Robertson Grant: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 13 April 2016. Volume:713;Page:10496. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Thank you for the opportunity to speak in this debate on the economic development and infrastructure ideas. I want to pick up where the chair of the Commerce Committee Melissa Lee left off and that was talking about the importance of exports to the New Zealand economy. I think right around the Committee we would all agree that for New Zealand to succeed we have got to lift our game when it comes to exports. That is where we are going to find the industries that are going to drive high-value jobs and are going to give New Zealanders the standard of living that we want our future generations to have.So the Government set itself a lofty goal. It was actually a promise and that was to lift the percentage of GDP that exports constitute to 40 percent. I note in the report of the Commerce Committee on this that it was described by the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment as “an aspirational target”. That is an interesting change of tune. It is not actually an aspirational target. It was a specific promise of this Government that it would lift exports as a percentage of GDP from about 30 percent when it came into office to 40 percent. Where are they today? Around about 27 or 28 percent. We are going backwards under this Government when it comes to exports. We are going backwards on the very thing that will help generate the kinds of high-value jobs that New Zealanders want.The Government complacently sits there with exports at the moment being still approximately 80 percent from primary industries many of which are unprocessed commodities leaving our ports. That is not going to grow the kind of future New Zealand that our children and our grandchildren want to stay in. We have got to have a greater aspiration than that. Once upon a time the National Government had aspiration. Once upon a time it said it was ambitious for New Zealand but now we are going backwards. There is absolutely no ambition among the National Government members for New Zealanders particularly when it comes to the export target.But do not worry because hidden here in the report of the Commerce Committee on the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment is the Government’s big strategy and plan for economic growth. It is called here an agribusiness hub in Saudi Arabia. For those not familiar with this genius economic plan from the Government it involves giving approximately $12 million to a man named Mr Al Ali Khalaf. Mr Al Ali Khalaf was given this money to set up his agribusiness hub in the desert.Many people around the Committee and perhaps listening will not be aware that the sheep that were flown over to set up this agribusiness hub actually belonged to Mr Al Ali Khalaf in the first place. So the taxpayer paid out to get the sheep from his farm in the Hawke’s Bay and pop them on a plane—they may as well have put them in business-class seats because that is how much it cost to fly the sheep over there. A sad part of the story is that many of the sheep died on the way. Those that did not died when they got there. We had some dispute with Nathan Guy about whether or not it was a sandstorm that killed them but they did die.In the end though the money just kept flowing out of New Zealand. Murray McCully called it a “facilitation payment”. Well there is another word for that. It begins with “b” and has the letters “r” “i” “b” and “e” after that and that is actually—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! No no.GRANT ROBERTSON: Here in the report of the Commerce Committee on the annual review of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment is a description of the agribusiness hub in Saudi Arabia. This kind of approach from the Government is appalling. It is about looking after its mates. It is about looking after those at the very top rather than hard-working New Zealanders supporting and investing in the regions of New Zealand.Here we have $12 million being pushed offshore to Mr Al Ali Khalaf in the vain hope that he will somehow support a free-trade agreement with Saudi Arabia that does not actually seem to be going anywhere at all. We await with interest the Auditor-General’s inquiry into the agribusiness hub in Saudi Arabia because it is murky and it finished off most recently with the payment for an abattoir in Saudi Arabia and that—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: No sheep.GRANT ROBERTSON: Ha ha! There are no sheep there but they have got the abattoir. That impoverished group of people the Saudi Government has been now given by New Zealand an abattoir because it is actually not possible for Mr Al Ali Khalaf under Saudi Arabia law to own the abattoir himself so we had to give it to the Saudi Government. This is the best the Government can do in terms of an economic development strategy for New Zealand according to the review that we have here: to throw away $12 million on the vain hope of some kind of pay-off. That will not happen.