Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): It is a privilege to be able to address this debate here today. I do want to start by acknowledging Mr Speaker on his appointment. I first met him back in the 1990s in the context of the parliamentary rugby side when he was a co-captain and I was a junior National speech writer. He never selected me for the playing XV; he always made me in charge of bringing the oranges on at half-time so I always thought he had it in for me. I'm hoping that in his new role he will look more favourably upon me in terms of taking a debate call in the House. I want to acknowledge you Madam Deputy Speaker for your appointment. It's a great thrill to have you in the Chair and I know that Parliament will be all the better for it.It's also nice to reflect that six years ago today was when I was fortunate to be here in Parliament and to second the Address in Reply debate and it was a very proud moment for me and my family. Also reflecting six years on how proud I am to have been part of the National Government and more latterly part of Cabinet which worked very hard alongside all New Zealanders to deliver a strong economy great job growth over the past few years and confidence in the future and reversing the flow of migration across the Tasman has been a wonderful thing to see in recent times. Sure the world is never perfect at any given stage. We all have challenges and we've seen the challenges of rapid growth around the country.I must say I was a little bit offended like many New Zealanders by Winston Peters' description of the situation that he was inheriting on the night of his point of decision. One lady I was talking to in the local supermarket said to me Imagine if a new CEO was just taking on a job and said 'Oh well the company's all going to go down the tubes in the next couple of years but don't blame me because it's all going down the tubes and I'm taking over this new role. But don't blame me—everything's going down the gurgler.' " It's such a bizarre way to start a Government and a bizarre way to frame the beginning of what is supposed to be a hopeful new Government. It was a deeply distressing moment for many of us. My only hope is that the leadership of the Labour Party will be able to deliver something better out of it than that.We have shown already that we are going to be an active and vigorous Opposition ready to hold the Government to account but of course we're also conscious of the fact that an important role in Opposition is to take the time to reflect and to think about the policies that we have brought the progress of the country and what we could do better in the times ahead. It seems to me that there are three challenges that I might refer to. One is the most fundamental challenge that we've always faced as a country and that is how to maintain and grow our international competitiveness because that is what our living standards ultimately rely upon.If I had a slight frustration during the campaign trail—I heard it a lot from the Opposition spokespeople including from David Parker who was standing with me in the Epsom electorate—it was this idea that "New Zealand is a wealthy country we should be able to afford to do X Y Z and people should have higher incomes." etc. etc. as if it is somehow based on a matter of "Right this is what we deserve as a country." Well there's nothing that we deserve that we don't earn from our own hard work and we earn those incomes only if we maintain international competitiveness in a very competitive world. So New Zealand businesses have to go out there and deliver a better product at a better price every year—year in year out—in a very competitive world. This idea that we can just keep adding costs to New Zealand businesses and that it will have no effect on our international competitiveness is of course nonsense. So we have to be very careful of that over the coming times and the early indications from this Government are pretty alarming.The second area is continuing to make progress on dealing with the long-term challenge of helping people off welfare and into work. We've been very successful in the past few years in creating up to 10000 new jobs every month in this economy which is the most powerful thing you can do for young people particularly and anybody wanting to find workers—to provide the jobs for them. We want to see that continuing. I do worry. We've also—and you Madam Deputy Speaker have been an integral part of this over the past few years around working with our welfare system to encourage people to get back to work and to look for work in every opportunity. We will be watching very closely to make sure that this Government doesn't go backwards on some of the progress that we've made in that area which has enabled people to have that satisfaction of work working on the basis that everybody can do something. Not everybody is in the position to be in full-time work—particularly with young children—but everybody can do something.Thirdly I think we should be thinking creatively about how we address what is a wider global issue that every developed country in the world is facing at the moment about how you deal with wealth inequality. We have seen during the last decade—since the global financial crisis with interest rates being at very historically low levels all around the world an explosion in asset prices all around the world including in housing—particularly in highly desirable countries such as New Zealand and highly desirable cities such as Auckland and Tauranga and Wellington—and that certainly has had an impact on wealth inequality. There's no question about that there's no debate about it and it is a very challenging issue. We as a Government worked very hard in this area primarily to increase the supply of new housing to take pressure out of that dynamic and we'll be watching very closely the efforts made by the new Government to take that further. Personally I think we will support things that will help but we'll be very actively thinking ourselves about how to make better progress in that area in the years to come.In the areas that I've picked up around tertiary—well it's a very interesting sort of situation that we've got here. What we have is—it was interesting. I was hearing the Prime Minister say this morning that Labour has a clear plan. After nine years in Opposition they've come in with a clear plan. But then she was on the radio this morning talking about immigration and the numbers and was not really clear about what they were doing there. I know during the campaign they promised quite clearly that they were targeting a reduction of international students by 15000 to 22000 a year. That's the specific target they had in their policy. I would make the point that last year we had about 70000-odd international students coming into New Zealand so we're looking at an explicit target of reducing the international education student numbers by about a quarter. If you think about that this is a $4.5 billion industry that employs upwards of 30000 New Zealanders. You don't have to be Archimedes to work out that if they do what they say they're going to do we're going to have hundreds of millions of dollars taken out of the New Zealand economy and thousands of New Zealanders losing their jobs over the next few years.They're not just jobs in terms of just teaching these international students but it's the international students who come and live here and work here it's the service industries that support them and the tourist industries that entertainment them when they finish their studies. So it drives me a little bit crazy to hear the Prime Minister saying how much she cares about people and how much this Government will care about people. Well what about the people who are going to be losing their jobs because they are cutting—lopping—one-quarter off the international education market? What about those thousands of people who get up every morning and do a good job for their clients or their international students who in their hearts want to go out and teach them and who get up in the morning and do their job with great satisfaction who are going to have that taken away from them because this Labour Government doesn't believe in that sector; doesn't believe particularly in private education in any way shape or form; and is particularly targeting the private training establishment sectors. What does she say to those people?Rest assured we will be watching very closely and making sure that that important sector remains robust and strong and can continue to contribute to our strong economy and to deliver jobs in this country as it has in the past few years. Like every industry in this country there are challenges in international education but the logical way to go about it is to focus on the enforcement of the rules and be active in that area but do not lop off a quarter of what is an important industry for this country. Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker."