Goff Phil: General Debate 
Goff Phil: General Debate 
[Volume:626;Page:21146] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. Come election day New Zealanders will have a very clear choice. On one hand they can vote to continue the stable and competent governance that this Labour-led Government has given to the country for the last 6 years: 260000 additional jobs; an unemployment rate amongst the lowest in the Western World; growth rates amongst the highest in the Western World; a net New Zealand debt that is headed for the first time to zero; and a Government that has shown concern to invest in the critical areas of looking after our elderly providing quality education and providing quality health. 
On the other hand they can opt for a New Zealand First - National coalition. The performance and track record of such a coalition in the late 1990s was an absolute disaster. It was a Government that underperformed and a Government in which the leaders of National and New Zealand First could not get on together; their egos were too large. It was a Government that had record-high unemployment figures that slashed social expenditure that ran down social infrastructure that gave us the INCIS debacle and that fell apart in disarray. The same components are still there on the other side of the House. 
On election day New Zealanders have another clear choice. They have the choice between the competence and good judgment shown by Helen Clark and the bumbling incompetence and the flip-flops of Don Brash. Don Brash is the man who said at the time of the foot-and-mouth scare that we should have covered up that threat—a step that would have totally destroyed our credibility as a trading country a step that would have irreparably damaged our interests. Don Brash made that comment and the National Party’s spokesperson on agriculture is putting his head under the desk because he knows that what I have said is true. 
Don Brash is the man who went to Australia and described his own country—this country—as just another small broke Pacific island. Don Brash is the man who said against 80 percent of New Zealand public opinion that we should have gone to war in Iraq and that we should have committed our troops there. Don Brash is the man who left New Zealand the day after the Boxing Day tsunami to lie on a beach in Hawaii for 2 weeks. He said nothing. He then came back to New Zealand to criticise the hard-working New Zealanders who had been trying to alleviate the destruction and human misery caused by the tsunami. Don Brash is the man who could not remember that he had told American congressmen that the nuclear policy would be gone by lunchtime. 
That man has no credibility. He has even less credibility when we see him as the man who came into this Parliament as a man above politics a man of principle—who then flip-flopped on every principle he had ever believed in. He was against the “Cullen fund”; suddenly he was for it. He was for selling off State assets; suddenly he reversed his position. He was the man who said a National Government would repeal the 4 weeks’ holiday pay; suddenly he reversed his position. 
Don Brash was the man who told us that before Christmas we would have a Budget with tax cuts—and John Key said the same thing—but within a week he had retracted that completely. The reason was that the OECD came out with a statement that made it clear such tax cuts would be grossly inflationary which is something of course that Don Brash had said all the way through his term as Governor of the Reserve Bank. 
There is a very clear choice on election day: New Zealanders can go for the sort of social support and targeted assistance given to ordinary hard-working families through the Working for Families package or they can go for tax cuts that will overwhelmingly benefit the elite that Don Brash and John Key represent in this House. 
I am proud of the fact that we have a Working for Families policy that will dramatically lift out of poverty the number of children currently living below the poverty line. I am proud of the fact that in my electorate the Working for Families package on 1 April this year gave ordinary working families with three kids an extra $55 a week. The Aussie Budget came out—a $22 billion package—and gave ordinary working families just $6 a week.