Robertson Grant: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Robertson Grant: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 13 June 2012. Volume:680;Page:2928. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 This is a broken shonky incompetent out-of-touch Government so distracted by scandal and cronyism and its own mismanagement that it is missing in action on providing any economic leadership for this country and on addressing any of the underlying issues that this country has.  
But let us look at just 2012 in this Government. A few years ago there was a book on the top of the Amazon best seller list called  
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius 
. Well if they were writing a book about this year under this Government it would be called “ 
A Mind-boggling Term of Staggering Incompetence 
” because that is what we have seen right from the beginning of the year with the Crafar farm deal about which a High Court judge said that Maurice Williamson and Jonathan Coleman had misdirected themselves in law. They got it wrong and the Government is so out of touch with the public’s view about the importance of our farmland that it wants to see it hocked off.  
Then there are asset sales which are not only opposed in polls by 80 percent of Kiwis but also opposed by 99 percent of submitters to the Finance and Expenditure Committee. But it is apt that the Government is acting in the interests of the 1 percent because that is what it has been doing throughout—the 1 percent of submitters the 1 percent of this country—and bulldozing this Mixed Ownership Model Bill through the select committee.  
Then we have John Banks up a river on a cabbage boat without a paddle. He does not know what he is doing. He does not know what he is doing in this Parliament. The Government does not want him here but it is stuck with him because he is the only way it can get its ridiculous agenda through.  
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has seen disgraceful mismanagement and passing of the buck by Murray McCully. In ACC there is a legacy of cronyism internecine National Party warfare and Michelle Boag playing “peekaBoag” and lurking around pillars in Parliament trying to get on the television. It is an organisation let down by its Ministers and let down by this Government. Then we have Skycity the convention centre and the pokies—a grubby deal and the Prime Minister is right in the middle of it. Make no mistake when the Auditor-General’s office is looking into this it is the Prime Minister’s actions it is looking into the Prime Minister who interfered in a deal the Prime Minister who got in front of other bidders and said: “Forget about it. I’ve got a deal for you with Skycity.” There are dinners and there are all sorts of things in this when the Auditor-General gets into it. But make no mistake this is the Prime Minister a dodgy deal and this is what the Auditor-General will be looking at.  
But I want to refer to the Budget. Once upon a time Budgets were documents of certainty and gravity thoroughly worked-through proposals based on analysis and debate. Ministers even offered their resignations if something leaked out. Well look at this National Government and its Budgets. It seems to see them as a cross between a Sunday newspaper horoscope and some kind of policy  
Dragons’ Den 
 where half-baked ideas are pitched to an unwitting New Zealand public who are forced to protest and threaten before the would-be policy dreamer backs off and admits that their idea would never have floated in the first place.  
The most avid reader of the horoscope is of course that well-known stargazer Bill English. I actually half expected his Budget speech to begin with: “The presence of Jupiter planet of joy and happiness in our sign indicates 140000 extra jobs and enables a totally unrealistic growth forecast. Go for it!”. But no what we had once again was the Budget coming from Bill English where we failed to meet our growth targets where the numbers are wrong and then the final indignity in this Budget a core proposal in education that is ditched after 2 weeks.  
The Government had a crack at pitching its idea to the public before ditching it and leaving a huge hole in the books not to mention a bizarre belief that the Prime Minister holds to this day that teacher professional development is possible only with class size increases. He is the only person making the causal link. He is the only person who thinks that New Zealand children do not deserve quality teachers unless we cram more children into the classes. He is wrong. It is not just a political mistake it is a mistake and this Government should admit that.  
If this Government was putting an ad in the personal columns it would say: “Hopeless policies seeking incompetent management; long-term relationship assured.” That is what we are seeing from this Government and the only real plan this Government has now is to adopt a new strategy: “WWPD: What Would Paula Rebstock Do?”. That is the strategy from this Government. That is the person whom this Government turns to when it is trying to come up with a plan because it does not have one of its own. There is no strategy from this Government to grow the economy. The only strategy for actually doing something about the economy is coming from this side of the House. We know that to invest in our future we need to support education and we need to support a clean green clever innovative economy.