Goff Phil: General Debate 
Goff Phil: General Debate 
[Volume:652;Page:1407] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 It is a bit rich for that member to come into the House and talk about twin deficits when this country was running a surplus and Michael Cullen was very prudently paying off the Government’s sovereign debt. That member in Opposition said we should be spending the surplus and we should be blowing out the economy. He must thank God every day that he inherited a situation from Michael Cullen whereby he has the third-lowest sovereign debt ratios in the OECD. He said that himself in the Budget Policy Statement when he said that he had inherited a situation whereby New Zealand has had consistently in the last 9 years one of the lowest unemployment rates in the Western World. 
He must be thankful that he inherited from the previous Government a sound banking situation and that guarantees were brought in at the right time. He should thank the Labour Government that sensible decisions to deal with the economy’s structural problems had been introduced by way of things like KiwiSaver. The only thing the National Government has done to KiwiSaver is to gut it. It has done so against the advice that was given to the Minister of Finance by his Treasury advisers which he did not have the honesty to release at the time the debate was happening in the House. He was so frightened of his own department’s advice that he suppressed it for 6 weeks after he had released almost every other piece of information. 
There is no doubt that New Zealand faces an economic crisis that threatens the jobs of literally thousands of New Zealanders. The Minister’s own Treasury advice is that unemployment could rise by as many as 68000 people over the course of this year. New Zealanders do not blame this Government—or for that matter the previous Government—for the problem of economic recession. We know that New Zealand is a small player in the world and we deal with the cards given to us. But what New Zealanders will hold this Government responsible for is the response to that economic situation. I think it is important that this National Government does not squander the very powerful position it has inherited in each of the areas I have outlined. 
I say to Mr English that as an Opposition we are more than happy to work constructively to support measures provided they are effective and provided they are fair. Mr English needs to acknowledge to this House that of the much-talked-about stimulus package that National is parading up and down 75 percent of it was brought in by Michael Cullen in the Budget in May of last year. That is what he needs to acknowledge. Unfortunately what he does not acknowledge is that since the Budget last year and since the end of last year the international economic situation has continued to get worse. National is putting in place stimulus measures designed to deal with the economy as it was seen by almost everybody in the middle of last year without responding to keep pace with how far that situation has deteriorated. 
What I regret about what the Government has done is that so much of it has been counter-productive. Everybody knows that if we want a stimulus package giving funds to those who are at the bottom of the heap—low and middle income families low-income earners—means that those people will go out and spend those funds immediately when they receive them. They will pick up goods and services which in turn will keep businesses afloat and jobs intact. What did Bill English do last year? He slashed three-quarters of a billion dollars out of the pockets of low and middle income families where each dollar spent as a stimulus would get the most cost-effective return and he gave that to members on the front bench in this House and to those on higher incomes who will pay down their mortgages and spend it internationally. 
We know that there is not a bottomless pit of money. We therefore know that the money has to be spent most effectively. That Government did exactly the wrong thing. It got advice from its own economic advisers that it chose to ignore. Everybody who knows anything about how to get sustainable growth knows that the last thing we should do if we want innovation is to slash research and development tax credits. The last thing we should do is to pull apart the Fast Forward fund which would have kept innovation in our vital primary sector. The last thing we should do is to put superannuation funds at risk which the Minister has done as a result of the changes he has made.