Joyce Steven: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeJoyce Steven: General Debate[Sitting date: 04 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15235. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development): I moveThat the House take note of miscellaneous business. This afternoon yet again we have had another couple of revealing glimpses of the true state of the New Zealand Labour Party. There are two particular points this afternoon—firstly during question time and I have to say the incredibly lazy incredibly deluded performance of the Opposition leader who turned up and wasted three-quarters of his side’s questions on a lazy attack on the Prime Minister which was of absolutely no substance. There was absolutely no preparation. It had absolutely no point. And on top of that he was well and truly spanked by the Prime Minister. It is not as if this was the first time. The Opposition leader persists in coming down here with his airs and graces and pretending that he knows stuff and absolutely is as shallow as a puddle.Speaking of shallow puddles the second glimpse we got of the New Zealand Labour Party this afternoon was its incredibly shallow political attack on the Programme for International Student Assessment results. Actually it is quite revealing if you have a look at it because Labour’s first move actually happened yesterday when it broke an international 34-country embargo to score a shallow political procedural stunt in this House before the results were released. That has to be the most juvenile approach to what is a serious subject for New Zealand. Then having made the juvenile attackwhich was completely over the heads of most New Zealanders it proceeded to attack the Government for the results. Well let me tell you one thing. These results if we want to be political about it were nurtured and created by the previous Labour Government.Some maths lessons for the Opposition: 15-year-olds last year were 5-year-olds in 2002 and they were 3-year-olds in 2000. They spent their entire preschool and primary school years in Labour’s utopian school system. People in glass houses should not be throwing stones. Mr Hipkins worked then for theuber-Minister of Education one T Mallard—he of the “The world is lying.” sort of accusation—and the deal is that they were the Labour Government’s results. We can all accept that the numbers have declined and that means frankly that we are all responsible as a country. And because of the time it takes for education results to appear everybody in this House has to have a look at themselves because this decline is not new. It has been around for a while. So even now the maths decline—what were the numbers in 2009? Thirteen. They have declined since then. But what were they in 2000? We were at four 2000 so we declined then. So if the criticism is of the National Government now then what about that period? It is adolescent of Mr Hipkins I have to say to blame the current Government. Let us accept that there has been a decline.So what new innovative things are parties proposing to actually achieve with this stuff? Well partnership schools—a National Party initiative. Network for Learning—a National Party initiative. Participation targets in early childhood education—a National Party initiative. The Youth Guarantee—a highly successful National Party initiative. National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 targets performance-linked funding in tertiary education and national standards in primary schools—we need more of this innovation not less. You cannot manage what you cannot measure and the Labour Party and the Green Party in this House today using measures to criticise the Government for having measures was ironic. That is what they were doing. They were saying that the Programme for International Student Assessment measures are the things that we should have to criticise the Government for measuring national standards. If that is not hypocrisy what is?The sad part about it is that the Labour Party and the Green Party have no solution except to wind everything back. That is the trouble for the Labour Party and that is the other thing we have noticed today: the lazy inept attack on national standards and the fact that it has done absolutely no work on policy in this area except to say that it would roll it back. That says that the Labour Party is lazy. The Labour Party after 5 years in Opposition is still arrogant because it still believes that it does not need any new policies to get itself re-elected. I have one suggestion for those members. When they go away in the break for goodness’ sake do some work because your laziness is showing.