Peters Jim: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Peters Jim: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:606;Page:3398] 
JIM PETERS (NZ First) 
: 
 I rise to speak to the Prime Minister’s statement and to endorse the motion made by the Rt Hon Winston Peters—namely that this House has no confidence in the Labour minority Government—and the reasons that were outlined for that. I will read some of the comments from that statement. The first one states: “The economy’s performance has been strong” and I have heard from members of the minority Labour Government the reasons why they deem that to be so. In the Speech from the Throne last year and again in this statement—as my colleague Doug Woolerton has already said—there is not one mention of the state of agriculture and the huge impact on the farming community. There is no recognition that in 1999 that Government inherited a stable buoyant economy. The reason for that buoyancy has not quite passed away although there is a higher exchange rate. With that buoyancy went the will of the farming community to really make the measure. The rural community has seen increased dairy production helped year after year by a favourable climate—even in Northland this year. It has seen 1000 head of cattle go through the sale yards at Kaikohe every week well grown and off to the overseas market. It has seen the early draft of lambs meeting very high prices at Smithfield this past year. Those indicators of performance have nothing to do with the planning or the performance of that Government since there is no plan. There is not one mention in this statement of an economic plan for this country and there has not been over the last 3 years. It is the mirror issue here—gazing at the mirror.  
Page 4 states: “Growth and innovation.” One of my colleagues has written above that: “Growth by imagination” which almost describes the way it is. Then I read: “The very foundation of a dynamic society and economy lies in the talent and skills of the workplace and people.” I think of last year when the honourable Minister of Education wasted man-hours and pupil-hours week after week month after month in the development of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement. He had secondary teachers out on the street because of his obtuseness and arrogance with regard to industrial matters. He now has the gall to praise teachers for the National Certificate of Educational Achievement yet the other day he said it was a credit to the secondary teachers who designed and implemented the system. How much more effective that system would have been had that Minister exercised some ordinary intelligence and common sense with regard to the secondary teaching profession. And so on throughout this long and rather tedious commentary about what the Government plans to do.  
In the brief time I have left I want to turn to another issue. On the Order Paper before us but with no mention here is the Resource Management Amendment Bill. Members of the House will have seen—particularly those who live in the Auckland area—the concerns that have been expressed throughout recent months about the nature of that bill. In many quarters it is regarded—and the “ 
Business Herald 
” has said so repeatedly—as a positive impediment to progress and economic development. There is not a word about it here. The bill has had a mixed history coming from the McShane “thinkpiece” to the House in 1999. It went through the select committee by May 2001 and has sat there silent as it were since then. The Minister is now rewriting the bill. The reason I want to bring it to the attention of the House is that in all of those harbingers of economic progress there is not one mention of the feeling out there in the community with regard to this obstacle to economic development. The worst part about it all is that the Minister has twice stated in the  
New Zealand Herald  
that contrary to expectations she has no intention of recommitting her rewritten bill back to the people.  
Today I heard the Hon Chris Carter say that that is the way things should be done with regard to the dog legislation. The Minister for the Environment has stated quite firmly that she has no intention of doing so. I bring our concerns to the House and the concerns of many more outside this place that if the Minister has rewritten vital parts under the democratic process that bill should either be resubmitted or should lie in this House for a reasonable amount of time allowing for representations to be made. That is the only way that this legislation can be a valuable resource for developing the community in the future.