English Bill: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeEnglish Bill: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 28 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5397. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): It is good to hear the Greens bring to the Opposition part of this debate a little bit of logic. I do not agree with everything the co-leader of the Greens said but he made a lot more sense than Grant Robertson did. I could follow his argument. It was starting from some wrong premises but nevertheless you could see where it was going. You know that even if you disagree with their critique of Government policy the Greens have an alternative view of the world and in its own way on its own planet it has got some coherence. You cannot say that about the Labour Party—you cannot.Just before I come to that I just want to correct one or two of the things that the member James Shaw said. He has the benefit of being a new leader. Therefore he is not responsible I suppose for the positions previously taken by the Greens but I have to say that the Greens’ crocodile tears for the dairy industry would be slightly insincere from anyone else in their caucus with their having spent the last 10 years kicking the dairy industry as the destroyer of the planet. It creates the only type of pollution that is almost as bad as people in the Greens’ world. So that is one thing he does not have to take too much responsibility for but I accept that the Greens now have a much more balanced view about the role of the dairy industry in the New Zealand economy which is that it produces jobs exports incomes increments in wealth and the opportunity for the Government to take some of that in tax and pay for other things. So I hope the Greens are going to stick to that position. At least it is more coherent than the Labour Party one.The other area where he was a bit more coherent was around the issue of consumption and expenditure versus exports and investment. That certainly is a challenge for the New Zealand economy. The Labour Party ought to listen because the co-leader of the Greens—and he is not even the finance spokesperson—seems to be able to articulate that kind of logic without sounding like he is a student politician trying to impress a bunch of first-year students in a lecture hall in their lunch break to see whether he can get them out on a protest about student loans which is what the Labour Party still sounds like. It still sounds like that.Mind you it must be difficult being a spokesman for the Labour Party. I mean at least the Greens are against free trade. They like fair trade—I am not exactly clear why but they do—and they are against free trade. Well it must be hard to represent the Labour Party’s position because it is for it and against it and interestingly that does not seem to create much tension for Grant Robertson. It does not seem to matter that those members are totally contradictory just like they are for and against migration. I have finally figured out the Labour Party formula: those members are all for having migrants from China as long as they stay homeless. That is fine. As long as they are homeless migrants they are most welcome as Labour members stand up in front of the Chinese New Year celebrations to acknowledge the role that this ethnic community is playing in the economy of New Zealand.I mean the fundamental problem with the contribution from the spokesman from the Labour Party—and we have pointed it out before in the House and I have yet to hear Labour address it—was this: dairy prices being high was bad for the New Zealand economy. We put up with that for years. Those members said that dairy prices being high meant we were not diversifying it meant that there was too much pollution and it meant that there were rich farmers on the pig’s back getting their carbon credits subsidised. So I thought: “Would it not be great if dairy prices dropped? That would solve all those problems.” Oh no. Now that dairy prices are down that is bad as well even if it achieves all the things that the Labour Opposition said should happen.That is the fundamental contradiction at the heart of Labour’s approach. The Greens are at least consistent. Labour does not believe in prices. Those members think that politicians should decide just to have a bigger part of the economy here and a smaller part over there. Well I look forward to the finance spokesperson for the Greens turning up again—Ms Genter—because I do not think it will take her very long at all to establish her credibility as the leading Opposition spokesperson on finance in the House.