Shearer David: General Debate 
Shearer David: General Debate 
[Volume:678;Page:901] 
DAVID SHEARER (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. A couple of days ago the Government entered its 100th day in office since the election. It is a pretty shambolic and sorry sight that we are seeing after 100 days: a deficit of $12 billion—$12 billion—which is twice what the Prime Minister believes that the Government will get for our assets if it sells them; I mean that is if it gets anything like $6 billion. That is up to the finance Minister; that is just a best guess and not even a best guess actually—just a guess. So what we have is a $12 billion deficit—a $12 billion deficit—that this country is showing now which is an indication of where the economy is going. Income tax is down GST is down and company tax is 5 percent down. This is a shambolic start to the year. 
The only real offer on the table is to sell our way to this brighter future that we were promised at the election just 100 days ago. You sell your way to a brighter future and how do you do that when you flog off our most valuable farmland? That is a start; the Crafar farm deal is one way. And we know that there are at least 16000 hectares of land in front of the Overseas Investment Office today waiting for a decision—another 16000 hectares in addition to the Crafar farms. In fact thank you to Justice Miller who had the good sense to understand that actually you need to look at this land and understand whether it is in New Zealand’s best interests to sell this land and whether it brings real value to New Zealand. Justice Miller for telling us that actually Ministers do not have their hands tied. They do not have their hands tied when they come to look at these things but in fact they are able to make decisions based on New Zealand’s best interests. These Ministers—and Mr Williamson is here in the House right now—did not do that; he said that his hands were tied. 
But there is more. As I go around the country and I speak to people all over this country all of them say the same thing: why are we selling our land and why are we selling off our assets? That is what they all say. We will get in behind the citizens initiated referendum. We will get in behind that because that is exactly what New Zealanders want to see. They want to have an opportunity to oppose these asset sales. Why should they oppose them? Because they believe—most New Zealanders believe—we already own them. They ask me why we need to buy these assets again. And when you look at the popularity of the sale of these assets when you actually look at how many people really do support the sale you see it is only about a quarter of the people who support them; the rest oppose them. The rest are opposed to these asset sales and they oppose them because they are never going to get a look-in to buy them. That is the real reason. The only people who will are the quarter whom those people on the other side of the House here say they represent: the rich people who are going to be able to put up the money in order to buy those shares. 
The Government is going to sell these assets at the bottom of the market to people who can afford them and most New Zealanders are not able to buy those shares. We know that these people believe that many of these assets were guaranteed by the Prime Minister before the election and that mums and dads—mums and dads—would be at the front of the queue. That is what they were told when these sales came up. We know that none of that is true in the legislation. The legislation was put in front of this House and there is absolutely no guarantee. So we are just going to have to believe this Government that somehow mums and dads are going to be first in the queue. That is absolute nonsense. That is a broken promise and we know it. Not only that but we were promised that there was going to be a cap—a cap—on foreign ownership and we know that that is not going to be in the legislation either. We know that there is going to be no cap on foreign ownership in this legislation.