Williams Andrew: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williams Andrew: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 07 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6370. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First) 
: 
 The people who created a society of equals in New Zealand would be sickened and disgusted at what sort of country we now live in. New Zealand is now a land of the haves and the have-nots. We are on the path towards creating a State-sponsored slave colony. 
Hon Steven Joyce 
: Oh for goodness’ sake! Ha ha! You clown. 
ANDREW WILLIAMS 
: The number of people at the bottom of the heap is growing. The Hon Steven Joyce can smile and laugh but the number of people at the bottom of the heap is growing. Those at the top are getting richer and richer helped by huge tax cuts from this National Government. This is a low-wage high-price economy. That is what National and its big business backers want. They want queues of workers standing in the cold begging for jobs. They want a minimum wage economy and even less for the youth of this country—even less than the minimum wage. 
Many New Zealanders are leaving the country as the Government continues its job eradication programme. Recently at Victoria University some 200 students were asked the question “What are you planning to do when you finish your degree?” and some 170 of the 200 in the group said “We’re going to go and live overseas. There is no future in this country with the qualifications that we have.” Is that not sad when 170 out of 200 young people feel that the future for them is not in this country? Yet National and its friends are bringing in thousands of immigrants to keep pushing down the wages—advertising in the likes of the UK for workers to come to Christchurch while we have people unemployed and while we have something like 6.8 percent unemployment. It is interesting that Tim Groser mentioned before that in Europe unemployment is at 11 percent and we are not even halfway there at 6.8 percent. Well that particular Minister really cannot do his maths very well because he said we were virtually half of Europe. Well 6.8 percent is not half of 11 percent Minister. 
The wages at the top keep soaring as evidenced this week in the headline “Rise of the $1m salaries: top boss says enough”. More than 41 senior executives are getting more than $1 million in this country many of whom are simply not worth that sort of money. The real wages at the bottom and the benefits keep falling. Rampant capitalism is now a disease and it has infected many countries throughout the world. Greedy financiers and bankers have destroyed entire economies many of whom have been bankers in the likes of Merrill Lynch in New York in their previous lives. The Government’s own figures released today show that its tired old slash-and-burn-and-sell-out policies are not working. The tax take is down. The deficit is growing. Every day there is a sad story of another failure. 
The Government’s only solution is to sell our precious assets overseas and to make us a colony of China and everywhere else where the economy is controlled. This is a disaster. We cannot afford another 2 years of a National Government. After another 2 years there will be nothing left. New Zealand First asks why the Government does not take its courage in its hands and go back to ordinary New Zealanders and ask them what to do at the polls.