Cosgrove Clayton: General Debate 
Cosgrove Clayton: General Debate 
[Volume:670;Page:16824] 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. Gerry Brownlee said on Newstalk ZB last week in respect of the Canterbury earthquake that people were being impatient. He was right. The Canterbury earthquake like the lack of planning and strategy from this Government is a very down-to-earth practical example of the fact that the Government is a shambles. There is no plan for the people of Canterbury as there is no plan for the people of New Zealand. 
Let us look at the evidence around that proposition. Early childhood education centres around New Zealand are cut to the bone yet the Minister of Education stands up day after day as we present example after example—Swannanoa Preschool has received a $100000 cut—and says that there is no cut. We have 158000 New Zealand citizens—Kiwis—unemployed. One in four young people leaving school is going on the scrap heap. 
Where is the plan around that problem? The only plan articulated by the Government was the Job Summit. Do members remember that? Then we had a cycleway. Then New Zealand was to be a financial hub for the world. Then we had the clanger: Gerry Brownlee the man who is interested in earth movements of all kinds suggested mining in national parks. I say that the Government’s programme has more cracks and gaps in it than the Canterbury earthquake or a cheap version of the  
Borat 
 movie. That is what I say. 
Gerry Brownlee and the other Ministers get up every day and say that the people are being impatient and should settle down. I say to Mr Brownlee that the people of Canterbury are impatient not only for a plan and a strategy but for any sort of coordinated managed effort in respect of their crisis. He should tell his colleagues that every New Zealander who is unemployed every mum and dad who is facing a $25 to $80 a week increase per child in the price of early childhood education and every early childhood education centre that is facing hundreds of thousands of dollars of cuts like the 34 in my patch facing nearly a million dollars of cuts are by God impatient. They are impatient for any sort of action. 
They are also impatient to know how far the asset sales programme that those members have articulated will take New Zealand. They are impatient to know that given that it was tried last time by that crew over there when they were in Government. They were told that everybody would be better off as National flogged off assets willy-nilly but they were not. They are impatient to know why National is doing it again. They are impatient to know why mum and dad Kiwis—according to that crew over there benevolent Government that it is—will be first in the queue to buy back what they already own with their own money. They are impatient to know the logic around that. 
The people of New Zealand are impatient to know how foreign interests that gained 51.8 percent of Contact Energy when it was sold off will be prevented from eventually gaining our assets. The people of New Zealand are impatient to know where the revenue streams will come from as the Government flogs off revenue-earning assets. The Government talks about purchasing non-revenue earning assets like for instance schools. It is a great thing to build a school; we built heaps of them. But Gerry Brownlee as the resident genius should tell me—and the people of New Zealand are impatient to know—how a school can generate revenue as opposed to say a State-owned power company. Many schools of course are in the disaster zone of Christchurch. That man Gerry Brownlee stands as a stark example given his lack of action in respect of the crisis in Canterbury of the inaction the shambles the lack of planning and the lack of strategy exhibited across every portfolio in this Government. 
I say to Mr Brownlee that he is right: people are being impatient. People are impatient to know how they will get a job especially the 158000 unemployed Kiwis. They are impatient to know how they will get a job how they will make ends meet and where these mum and dad Kiwis will get this windfall of cash so as to be first in the queue to buy back assets that they already own. According to National these 158000 unemployed New Zealanders and others have tons of dough! They are impatient they want a job they want action and they want a plan. I say to Mr Brownlee that he should try to deliver one.