Williamson Maurice: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williamson Maurice: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 11 May 2011. Volume:672;Page:18565. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister for Building and Construction) 
: 
 I want to start by trying to offer a little bit of advice to Opposition members. [ 
Interruption 
] They do need to listen to advice from somebody and if they do not want my advice that is fine. I will give my advice to them anyway. My simple advice is that the voters of this country vote on only two things. They vote on their hip pockets and their kids’ future. Those two things determine what most people finally go to the polls on. We can sit in this House and debate all sorts of things until late at night or under urgency and the vast bulk of New Zealanders would not even know that Parliament is sitting. We can debate the minutiae and have fights about whether new carpet should have been laid in Premier House or whether the BMW fleet should be upgraded. Again New Zealanders do not actually care. I am trying to tell Opposition members something that it would be in their interest to listen to.  
New Zealanders want a credible alternative plan for delivering things that affect their hip pockets and their kids’ future. Part of that plan certainly would be the standards in education. I do not know a single person who is not worried about their kids’ achievements. If Opposition members really want to start scoring some points they should be focusing their attack on something that improves the educational outcomes of our country. But no once again we get back to whether indeed Premier House should have had some paint put on it after 12 years. Frankly most people do not care. 
Other people will be saying: “Well I’m really interested in whether our incomes will match those of Australia. What would you do? How would you go about it? What’s your economic management tool?”. I watched  
Breakfast 
 on TV this morning and I watched Labour’s Opposition spokesman on finance— 
Chris Auchinvole 
: What did he say? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: My colleagues have to stop asking the hard questions. I do not know what he said. Well actually I do. I have a transcript and I will help my colleagues by repeating what David Cunliffe said in reply to Corin Dann’s tough question. Corin Dann said to him: “OK but you’re looking to get back into surplus by a similar time frame here—2016 something like that—so what would you cut instead?”. That is a pretty simple question. It is a very straight question and I think the Speaker would allow that in this House as being a straight question. He asked what he would cut. I want members to follow the answer. I want some advice following what he said. This is what the Hon David Cunliffe said: “What Labour has said is that we will aim to reduce net debt including the Crown’s financial assets across the business cycle. We believe that about a 10-year horizon is appropriate. We believe we can do that around as fast as the current Government is planning to but in a much more responsible way because—let’s not kid ourselves—debt reduction is not the only goal here. You see the Australian Budget. They are at the same time as reducing debt managing to get more Australians into jobs cutting their unemployment by 500000 people to only 4.5 percent. We’ve got nearly 7 percent—155000 Kiwis looking for work—and we have a responsibility for every Kiwi that wants to get a job.” Do members have a clue about what is happening here and what Labour will do? He is telling us what Australia has and what New Zealand has but what will Labour do? This was his golden opportunity on  
Breakfast 
 to tell us what the plan is to tell the nation. He says: “If we’re talking about saving money how about the thousands and thousands of Kiwis that are dodging their way out of the tax net …? Perhaps every New Zealander ought to be paying their fair share …”. That is it; that is Labour’s economic plan. There is not one statement in there about what Labour would do with tax rates at the higher end because we know it wants to address that; we know it will. There was no stuff in there about whether Labour would make cuts to programmes that the current Government has put in place—not a mutter not a murmur nothing. But oh boy Labour is back on the attack when it comes to whether a piece of carpet looks shabby at Premier House and needs to be replaced. If Labour members have a polling organisation working for them they should get that polling organisation cranked up to start asking some questions of the public. Do they care about that stuff? I can tell you that no they do not. That headline passes within a day. Yes it might be the talking point of the day but it passes.  
What New Zealanders care about long term is their kids’ futures and their hip pockets. If they will vote for another party to be the Government and for another person to be the Prime Minister of this country they want to know that that person has a plan has laid it out succinctly has said what they will do and has costings for it. We have heard nothing of that from Labour—nothing of it. But members opposite are getting into who was travelling where and whether the Prime Minister should have taken a helicopter from Hamilton to Auckland. It is just rubbish.