Shearer David: General Debate 
Shearer David: General Debate 
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DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 The speech made by Mr Tremain the member who has just resumed his seat is 5 minutes of my life that I will not get back. I will start by saying that economics is obviously not National’s strong point. The number of times I have stood in this Parliament and taken a call after a speaker has taken credit for the fall in interest rates and said it is the result of Government policy—my God! This is the result of a tsunami of different events throughout the world; it certainly has nothing to do with this Government’s policy. 
In the last couple of days we have heard that finally National has unleashed a new plan a new strategy. It is called muddling through—it is called muddling through. We have here a plan where we are not quite sure where we are going but we will sort of hopefully get there. We have a Minister of Finance who went across to the United States and met in Washington with all the heads of the IMF the World Bank etc. He came back and said the sky was falling—he was scaremongering—but our Prime Minister said: “Don’t worry; we’ll muddle through.” 
That is not a plan. Nor is what the Prime Minister has been articulating for the last 2 years and this is how it goes: Asia is getting richer; Asia will need more protein; New Zealand produces more protein; therefore we will be OK. That is not a strategy or a plan either. That is a hope that we can continue to do the same old stuff and we will still be able to muddle through and get there. Well it is not good enough and I will tell members why it is not good enough. 
The previous speaker talked about some statistics. The Government has an $18 billion debt. It inherited a surplus but it now has an $18 billion debt. GDP per capita is 3.6 percent lower now than in 2008. Half of the population of New Zealand has not had a pay increase in the last 12 months but they know that prices have gone up by 5.5 percent. There has been 0.1 percent growth in the latest quarter—the second quarter. That is 0.1 percent which is just above zero but not enough to keep up with population growth. In other words we are going backwards. Mr Key talked about growth today and he pointed out a graph. Under his breath he said that we are growing with the exception of Australia which is growing much faster. The gap between Australia and New Zealand is growing wider and wider. 
Earlier this year it was said that we were going to have an innovative science-led economic growth plan. It did not happen. In Budget 2011 we had a $12 million decrease in the amount of money we spend on science. More companies have queued up to get development grants—two-thirds—than have actually got any development grants. The innovative economy has been forgotten and we are back to muddling through and relying on those Asians buying our milk and meat and all those other things that we keep on producing because they are getting richer. 
The other thing that we rely on of course is the Rugby World Cup and the rebuild from the earthquakes. Again this is a hope; it is not a strategy. We do not see this Government coming up with any plan or strategy to move New Zealand forward. It is simply muddling through on the same old things that it has always muddled through on. The Government has chucked out tax credits and it has chucked out the money that could have gone into our agriculture sector. It is now putting in half of what Labour already had in place in 2008. Why did the Government chuck them out? Because it gave a whole bunch of tax credits to rich people who did not need them. That is what happened. That is why those particular programmes were canned. 
So here we are today just out from an election with a recession around the world about to happen according to the Minister of Finance and our Prime Minister says to everybody that it is OK and that we will muddle through.