Clark David: Debate on Budget Policy Statement 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clark David: Debate on Budget Policy Statement 
[Sitting date: 13 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8494. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 Well that speech was certainly a triumph of style over content and that is certainly saying something. This Government has the worst economic record in 50 years. That is something we need to put on the record right from the start. We have this picture building of a Government with an awful awful awful record of achievement. We see the unemployment rate up to the highest levels it has been at since the 1990s. We had 30000 jobs out of the economy last year and we have 1000 New Zealanders a week leaving for Australia. The statistics will be worse for that. 
Why is it not working we ask. It is because this Government does not really seem to have an economic plan and that was laid bare in the Finance and Expenditure Committee. We saw a Government whose only plan currently is to sell down our best revenue-generating assets. Treasury says that will take us backwards by $100 million a year. That is its plan. Its previous plan was to mine national parks. That is gone. It does not have any ideas so it is selling off farms it is selling our assets and it is trying to do crony deals for pokie machines. It is cronyism that really sits at the heart of this Government’s economic policy and it simply is not working. The facts show it is not working. The wage gap with Australia is growing. It has gone from $120 a week to $180 a week in the last 4 years. So this Government is simply not meeting its promises. It is disappointing New Zealanders. But that cronyism that is their economic policy it seems is something that is being laid bare. 
We know that there has been a very cosy relationship and a costly relationship between this Government and its State-owned asset in Solid Energy. We know—we know—that the shareholding Ministers had facts at their disposal and they did not intervene. Either they trusted too much or they did not ask the hard questions or they thought that if they threw a bit more money at it—at the directors’ fees—it would go away. What we know is that they did have a very cosy relationship. They are not talking much about it now but this picture tells us that they had a pretty cosy relationship. Here we see the Minister of Finance with the then Chief Executive of Solid Energy Don Elder developing one of the now mothballed projects. At the same time it was borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars—hundreds of millions of dollars—at the taxpayers’ expense. I am picking that tomorrow when the State-owned enterprises come in when Don Elder comes in to talk to the select committee we will see New Zealanders asking then whether Bill English will be sitting with him and whether Bill English will have his hand on Don Elder’s tool tomorrow. That is what New Zealanders will be asking. 
So we see this cosy costly relationship with the State-owned assets. We see a Government that is failing to deliver jobs and there is no hope. We have got an economic development Minister who is no better and a Ministry of Economic Development that does not even have a Minister in charge of it. The closest thing we have got is Mr Joyce who is called the Government’s “Mr Fix-it”. If you say that with a strong Kiwi accent you get a lot closer to the truth I reckon. This is not delivering jobs. This Government is not delivering jobs and Kiwis are feeling it. Kiwis in the regions are really struggling right now and they know that this Government is not delivering. Despite it promising to close the wage gap with Australia that has grown. Despite it saying “Your loved ones won’t go offshore” the number leaving is 1000 a week—record numbers to Australia. It is a short-sighted and petty Budget that it has delivered picking the pockets of paper boys and increasing class sizes. But it has no new ideas to grow the economy. That is why it is going wrong. That is why it has got the worst economic growth record of any Government in the last 50 years.