Robertson Grant: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: General Debate[Sitting date: 14 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7211. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Former Prime Minister of New Zealand and now our ambassador in Washington Mike Moore once said that the problem with Tim Groser is that he did not get enough credit for splitting the atom. I think that with Mr Groser’s approach today we are still looking to know whether or not the $3 million that he says was the cost of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement was just his minibar bill—or was it the whole thing? That is what we want to know from Tim Groser.Today the National Government and Bill English announced his first surplus—one out of seven. Meat Loaf used to say that two out of three ain’t bad. I am not sure what he would make of one out of seven but Bill English did it today. At this point in the economic cycle New Zealanders should expect a Government to post a surplus. We are talking about a period of time covered by these annual accounts when dairy payouts were over the $8 mark. There is 3 percent growth. The last time we had 3 percent growth in New Zealand there was a $7 billion surplus and unemployment was under 4 percent. That was under a Labour Government.Fast forward to a National Government and we have 3 percent growth a $441 million surplus—and we will come back to how that has been created—and unemployment nudging up against 6 percent. The question the National Government has to answer is: who is the economy for in this situation? Who is benefiting from this so-called surplus? Is it the 305000 New Zealand children growing up in poverty? Should they be thrilled today that Bill English has manufactured a surplus by bodgying around with the figures? Is it the 148000 New Zealanders who are unemployed today? Should they be pleased that Bill English managed to cut a bit of spending here to not pay out on the earthquake there and to overcharge ACC by $350 million? Should they be happy about that? It seems to me that what we heard today from the National Party is that the political target of a surplus was more important than what we should as a country be trying to achieve with the economy. Time after time with this National Government it has been about what it thinks it can get away with—what it thinks it can hide from the New Zealand public instead of what it can actually do to use the economy to improve people’s lives to reduce inequality and to give opportunities to children who need special education support.There is an underspend in these accounts that have been released today of $235 million in education. Part of that is the Ministry of Education’s failed experiment to try to force “super-principals” on schools. Another part of it is special education funding that has not been spent and there is not an electorate member in this House who has not had a visit from a parent whose child has been denied the special education support they need. That is what the Government celebrates today: $50 million - odd underspent in health underspending in housing and underspending in law and order. It is making up a surplus while $350 million is overcharged to New Zealand individuals and businesses for their ACC.This surplus today means Bill English will be able to put his hand up and say: “I got one. I got one out of seven.” Interestingly he would not commit today to anything more than that. He was asked whether there would be more. In fact I nearly raised a point of order. I would have stretched your patience Mr Speaker. I nearly raised a point of order during question No. 1 today—the patsy question—because the second half of it was not answered. He was asked whether there would be surpluses into the future and the answer he gave in his press conference today was no. He knows that it will not happen because the New Zealand economy today is in trouble and it is partly in trouble because of the failure of this Government over 7 years to rebalance the economy. There has been a failure to diversify to support diversification to support added value and to actually do something to create opportunities in our regions and the failure to do that means that this surplus is a one-off blip. It is not going to be repeated.Yes Bill English will be able to say he got one out of seven. He can look back at Michael Cullen and see a surplus year after year after year and he will never achieve that because as the Minister of Finance he has not acted to create the economy that can deliver sustainable surpluses. But in the end surpluses mean nothing if the economy is not giving opportunity to all New Zealanders and if the economy is not addressing the inequalities that exist. There was outrage when Bill English stood up today and told us that the tax cuts of 2010 somehow or other improved equality in New Zealand. They did not. They widened the gap. It is a pitiful surplus that has been announced today but the more pitiful thing is that there is no plan in this economy to grow sustainable jobs and reduce inequality.