Adams AmyHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): I think members across this House come to Parliament because they share in a very real desire to see New Zealanders have stable and happy and prosperous lives with good health and education live in safe communities and have a beautiful environment. But one of the differences I believe between this side of the House and this new weak disparate Government that we have is that on this side of the House we understand that all of those ambitions and desires we share for New Zealanders and their families require a strong economy—they require a strong financial base to pay for those things. The interesting thing is that things like the Family Income Package that this party developed and delivered in the 2017 Budget and that has been adopted by the new Government are possible only because of that strong economy.At its very core a strong economy comes from courageous New Zealanders who are prepared to get up work hard invest their money put their own assets on the line work 16 to 20 hours a day and hopefully grow from that ambition that hard work and that confidence into creating jobs. It is the New Zealanders who take that chance who are our economy. They are assisted by a Government that creates rules and settings that encourage them to do that and give them the confidence to invest in New Zealand. That fundamentally is what determines how many jobs we have in our society how high the incomes are in those jobs and how good those jobs are. The most important thing to any New Zealand worker I would suggest first and foremost is that they have a job. You have to have a job before pay rates or pay conditions or anything else are even relevant. So we must always ensure that what we do supports the creation of new jobs.Now let's look at New Zealand's record in this regard. In this regard under the National Government we've seen New Zealand creating jobs—new jobs; extra jobs—at the rate of 10000 a month for more than two years now. That means New Zealand now has the third-highest employment rate in the OECD and New Zealand has the highest employment rate it has ever had. That is the reality of a strong economy and good—Hon Simon Bridges: How many jobs a month?Hon AMY ADAMS: That is 10000 new jobs a month. Those are the conditions we have right at the moment.But what have we seen since the change of Government? Well interestingly enough in the first 100-days we have seen what I would have called a remarkable plummet in business confidence. My colleague Jacqui Dean our spokesperson on small business knows this very well. Up and down the country what we are hearing consistently and what's reflected in those business confidence surveys that Steven Joyce has been talking about in this House is that businesses are scared. They are scared of investing they are scared of growing and they are scared of employing people because they know this Government is going to make it harder and harder to employ people. I've lost count of the number of businesses who've said to me Why would we invest our money? Why would we put our own assets on the line to employ people when we can't have any confidence that we're going to be supported in that ambition?" If we have settings that are going to cost jobs in this country the only people who lose are the New Zealand workers. Why would you do that?Yet we now have a Government that is so determined to look after their union mates that they want to take us back to the dark old days of the 1970s when it was all about block rigid employment conditions when businesses were punished for taking on workers and when the taking on of a worker was done only if it was absolutely unavoidable because the cost and the difficulty was so overwhelming. I find it so disturbing that the labour reforms announced by the Labour Government are not surprisingly going to take us back to a situation that will see I'm telling you now more strike action. You will see more strike action as unions get more and more militant—you're seeing it already. You will see fewer jobs. I asked the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety whether he could commit to maintaining 10000 new jobs a month. No he can't because he knows that these changes will see fewer jobs created and that will hurt New Zealand workers.At the end of the day if we want New Zealand to continue to be a prosperous growing positive country with opportunities for our workers and opportunities for our families they have to have jobs and the more jobs there are the more choice they have. Good jobs are created when New Zealand businesses have confidence that their Government backs them. It's very clear that New Zealand businesses have no confidence that this Government will back them. That will hurt New Zealand workers and we're going to make sure New Zealand knows about it."