Bakshi Kanwaljit Singh: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBakshi Kanwaljit Singh: General Debate[Sitting date: 14 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17843. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): Thank you for the opportunity to speak in this general debate today. I begin by congratulating our Prime Minister and our Minister of Finance on their leadership in managing the New Zealand economy outstandingly. We in the National Party were handed over an economy that was in a dismal state a country where most of the skilled youth were inclined to migrate to Australia because they could not see a future for themselves in their own country. Not only was our talented and skilled labour force migrating out of New Zealand we were failing to attract skilled migrants to our shores.It is with great pride today that each of us in the National Party can share with you and with all New Zealanders that due to the strong leadership provided by the Prime Minister John Key and the pragmatic approach taken by our finance Minister Bill English they have turned New Zealand into what not too long ago was described as and as noted by an economist from HSBC the rock star economy.In case anyone in the Opposition feels that this was an easy task let me be blunt and say that it took a lot of hard work in the past almost 6 years to undo the damage that was done by our Opposition colleagues when they were in Government. It is because ofthis hard work that we are optimistic that our economy is on the right track to reach our goal of a Budget surplus this year.Our migrant community has played an active role in the success of our economy. At the start of my speech I alluded to Kiwis leaving the shores of New Zealand for Australia because in their opinion Australia can provide a better lifestyle. The Australian Government yesterday presented its Budget for 2014-15 and from what any common person can understand the Government in Australia has to address a number of challenges through that Budget. The challenges posed to the Australian economy are without doubt due to the reckless spending by the previous Australian Labor-Green coalition Government. A recent study by Deutsche Bank says that Australia is one of the most expensive countries in the world. The Australian Prime Minister has said that the Budget presented by the finance Minister is a problem-solving Budget because Australia has very serious problems of debt and deficit stretching as far as the eye can see but that it is also a nation-building Budget.Therefore I urge all New Zealanders to seriously consider the pragmatic work done by the National Party Government in the past 6 years and start to imagine the negative consequences that a Labour-Green Government can have on the 6 years of hard work done by the National Government. In India there is a saying “Jitne chadar ho utne peer phelana.” which means to live within one’s own means. We in the National Party believe in living within our own means. By comparison all other Opposition colleagues do not share the same thought and have a shared spending plan like the recent opening of the Green Investment Bank. The question they have to ask themselves is of course: where is the money coming from?Here I would like to share that the migrants who come over here have got dreams to be successful. I would like to give an example. Some of my fellow Indians started as taxi drivers but today I see a lot of them are progressing. They are going into the trucking business and here I would like to quote the latest survey by the ANZ Heavy Traffic Index. The index which reflects our truck movement on 11 roads selected because they have historically given good indications of economic activities at the time rose 0.5 percent just in the last month. To me this is a very encouraging statistic as this means that despite—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.