English Bill: Debate on Budget Policy Statement 
English Bill: Debate on Budget Policy Statement 
[Volume:606;Page:3997] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 In the last 10 days we have seen the Labour Government abandon the economic goal that it set as its top priority the heart of its strategy back in 2001. Just as important we have seen it abandoned in a way that reveals the true nature of the Prime Minister and the Government which in the polite language of Parliament can only be characterised as “economy with the truth”. We have seen another block in a pattern of deception that goes back to the closing the gaps policy. That was once a flagship policy but the Prime Minister suddenly decided that it would disappear—while the committee the money and the programme still existed. Just recently we saw the revelation that at the same time that the Prime Minister was criticising statements I made about the SAS she had decided months in advance to bring them back by the end of last year. 
The tawdry display of semantic gymnastics that we have seen over the last week is a further example of this pattern of deception. Let us sort out some simple facts. Helen Clark set an economic goal which was to lift New Zealand into the top half of the OECD on per capita income by 2011 and the only person who says that never happened is her. But we have a welter a stack of public documents that include that goal. 
Hon Member 
: And a graph. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: And a graph—a famous graph. I will come back to that. So that is one fact; a goal was set. Then it turns out that the Prime Minister got some embarrassing advice after the goal was set. The embarrassing advice was from Treasury which basically concluded that it could not be done—that it would need to be a very long-term goal. In fact Treasury on the basis of the policy concluded this: “It appears more likely that New Zealand’s ranking among OECD countries will continue to fall.” No wonder she was worried about it. She had not taken advice and Treasury said that it could not be done. The next really puzzling decision of this Prime Minister who expects everyone to believe what she says was that she never told anyone. She never told anyone that she had been advised that the goal could never be achieved. She never told her Ministers. She never told the Deputy Prime Minister—because he kept repeating it as did his officials. She never told Dr Cullen. Why should we believe that? Something is wrong. If the Prime Minister discovers that a fundamental plank of a fundamental policy is totally unrealistic— 
David Benson-Pope 
: That member’s lost his marbles. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Does the member not believe her either? No he does not. She discovered that and she did not tell her Minister of Finance and her Deputy Prime Minister—or she did but they thought they would just keep on saying it anyway just like she said she would keep on saying it. So having abandoned the goal she did not tell anyone. We found out about this only because of a chance remark she made in reaction to some criticism from the knowledge wave conference. So the Government has abandoned its economic goal and it has no replacement. I would like to hear from the Minister of Finance today as to what his goal is because Treasury members will remember has said that New Zealand is likely to drop down the rankings. So even the goal of getting into the top half of the OECD at any time is regarded by the Government’s primary economic advisers as one it simply cannot achieve. So why does it not give that one away as well? What did we see instead of Helen Clark owning up and fronting up? We saw all this nonsense. 
Jill Pettis 
: You’re just shaking dead rats. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: The member is right: it is a dead rat. It is a dead rat that Labour members have to swallow particularly the Minister of Finance who has been left marooned by his own Prime Minister. He was left yesterday to paddle his canoe out of it by himself when it was all her fault. So now we have found out that this is the kind of semantic ballet we get. We found out that Helen Clark said—I think it was Michael Cullen who said it—that she did not set the goal; it was talked about by other people and she repeated it. That is one of the things we found out: she did not set the goal; it was talked about by other people and she just picked it up. I believe that that tells us something. It tells us that they were never really sincere about it. Helen Clark never meant it. She wandered into a brand new country that she has never been to—a country called “economic policy”—and picked up the nearest little glossy bauble. Then she thought: “Right I’m meant to be a centrist Government. I’d better talk about economic growth. What are they saying? Here it is. Heather put it in all the booklets and the publications.” But of course she never really meant it. Then we were given the excuse that it was actually the officials who set the goal by mistakenly repeating it in documents that the Prime Minister signed—documents that contained her little photo airbrushed a foreword graphs and her signature. So it is all the fault of the officials. 
Just 3 months ago Industry New Zealand which is at the heart of the economic strategy was still repeating the goal because it had never been told. Then we were told this and it is really good: “It wasn’t a formal goal.” The Prime Minister stood up in this Parliament and stated the goal in her speech—but that was not formal. What kind of nonsense do we have to put up with from a woman who cannot tell the truth? Of course it was formal. It was in the Prime Minister’s statement presented to the House of Representatives of New Zealand in a speech required by the Standing Orders. And it was not formal! What does that tell us? That it was informal! So the goal was informal everyone else talked about it and it was only in the graphs it was not in the text—it was informal. The formal goal was apparently in the document called  
Growing an Innovative New Zealand 
—the one of course that does include the graph which tells us that the Prime Minister— 
Katherine Rich 
: They’re getting upset. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: OK so the Minister of Finance is going to get up and explain how all this fits together so neatly— 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: To three of his members. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: —to three of his members because the rest of them are so embarrassed about what they have seen happen over 10 days in this House. The Prime Minister and Dr Cullen have had to crawl out of the undergrowth and own up to the dirty little secret: they never meant it; when they found out it could not be done they never told anyone; and their chief economic adviser has put up only one plausible scenario—that it can be achieved by 2049. That is in advice to the Government called “Climbing the OECD ladder: What does New Zealand have to do?” 
John Carter 
: Is that official? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: It is informal advice not formal. That is what we want to hear about in this debate. We want to hear what Dr Cullen’s economic goal now is. Otherwise we can only conclude that the Government is busy but it does not know why. I think that that is now the case. The Government is busy but it does not know why. It has abandoned its goal. We have found out that at the heart of this Government is a moral rottenness about the truth and I am so pleased that the public are now starting to see it.