Jones Shane: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Jones Shane: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:674;Page:20415] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 I follow Mr Parker as the Minister in the chair the Acting Minister of Economic Development the Hon David Carter has just woken up and realised that he should have exercised the opportunity to address the challenges laid down by Mr Parker. That inattention that sort of soporific pose he ordinarily strikes is reflective of his stewardship in this portfolio. Gerry Brownlee to his credit did not do a great deal other than try to mine Great Barrier Island and try to mine the Coromandel. On top of that he ensured that New Zealand’s tourism industry would definitely fail after he decided to try to mine Tongariro Ngauruhoe Ruapehu and the national parks. But that man was inordinately more active than this character who sits here who has distinguished himself by promoting water schemes that lead to endless questions in the House as to whether he should have anything to do with them. This is the most derelict Minister we have had in such a key portfolio. 
Where are the jobs that this Minister is able to produce? Where are the thousands and thousands of jobs that young Kiwi families need for their sons and daughters? That is a reasonable question to ask of an Acting Minister of Economic Development. What does he tell us? He tells us that the Chinese should make and engineer the railway wagons for KiwiRail. What we will see as a result of that is such a level of hostility by patriotic Kiwis employed in that industry. I cannot imagine that they will be motivated to look after those wagons knowing that the wagons represent the blinkered view of this Minister who wants to deprive Kiwis of the chance to manufacture develop skills and create things. What society can create wealth if the people’s skills are not being used or exploited? Not one idea has come from this man. 
In addition to that regional development is in a state of decay. There is not a regional council and there is not a local council that has any confidence that this Government has generated a policy or a programme designed to stimulate activity amongst small to medium sized firms in the provinces. All the Government believes is that by building larger roads as the “Minister of Warkworth” Steven Joyce continues to do and backing uncritically the intensification of agriculture—ignorant of the effects it has in terms of the worsening of the host environment—somehow that will generate the hundreds of thousands of jobs New Zealand families are looking for over the next decade. I realise that the Government treats the Australasian labour market as its primary focus of attention but I never thought for a moment that the key element of its agenda was to drive people away from South Auckland and other areas into Australia rather than to invest back in our own country. 
What is the Government doing in relation to investment so we generate more jobs and exports? I accept that it does not believe that that is its job. Government members are of that discredited Milton Friedmanite approach to the economy—“Close your eyes take your hands off the wheel leave it on autopilot etc. and Kiwis through some Darwinistic process will take care of themselves.” Well Kiwis are getting poorer. More kids are going to school suffering as a consequence of malnutrition and are not able to learn properly. Why is that? Because there is no recipe to address the fundamental things people are looking for: a growing economy I say to the Minister; jobs I say to the Minister; and most important a living wage which is something one would imagine would lie at the pith of an economic development strategy. But as I said those members do not believe in any of this; they believe that by doing very little and by privatising the jewels in our crown our State-owned assets somehow a massive dynamic of creativity imagination and job creation will be unleashed by the Australians and the foreigners who own our assets. That reflects an incredible level of naivety as to how the international economy really works. We under this Minister are pursuing a foolish level of purity while the people we trade with and deal with are far more pragmatic. We watch the Minister navigating us on to the rocks—rocks not so much of treachery as the Government’s treachery is to the young people it has sold out but rather those of the consequence of our being left behind while the rest of the world marches on with no jobs and no innovation.