English Bill: General Debate 
English Bill: General Debate 
[Volume:676;Page:21506] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Prime Minister) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. I think it is a long time since there has been such a level of public interest in economic issues in this county. It has been a long time since so many New Zealanders were so interested in international events particularly those of the last couple of months and so interested in the connection between those international events and their own prospects for jobs and incomes. One would think that with such a high level of public interest—which is justified because of the scale of concern about international events—there would be some kind of robust debate about that in New Zealand. But one of the reasons there is not so much robust debate is because Opposition members cannot even organise a member’s question to their own select committee chairman. They cannot even organise a member’s question to their own select committee chairman let alone organise a reasonably testing economic debate. And we know why because we have looked at the Labour Party billboards. 
Members may recall that over recent years there was no way anyone could be on a Labour Party billboard except its leader. Now there is no way its leader can get on any Labour Party billboard. In fact the Labour Party has become so disorganised that its posters and billboards do not even ask voters to give their party vote to Labour—they do not. So there is no leader. There was always the leader and now there is no leader. It was always “Party Vote Labour” but now it does not mention the party vote at all. So Labour is now a collection of individuals campaigning to try to rescue their own seats. That is why they do not have the focus or the capacity to mount an economic debate at a time when any Government’s policy on the economy should be tested hard because the stakes are so high. 
I will just set out some of the progress the Government has made which is helping to give the public a sense of confidence about the direction New Zealand is going in through the increasingly rough seas of the global economy. One of the main measures used to measure New Zealand’s vulnerability to these events is called its net international investment position which is just the net of its debts and its assets held offshore. On that particular measure we have improved quite significantly in the last couple of years. Two years ago we were looking at over 80 percent of GDP of effectively net debt and were forecasting that to get worse. That put us up there with countries like Spain and Portugal which are now in trouble. In the last couple of years it has improved quite significantly to where it currently stands at about 70 percent of GDP. So the vulnerability has reduced by around 25 percent. We still have a long way to go. It would be great if New Zealand’s net international liabilities were under 50 percent of GDP. 
We are still at 70 percent but it has improved for two reasons. One is that New Zealand households have understood what is required in these economic circumstances which is care with their spending and more saving. They have changed their behaviour in quite significant ways to the benefit of the country as a whole as well as their own circumstances. The other reason it has changed frankly is that Statistics New Zealand has become better at counting the assets owned by New Zealand offshore particularly assets owned in Australia. We have made considerable progress on what has been one of our biggest vulnerabilities. I have to say though in the discussions I have had in the last couple of weeks the world at large has become much more sensitive to levels of debt. Whether it is private or sovereign it is just added all together and even though we are doing better we are under the microscope.