Lee Melissa: General Debate 
Lee Melissa: General Debate 
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MELISSA LEE (National) 
: 
 Boy! I am glad that the Minister of Education is introducing standards and focusing on literacy and numeracy after the contribution by the previous speaker David Parker. Perhaps the Minister should also include history lessons in the curriculum because obviously that member does not remember the last 10 years. 
New Zealand is going through the worst recession since the Depression. The world is going through the worst global recession since the 1930s. To tackle that background the Hon Bill English the Minister of Finance produced a Budget that was prudent and responsible. Yes members on this side of the House like the two words “prudent” and “responsible”. You see members opposite do not seem to understand the concepts of prudence and responsibility. We know this because the previous Labour Government at a time when we should have been careful—extremely careful—managers of the economy left this country with a legacy— 
Michael Woodhouse 
: Frivolous! 
MELISSA LEE 
: Yes a legacy I like to call a decade of deficits. Its answer to fixing that awful legacy is to spend more. How much more? Six billion dollars more. That is how we have ended up in this pickle. 
Labour’s idea of managing the economy is to borrow more a heck of a lot more and to spend even more. If I did that with my own finances—borrowed more and spent more—I hate to think where I would be. That kind of reckless economic policy from Labour would put New Zealand deeper into debt make it billions of dollars worse off drive up interest rates and ultimately bankrupt this country. New Zealand went into recession under Labour’s watch. That is right—under the previous Labour Government’s watch. When that is combined with the global recession it will put a big hole in New Zealand’s economy over the next 3 years. Somebody on the other side of the House talked about a big hole but it is actually a $50 billion big hole and Labour’s delusional economic policy of borrowing more is simply that—delusional. We do not need more debt; more debt is the last thing that we need. We are facing a cash deficit of $10 billion to $12 billion over the next 4 years. If we were to heed Labour’s delusional advice the debt would spiral even more. 
Brendon Burns 
: How delusional were you as a candidate in Mt Albert? 
MELISSA LEE 
: That is right Mr Burns; if we take your advice we will go into even more debt. So we will certainly not be taking Labour’s advice on how to improve our economy. Over the last decade Labour has proven that it cannot be trusted to manage New Zealand’s economy with prudence or with responsibility. 
The Leader of the Opposition the Hon Phil Goff goofed up—probably he was on his scooter—when he announced in July that he would announce a recession response package shortly. I do not know about other members but I think it has become a very long “shortly”. As far as I am concerned “shortly” is something to do with urgency and soon. Perhaps that is the reason—the style of the previous Government—that the last decade has proven to be very bad. We are still waiting for Mr Goff’s response package. 
But the Leader of the Opposition was very quick—guns ablaze I will call it—when he came out and promised a gold-plated or perhaps diamond-encrusted social welfare system that would see households with millionaires receiving the dole. Although the Leader of the Opposition has now backtracked on this it is interesting to note how he operates. It speaks volumes in my view that in choosing to highlight the case of a man who had lost his job and had nothing Mr Goff could have been seen to do the responsible thing. But what speaks volumes is what he chose to omit what he left out. He failed to reveal that the man had a number of investment properties. He is not someone who needed to go on the dole. 
Mr Goff apparently apologised at the recent Labour Party conference for the nanny State policies of the previous Labour Government admitting that it had got them wrong. Perhaps the prudent and responsible thing for Mr Goff to do would be to apologise to all of New Zealand—to all New Zealanders—for the decade of deficits and bad management of New Zealand’s economy. Perhaps then his popularity might improve out of the single figure ghetto that he is in at the moment. 
The last thing I will say is that it is great news that after five quarters of economic contraction we have finally managed a small growth rate in the June quarter. It is in fact very small but it is huge growth when contrasted with the previous contraction.