King Annette: Appropriation (2010/11 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
King Annette: Appropriation (2010/11 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
[Sitting date: 03 August 2010. Volume:665;Page:12899. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 We have just heard from Mr Ryall who is not a nice man. He is not winning for the sick and vulnerable people of New Zealand. When we go around this country we hear that they call him “Minister of Cuts”. People tell us daily of cuts that are occurring in health and most of it is by stealth. People wake up and find they have had their health service cut only after he has passed through and after it is too late to do anything about it. He had the cheek to mention the Healthy Homes project but he forgot to tell the House and listeners that the National Government cut that project by 60 percent in this year’s Budget. But of course he says it is not a cut; it is only a change. 
In 2008 we saw from National so many promises so many commitments many political bribes so much hype and more slogans than Goebbels could produce. We could call 2008 the “Year of the Great New Zealand Con” because 2008 was the year that John Key sucked in thousands of New Zealanders by his great propaganda machine. He talked about a “brighter future”; the “unrelenting focus on catching up with Australia” the “turbocharged economy”; the “fresh start for young New Zealanders” the “step change” in every policy one could see. Amongst all of that he promised to keep all Labour’s major policies. He said he would also keep those and that is why the media called him “Labour-lite”. 
Then we have to remember that the very policies that he said he would keep he voted against when he was in Opposition. He voted against Working for Families; he called it “communism by stealth”. But in the election campaign he promised that he would keep that “communism by stealth” programme. He does not now recognise that the programme lifted 130000 families out of poverty and last week in the House he had the cheek to say that the previous Government had done nothing about poverty. 
The Minister promised to keep interest-free student loans but in Opposition he said it was “irresponsible economic vandalism” and that National members would oppose it with every bone in their body. I say to them now: “Where is their spine?” because one part of their body has disappeared. National members were going to oppose it with every bone in their body but in the promise—the great New Zealand con—they promised they would keep interest-free student loans. National said it would keep the 20 free hours early childhood education policy but then it took out the word “free” and now we know what it means. It means “free with a fee”. 
National also opposed the seabed and foreshore legislation. How many members of this House have forgotten the “Iwi/Kiwi” billboards? National ran that campaign against Maori up and down New Zealand to divide this country and that has been forgotten by the National Government. It was all about optics when National was in Opposition. Now I believe that New Zealanders are starting to see through the great New Zealand con. They are saying they voted for a different Government. On a daily basis Opposition members—whether getting into a taxi meeting people on the street walking through the supermarket or collecting for charity somewhere—have people coming up to them and saying: “This is not the Government we thought we were getting. This Government is not giving us what we voted for.” I say that this Government cannot make decisions. It cannot make a decision and stick with it. It seems to us that the last person who spoke to John Key leads to the decision he makes that day. 
Today we have found out it is even worse than that; we now have “Government by Google”. Imagine that! We must be the first country in the world that has “Government by Google” as the chief Opposition whip has called it. When Government members want to find out what is happening they put a word into the Google machine a computer and out spits all the comments that they want. They do not do research they do not do any work they do not have a plan; they just have “Government by Google”. Government members do not have the internal fortitude to stick to their principles and policies. They do not stick to a plan. Why do they not stick to a plan? The answer is simple: they do not have a plan. It is so obvious now to all New Zealanders; there is no plan from the National Government in this country. It really is funny if it were not so sad. 
This is National’s plan: “Building the Recovery” policy statements. It is empty except it is copyright and also has an address on it for a Mr Oldershaw. Perhaps we should ring him and ask him what happened to the plan because the Prime Minister cannot tell us the Minister for Economic Development cannot tell us and the Minister of Finance cannot tell us. I ask whether there is anybody over there who can tell us what the economic plan is for this country. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: The next speaker can. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Nick Smith is the next speaker. If people can understand what he says they might hear a little bit of a plan. At least he has tried to have a bit of a plan even though everybody is laughing at it. 
There is no plan particularly around National’s biggest promise which is its biggest con of all. You see New Zealanders are proud people and we really like to compare ourselves with our closest neighbour. We like to think that we can beat the Australians at things like rugby on Saturday nights. The Prime Minister at that time the Leader of the Opposition said: “We will close the gap with Australia by 2025.” There were no ifs no buts or an aspirational “maybe” or “we will lead towards it”. When he said: “We will close the gap with Australia by 2025.” New Zealanders believed him. They believed that there would be a closing of the gap in wages in skills and in education. In anything we liked there would be a closing of the gap. 
This is the plan now. It is not written anywhere but behind the Government’s own closed doors and in smoke-filled rooms its members are saying: “We can’t do it. We can’t close the gap but we are going to fudge it. Let us now say it is aspirational.” The Government says that it is still committed to closing the gap even though it knows it can never make it. If we do not believe our goals and we do not have a plan we will never achieve anything. This Government is so good at telling us what the score will be but it never tells us how we will get to that score. It is a pretty crazy way of going about running a country. It is easy to tell people what one thinks the score would be; it is much harder to say what the game plan is to be able to reach that score. 
The Government does not have a plan. It has no commitment to this country. Fortunately New Zealanders have an alternative party that does have a plan. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Oh! 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: I tell members opposite that our plan is not secret or covert. It is not one that even those members do not know; every New Zealander will know Labour’s economic plan. We had one in Government and it saw us have the lowest unemployment rate in the world. It saw us with net Government debt and as a country that was growing that had invested in our young people and in apprenticeships and that had invested in the future in terms of savings. Labour got New Zealanders saving and we got families working. We invested in social services. 
That was the legacy for National and every day its members stand in this House and try to pretend that the recession we have gone through was the worst since the 1930s. I can tell Nick Smith that there were more people unemployed in this country when National last went out of office than there were in this latest recession. The Government has done nothing to address the current unemployment rate; in fact the Budget is predicting that in 5 years’ time unemployment will still be above what it was in 1999. [ 
Interruption 
] I tell that member to read his own Budget documents. That is what we are getting from this National Government. There is no plan to reduce unemployment no plan for a skills strategy and no plan for growth in this country. Anything the Government is doing is based on reducing the rights and the incomes of working New Zealanders not based on any growth or strategy that it could put in place.