Anderton Jim: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Anderton Jim: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:645;Page:14128] 
Hon JIM ANDERTON (Leader—Progressive) 
: 
 This year New Zealand will face some crucial choices about our future. We will decide where our priorities lie. Our choices in my view are simple. It is a choice between the confident steps towards a stronger and more caring New Zealand that this Government continues to take or going back to the failed policies of the past. It is a choice between steady and reliable gains for New Zealanders such as those the Prime Minister outlined today or ripping it all up for a National Party smash-and-grab raid on the economy so it can help itself to as much as it can. 
I listened carefully to the Leader of the Opposition today because I thought he might try to sound more responsible for once. I thought a wise leader would have something positive to say—just one thing would have been good—so I listened carefully. Did he for one moment say that he was pleased that 360000 new jobs have been created since this Government took office? There was not one word. Did he say that he was pleased that we have enjoyed the longest run of economic growth since World War II? There was not one mention. He thinks it all happens by accident. He thinks it is just good luck. How come the National Party never got lucky in 8½ years in Government the last time? 
John Key was blaming all the things that happen in New Zealand on this Government. Actually in 30 consecutive years—from 1970 to 1999—this country went down 1 percent a year per capita income against Australia. For how many years of that period was National in Government? I will tell members that it was 20. National is absolving itself of absolutely the majority of the responsibility for all that time and blaming it on us. It is almost incredible. 
Did John Key say he was pleased that unemployment has fallen from the disastrous levels that the National Party created? Not once; there was not a mention. Pacific and Maori people used to have unemployment rates of more than 25 percent. Unemployment has now fallen to just 3.4 percent of the workforce and the Opposition has not noticed it. He did not mention it. 
Did Mr Key say he was pleased that Working for Families has put cash into hundreds of thousands of homes that need it most? No; he just demanded more for himself. Did he say he was pleased that Working for Families lifted tens of thousands of children in New Zealand out of poverty? More children were in poverty than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s. No; there was not a mention. Why is that I wonder? I suspect that National does not really care about it. That is why it was not mentioned. 
Did Mr Key say that National was pleased that this Government has taken 140000 people off the benefit lists and found decent meaningful jobs for them with better wages and better work conditions? There was not a mention. For a party that has spent so much time bashing beneficiaries it is amazing that National created so many of them and still has so little to say when we come and cut back the benefit rolls as we have. 
National has a hands-off attitude towards jobs and towards reducing welfare payments and a hands-off attitude to the economy because it simply has no ideas. I listened carefully for any semblance of new ideas from the National Party. I hear all the time how it is now agreeing with a policy that it opposed in the first place which happens to be one that the Government has implemented. There is no vision there. There are no answers. National has nothing new to say. It promises only a return to the failed policies of the past. That is the choice New Zealanders face this year with National—to go back to the failed policies of the past a stagnant growth for the future and high unemployment. That is all there is. That is as good as it gets. 
There are four policies that I have counted that National has announced so far. Firstly to sell all the assets—sell Kiwibank sell the airline sell the railways and then start on some new sales: sell the power companies sell the roads sell the lot. That sounds a lot like policies I used to oppose myself. I will not go any further down that road. National’s second policy is to put up doctors’ fees. Its third policy is to cut taxes but only for the wealthiest New Zealanders. Actually that was the policy announced yesterday by the Business Roundtable. The silence from the National Party on that policy announcement was deafening. I made a statement on the policy saying what a load of rubbish it was. We never heard anything from the National Party. Did the National Party make a statement attacking the policy? No; it would not because it is National’s policy. The Business Roundtable announces its policy and we know from bitter experience that what the Business Roundtable wants National gives it. That is my experience in watching National in this Parliament. The one thing that National dared not say was what it thought of the Business Roundtable policy. What did National members think of it? Did they think it was great to have a flat tax rate for all New Zealanders or for the highest-income earners to be paying the same as some of the lowest-income earners? I want to know whether the National Party supports the Business Roundtable. I would like to hear that from the next National Party speaker. 
A family on the average wage in New Zealand with two kids pays the lowest rate of tax in the OECD. The National Party is opposed to that tax rate. Such a family pays virtually no tax at all. I want National to tell us whether it wants to cut taxes for the average family. We have actually cut it to the lowest levels in the OECD. I want National members to tell us whether they would pass on as much of the tax cut for that family as they want for themselves because I do not think so. They do not care about the family on the average wage; they care only about families that are on wages equivalent to their own. 
I acknowledge one area where I think like the Government National has made some positive promises. I insist on finding something positive. I am pleased that the emphasis on both sides of the House is on better educating our young people and on better preparing teenaged New Zealanders for the future. That is a good thing. I welcome a stronger priority for education. 
Now that more of us in this House are talking about education one of our top priorities this year should be to remove the tax on education. I am speaking now as Leader of the Progressive Party of course. The student debt in this country in my view is a national outrage. We were told it was introduced because without an education tax tertiary education would be unaffordable. What has happened? We are now carrying as a country no net public debt. But as of last June students owed the country $9.413 billion in debt. If we project those figures by 2010 that debt will have risen to $12 billion. 
Bob Clarkson 
: Is that National’s fault? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON 
: I would like to hear whether National has a policy to abolish this debt. I would like to know that. By 2015 the debt will be $16.5 billion and by 2020 it will be $21.5 billion. At a time when even the most heartless New Zealanders are worrying about affordability of housing for young families how will students save for a house when they have decades of debt around their backs? 
When I hear people in the House talk about tax cuts I think that yes there should be some tax cuts for people who need them most. Businesses have had a corporate tax cut which is something a National Government has never ever delivered. National is so keen on talking about things that it forgets to do anything. Middle-income earners have missed out so there should be something for them. But who is the most overtaxed group of all? It is young workers who had to pay a special tax on their education. If we are worried about losing our best and brightest overseas and if we believe in tax cuts that will keep New Zealanders at home and attract them back then we should be cutting the tax that drives more of them away: the education tax. 
This is really an appeal by me to all parties in the House if they are really interested in education. When I went to training college in New Zealand—a teachers college in Auckland—we were paid a wage. We did not have to borrow money but we had to pay something back. We had to serve in country areas for 2 years. It was a bond really. My challenge is: why we do not say to young New Zealanders at tertiary levels now that if they get their tertiary education in areas where there is need—for teachers in the country areas vets doctors nurses tradespeople and professionals of all sorts—we will pay them back every year that they serve in areas where they are needed in New Zealand as part of their loan payment? That is not something for nothing. 
Bob Clarkson 
: Why don’t you just turn around and face the Government?