Hodgson Pete: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Hodgson Pete: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:645;Page:14188] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister for Economic Development) 
: 
 Who knows what that speech was all about? It was scatological it was Messianic and it was completely free of fact. It was a great work of New Zealand fiction except it was not a great work at all. Those members on the Opposition side of the House just make it up. They get up they start with their research unit notes and they just head off into hyperspace making it up as they go along. 
Let me alight just on one topic: the comparison between New Zealand and Australia because clearly it is a theme in the National Party’s research unit. I invite those members to rewrite their research as follows. In the last 8 years the gap between New Zealand and Australia has not widened. The years prior to that the 1990s the 1980s and to some extent the 1970s were when it did widen. It widened particularly in the 1990s and we can get some idea of why it widened in the 1990s by paying attention to the following policies. New Zealand had an Employment Contracts Act that was designed to drive down wages and Australia did not. It had a more moderate approach to employment relations. New Zealand had no increase in the minimum wage as my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson mentioned in her speech. Over 9 years it increased by only 87c. In the 9 years of this Government it has increased by $5. That is the difference between a Government that wants to lift wages and a Government that does not. 
Over in Australia right through the 1990s there was economic development policy at the state and federal level even to the point where people wondered whether they had too much economic development policy and in the 1990s in this country we had none. We had Trade New Zealand we had the BIZinfo number we had the Technology for Business Growth programme with a few million dollars in it and that was it. That was it. There was no New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and no collaboration with the social partners the Council of Trade Unions or with Business New Zealand. That happened only under this Government; in Australia it is a matter of continuum. Here we stopped doing all that. When we start adding those facts together we start to understand why Australia leapt ahead during the 1990s and right now the gap is getting no bigger. 
I will make some comments about Katherine Rich because she comes from Dunedin because she has been my opponent in the last three elections and because I know her and her family somewhat. I have known her parents for 30 years. I respect her decision but I am sad to see her go. I am genuinely sad to see her go. I would say to her publicly that on the three occasions we have shared the platform on the hustings not once have we had reason to fight in any personal way; not once. We have contested strongly and we will continue to contest strongly—I do not imagine she will leave public life in its entirety—but it has always been a thoroughly civil contest and I am sad to see her go. I never wanted her to be a Minister because she would have been a Minister in a National Government but had she ever been a Minister she would have been a good one. Of that I am sure. She would have been a good Minister. 
I want to record my public respect for her on a number of issues but the one that comes to mind with me more than all of the others was her position on solo parents 2 or 3 years ago when she stood up against her leader of the time and had to do so publicly. Although she is a younger member of the National Party caucus she actually reminds me much more of National’s older values. She reminds me a lot more of McKinnon Bolger or Jack Marshall. I know that those are all “old men” but in a sense Katherine Rich epitomised those values much more than I think anyone else I know of in the National Party. I wish her well. I promise her that I will represent her interests because she is one of my constituents and that will not be too difficult because our base values are nowhere near as far apart as they are between me and much of the remainder of the National Party caucus. I think that she has been a voice of moderation. I think she is a modern person—both modern and moderate. So those are my remarks. 
The National Party is a loser. The National Party is a big loser here because Katherine Rich offered some counterbalance to the stuff that is not modern and moderate in the National Party. If one was to look along its front bench and ask whether one thought Nick Smith was a modern a moderate or a balanced sort of person or whether we have compassionate conservatives sitting there on the front bench then I think one would have to acknowledge that the National Party is now seriously imbalanced. It was partially imbalanced it will now become seriously imbalanced and as far as the replacements are concerned all I would say is that Merv Wellington is now looking like an intellectual giant. That is all I would say about that. There is not a lot of depth in National when one looks at the minor reshuffle it has had. We need not bother mentioning names. The long and short of it is that Katherine Rich’s talents are being missed for that reason. 
Yesterday when the Prime Minister opened the batting in this House with her speech pointing out where her Government is headed this year it was a speech packed with content either in the general or in the detail—it was packed. There was 30 minutes of it—it was packed. It described a Government that knows where it is going knows how to get there and that has momentum. But the Leader of the Opposition leapt to his feet—and it has happened again in the House this afternoon—and used the word “vacuous”. Let us explore that. “Vacuous” he said. Helen Clark gave action on housing and on changes to the funding of non-governmental organisations. She offered more progress towards sustainable development. She announced new initiatives in criminal justice. She foreshadowed announcements—or at least developments—in research and development in the innovation area and in broadband. That was on top of her education announcements of a couple of weeks prior. 
John Key got up and said that the speech was vacuous. John Key had had that speech for 5 hours—he got it at 10 o’clock in the morning he got to his feet at 3 o’clock in the afternoon and I do not think he had read it. I do not think he had read it. He said the Prime Minister’s statement was vacuous. Actually when one looks at John Key and what followed from his speech one sees that it was a self-description. If one wants to know anything that was vacuous about yesterday afternoon’s proceedings it was Mr Key’s speech. It was a remarkably empty speech. He had had the Prime Minister’s speech for 5 hours to formulate a response a rebuttal a repositioning or something and he did none of those. He had only one-liners. They were carefully written jokes—actually they were tragically overwritten jokes. God knows what Britney Spears has to do with the Waterview bypass! But we got all of that from John Key and he had 5 hours to prepare something better. 
John Key had no vision no substance—no alternatives not even in the general. Let us just say he did not have to announce anything specifically—it was not required. But he did not give a direction of travel; he just gave a speech that was better suited to some after-dinner event and not well suited to opening the Parliament of this country for this year. It will not do. This gentleman is putting his name in for Prime Minister later this year—not in 5 years’ time but later this year. He has not told us what he stands for except that he can hold a bellyful of dead rats. That is all we know about John Key. He is too preoccupied with trying to imitate this Government to make up anything of his own. When he tries it does not work. 
He tells us that he will do boot camps. That is interesting because yesterday the Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft at a meeting in Queenstown spoke of the issue of serious offenders amongst our youth and said of boot camps that turning serious offenders lives around was not as simple as setting up boot camps. He said: “We had them—they were called corrective training. They came out fitter stronger faster but still burglars. Reoffending was around 96%.” Judge Becroft said the best solution to youth crime was to give children the best possible start in life from birth to the age of seven. 
Who opposes 20 hours’ free early childhood education? Who is completely underwhelmed by the preschool check for children’s health and children’s behaviour? Who has said that they think the best way to deal with young people who have gone off the rails is to put them into a boot camp? It is known to fail. This gentleman Mr Key does not know what he stands for and there is a one-liner in politics: “If one does not know what one stands for don’t stand.” This is the guy who went to Waitangi a week ago today and was caught hugging a guy who is up for a serious offence. Mr Key got tricked. He is just new. He is new he is not ready and he will not be Prime Minister at the end of this year.