Cunliffe David: General Debate 
Cunliffe David: General Debate 
[Volume:676;Page:21730] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 This is the last general debate of this parliamentary term. It is the last week of this parliamentary term. National’s summing up of its achievements was heralded by the great Maurice Williamson. Where was the Prime Minister? Where was the Minister of Finance in a week when economic history has been made? It is also the last week of the school term and I guess the public could be forgiven for confusing the two because sometimes this place resembles a schoolyard brawl. 
But occasionally we get the opportunity to rise above that or we get it enforced upon us: a report card or two that do not come from within this classroom but from assessors outside it. It is appropriate that this House reflects in this week of all weeks upon the report cards that have been given to New Zealand. Can we imagine when Mr English gets home and opens his school report that he finds he has a D—indeed a DD? It is a DD based on an objective assessment not of national standards but of international standards—international standards that have been laid bare for all to see. 
The first one is for total debt. He got a D for that because New Zealanders have borrowed too much and he has done nothing about it. The total level of debt is now close to that of southern Europe. This Government has put New Zealand in the company of the only one-quarter of OECD counties that have been downgraded in the last 3 years the others being Greece Ireland Portugal Spain Iceland Italy and the United States. That is the performance of this Government according to the international referee—the international assessment. The Government has got a D for not applying itself to the capital gains tax that could have solved that international debt problem. 
The second criterion in the international standards is the current account deficit; the Government got a D for overdependence on commodity exports. It got a D for a widening current account. The Minister of Finance might like to spend his whole time in question time talking about previous Governments but the fact remains that in his Budget the current account widens every year for the next 5 years to 7 percent of GDP in round numbers. That is the standard that he has been assessed upon. Forget parliamentary debate; just think about the facts this week. The public has access to an international assessment. 
He also got a D for savings performance. That is hardly surprising after cutting KiwiSaver and starving the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. How was he going to get a pass mark on that one? The recommendation is that he apply himself to a strong savings policy like the other kids at school are bound to do. We will see whether he does. 
If that was not enough in this last week of term as well as international standards the Government got a dose of its own. It got national standards from the Auditor-General no less. The answer to those national standards was not to try harder—“could do better”—it was that the Government has lost billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money because the Minister could not exercise the most basic routine oversight. What did the national standards assessors say? They said that the New Zealand Treasury was not even up to monitoring finance companies that it had guaranteed the loans of because it did not want to intervene. Hang on it had already guaranteed the loans! Money was flooding in to expand its debt books by a factor of 1000 percent and Treasury did not want to monitor it because it would have been interventionist. Is that not ideology gone wrong? What did the Minister of Finance do about it? In the face of this appalling lapse of governance he did precisely nothing. 
Did he believe that the market would solve all these problems? We had 10 finance companies go belly up. The most important was South Canterbury Finance. The Minister intervened there to make sure the Government did not accept a recapitalisation package that would have limited the taxpayers’ loss to $500 million. How much have they lost now? It is $1.2 billion—$700 million extra. At lunchtime as Phil Goff said we had the honour to attend a lunch paid for by Parliament’s cleaners. They paid for it and we enjoyed the lunch on them. They are paid $13.50 an hour and this Government lost $700 million because it believed in the righteous market.