Ardern Shane: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Ardern Shane: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:645;Page:14278] 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) 
: 
 I rise in support of my leader’s motion: “That this House has no confidence in the Helen Clark - led Government because it has failed to make significant improvement in the areas of real importance to New Zealanders because it lacks ambition because it is tired and bereft of ideas because it has lost touch with the people who put it in power and because under its lead our country has become a story of lost opportunities.” 
When I listened to the Prime Minister’s speech on Tuesday it reminded me of the children’s story  
The Emperor’s New Clothes 
. The Prime Minister and her cohorts still think that if they continue with the same rhetoric they have been trotting around with for the last 8 years then people will believe them. Well I have news for them. The rose-tinted glasses have come off and the public are starting to see the real truth about this Government. They are seeing the Government naked and exposed and that is not a very pretty sight. Kiwis are asking themselves: “If things are as good as the Prime Minister says then why are we struggling? Why are we as Kiwis struggling so much?”. The answer is that as time has gone on Labour has concentrated more on more on its own preservation than it has on the issues that concern hard-working Kiwis in New Zealand. 
Labour has squandered New Zealand’s economic inheritance by failing to build strong foundations for the future of this country. If we really live in a fairytale land as this Government would have us believe why can we not buy our own homes any more? Why are there so many New Zealanders out there who cannot buy their own home? Why is that the case? Why is violent crime on the rise right across New Zealand? Why after 8 years of Labour are we paying the second-highest interest rates in the OECD or in the developed world? Why is that the case? We can all remember the Labour Government of the 1980s when interest rates peaked at 22 percent. Do we want to leave Labour there long enough for interest rates to eventually get to 22 percent again? The answer to that is obvious and most New Zealanders are now starting to realise that this Government has completely run out of leadership and ideas. 
Why are our schools unable to deliver what would have been described in Michael Joseph Savage’s day as basic curriculum in the education system? Why is that the case? Why are our children in rural New Zealand now not able to get a bus to take them to the classroom? Why is that the case after 9 years of a Labour-led Government? Do members remember Labour’s catchphrase when it was in Opposition 8½ years ago? Labour members used to say: “Listen New Zealanders just pay a little bit more tax and we’ll fix up the health system and the education system. It’s fair to pay a bit more tax.” So New Zealanders have paid and paid. Now tell me has the health system been fixed up? Can people get operations when they need them? Is it better than it was 8 years ago? The answer to all those questions is that it is certainly not any better. 
The problem is that one cannot fiddle with the figures employ more bureaucrats and expect that to fix the health system. They can pour money into bureaucrats until their heads fall off but it will not fix the health system. What we need is more operations more theatre time more doctors more nurses more opportunity for people to get treatment and more medicines. What we have is thousands and thousands more administrators and fewer doctors where we need them. It is time we had a change and in October or November of this year people will line up and make that decision and we will see the end of this Government. 
No amount of huffing and puffing from the Government can hide the reality from the public any more. The Government has been exposed. The Prime Minister should look at her own counterpart—or I guess one could say to some extent protégé—in Australia. He has just offered an apology for a couple of hundred years of abuse to a small sector of that country. She should look at her own supporters and her own voters and offer them a similar apology. She has let them down. She has not delivered on the promise she gave them and they will along with everybody else make their decision come October this year. She should apologise to all New Zealanders for underachieving and not delivering. No one is fooled by Labour’s offering tax cuts only in an election year. No one is fooled by that. No one will buy that bribe. The student-loan bribe worked but the tax cut one will not— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: It’s the member’s policy now. 
SHANE ARDERN 
: —and the member who is interjecting is about to find that out. 
Labour’s so-called affordable housing delivers nothing unless one is earning over $70000. Of course as we have heard before the tax system says that those earning over $60000 in this country are rich. Why are one in five kids leaving school with grossly inadequate skills? Why when Labour claims to aspire to be carbon neutral do our greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at an enormous and alarming rate? I can tell the House why that is. For every year this Government has been in power more trees have been cut down than have been planted. Forestry in this country has never been on a more unsustainable route. This year we will cut down thousands more hectares of trees than we will plant yet on the international stage the Government parrots that we are leaders in the field of carbon neutrality. 
The Labour Government came up with a plan which is similar to what Labour Governments always come up with. It said that if we tax farmers more that will stop emissions and save the planet. The Government failed back then and it became an international laughing stock in the process. It is absolutely bereft of any other credible idea about how to deal with the issue. 
For the first time in 50 years far more trees are being cut down than ever before in our history. That is happening at the same time as our Australian cousins are planting more trees. Afforestation is going on in Australia but the amazing point is that the standard stock— 
Pinus radiata 
—grows faster in New Zealand than it does in Australia. The second amazing point is that we market into exactly the same international and domestic markets as the Australians. So we have the same marketplace and the same market signals and we have trees that grow faster here but we have a Government policy that forces the forestry industry to go backwards. 
It would be so easy for National to say: “We told you so.” but that will not fix the problem. We will not buy into Labour’s attempt to divert attention away from the truth as it has done in the past and is doing in this debate. We will get on with the job of fixing the problems. We will deliver the change that Kiwis are demanding. National will take on the ethos that makes New Zealanders proud. We will take on the can-do attitude that we have all celebrated so much in the last few weeks with the passing of Sir Edmund Hillary. We all associate that “we can do it” attitude with our Kiwiana. We will make that the foundation of New Zealand once again and will not accept the mediocrity that has been dished out by this Government. 
National will lift wages by driving economic growth investing in infrastructure having ongoing tax cuts and monitoring the quality and quantity of Government spending. We will create safer communities by taking the brave steps needed to address this country’s growing crime problems. We will ensure that our education system delivers real opportunity for young people. We will give Kiwis confidence in the public services they rely on. We are more interested in building performance than in building bureaucracy. 
National will build a more confident New Zealand with a proud sense of nationhood so that once again we can stand on top of the highest mountain in the world and be proud of it. Once again we will beat our Australian cousins on the rugby fields or anywhere else and once again New Zealand will be a country that people want to come home to.