the value of our exports it gets worse from here. Treasury says that by 2016 New Zealand’s deficit will be out to 6.9 percent of GDP and by then New Zealand will have added $50 billion worth of overseas debt mainly private debt—$50 billion extra of debt. That is the reason why we were downgraded last year. It was misrepresented by the Prime Minister at the time as the ratings agencies saying it would have been worse under Labour. Subsequently that was denied by the ratings agencies. They downgraded New Zealand because of private debt in the main not government debt. Private debt gets worse every year from here on because it keeps growing under an unbalanced economy that this Government failed to change.  
These phoney promises are backed by no plan. In response to the fact that the Government was hurting because it did not have a plan it came up with this hare-brained scheme to sell off our State-owned enterprises which makes the Government deficit worse. It makes the Government deficit worse to the tune of $94 million per annum. We are around $100 million a year worse off because of course the interest saved is less than the profits and dividends forgone.  
The Government is getting distracted by scandal after scandal at the moment whether it is ACC or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade or mistakes by Treasury monitoring the Crown Retail Deposit Guarantee Scheme causing hundreds of millions of dollars of costs. The economic credentials of this Government are being slowly eroded as the public sees that it is mismanaging it. It is too distracted. It is looking after the people it likes whether it is Mr McElreabeing put in charge of the Broadcasting Commission or insiders of the National Party getting preferential treatment from ACC. This Government is more about looking after its insiders than it is about taking care of New Zealand’s serious economic problems. 
Reports noted.