Parker David: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Parker David: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 21 July 2010. Volume:665;Page:12535. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 If the Minister of Labour who has just resumed her seat is so proud of the effective protections that come from the good-faith provisions of the Employment Relations Act I ask why she refused to acknowledge yesterday in this House that under the 90-day trial period legislation employees can be fired without any reason being given. They will not know the reason why they have been fired. They may have given up a prior job to take the new one but they can be fired without any reason being given up to 90 days after starting the job. The Minister will not admit that not because she does not know it but because she knows that it does not appeal to New Zealanders who know it is just not fair. 
The Minister of Labour is also the Minister of Conservation. Given the controversies this week we would have expected some defence of the Government’s performance in respect of mining in national parks but despite the fact that that has been such a terrible mistake on the part of the Government the Minister of Conservation did not once acknowledge her role try to defend her conduct or try to defend the Government position. 
That is just not good enough. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Beyond belief. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: It is beyond belief. I think the most serious aspect of the debate on mining that has been exposed by the Opposition in the second stage is actually the flow-on analysis of what is missing from the Government’s policy. It was always a mistake to suggest mining in national parks. It was always a mistake. 
At the last election Gerry Brownlee was already on record as saying that he believed coal to be sexy. In fact one chapter of the video blog on his website he entitled: “Sexy Coal”. I would have thought that to be a bit of a warning to members of the National Government that they should keep an eye on him. Given that the burning of coal is responsible for about half of the greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels in the world the world actually does not want to see a lot more burning of coal I say to Mr Brownlee. It is not sexy. It is not the way forward for the New Zealand economy. 
Against that background the National Government let him go out last year and say that New Zealand was going to catch up with Australia by mining our national parks and that mining was going to cause a step change in the New Zealand economy. For a start it was never going to cause a step change in the New Zealand economy. Only about 10 percent of the difference between New Zealand’s wealth and Australia’s wealth in income terms arises from mining. He had no answer for the other 90 percent anyway but now he has abandoned the cure he though he had for that 10 percent difference. 
I thought question time today was quite illuminating. Where is his plan now that he has bungled mining his way into the future? Where is his plan? 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: There never has been a plan. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Mr Cosgrove is quite right. There is no alternative plan. 
Mr Brownlee said that if we asked him some other questions he would tell us. So I put to him one of the Prime Minister’s other big ideas—that is that somehow New Zealand will become a financial services hub for the world. I asked him what papers he had taken to Cabinet about that idea. He has taken none. 
John Key hops from cloud to cloud: the cycleway the 9-day working fortnight mining in national parks a financial services hub and building broadband with Chinese money. He has had one idea after another yet none of them—not one of them—has come to fruition. Not one of them has stacked up in any significant way. 
The underlying question I ask this Parliament to consider is what has happened to the promise to catch up with Australia a promise upon which the National Government was elected. I asked Gerry Brownlee at a select committee the other day about how we should judge how the Government is doing on that promise. I asked him what targets the Government has set and what its objectives are. He said that it does not have any. He actually admitted that it does not have any objectives and targets other than the ambition to get there by 2025. That is 15 years away. Not even in the worst nightmares of people who go along to horror movies like  
A Nightmare on Elm Street 
 do they think that the National Government will still be in power in 2025. So I ask how the Government will be held accountable for whether it meets its ambition of catching up to Australia by 2025. Plainly it has no plan and no targets and it should be held to account.