Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Economic Development): In recent months highlighted again today the hollow men and women of the National Party—and they are disproportionately men in that old-fashioned party on the other side—have been exposed for their shallowness. For years and years they've run on a rhetoric that the then Opposition parties—Labour New Zealand First the Greens—couldn't be trusted because we were tax and spend parties and we were going to break the bank. Neither of those attacks were pressed home in any meaningful way today by the Hon Simon Bridges because they are no longer credible attacks. And absent those attacks which were never credible but were run for years the National Party is left bereft of ideas—bereft of ideas.When they're left with nothing but empty rhetoric like Simon Bridges promising tax cuts while at the same time he's undermined by Nikki Kaye as she burnishes her own credentials traipsing around the country calling for more education spending and for further pay increases for taxes and the current industrial dispute that they lament why is it that they are incredible in their old attacks: tax and spend" and "they'll break the bank."?It is because facts tell otherwise. We have a Budget surplus under this Government. Net Government debt is now under 20 percent of GDP. People shouldn't be surprised by that: the last Government of which I was part reduced net debt including the super fund to zero.Hon Member: Then what happened?Hon DAVID PARKER: Oh well then what happened was that the National Party changed the measure so that they could ignore their abandoning contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and they increased debt by about $60 billion to around 25 percent of GDP. This Government has reduced debt already to under 20 percent of GDP. We're running a Budget surplus while investing in important services in health and education which was so run down. Inflation is under control. Unemployment is low—one of the lowest rates it's been for over a decade and growth is strong. Now the other side they toss off and they say "Oh they make excuses about the rest of the world." So I thought I would just tell Amy Adams about what growth rates are in the rest of the world. In Europe the average is less than 2 percent; in the UK they've obviously got a few problems at the moment and some uncertainties; Japan is around 1 percent; in the USA the growth projected this year is 2.3 percent next year 2 percent in 2021 1.8 percent; and in Australia it's under 3 percent. Advanced economies overall are at 2.2 percent. What about New Zealand? Better: close to 3 percent in the forecast period; our growth prospects are strong. China is growing strongly but slowing. The challenges of Government are never finished. It's always easy under the National Party; they just manage things down. They take the good things that are done by prior Governments they nickel and dime they run down health and education services they run up debt they flog off assets and in the end they leave big societal problems like increasing inequality a health service that's struggling education underfunded and the economy really languishing. Long-term solutions are what New Zealand needs—and I'm going to turn particularly to the part of the speech that the Prime Minister made about growing and sharing New Zealand's economic prosperity more fairly. Long-term solutions are needed. Now I haven't got time to cover everything so I'm not going to cover the social challenges that my colleague the Hon Carmel Sepuloni raised and which were spoken to by the Prime Minister earlier; I'm going to talk a little bit about our volume-to-value journey. I heard Amy Adams there—she is so out of touch. She is an example of why the National Party aren't just drifting down in the polls; they are plunging backwards in the polls because they are not listening to New Zealanders who know that she is wrong when she said that there had been no changes in economic management under this Government. We've introduced the research and development tax credit. We campaigned on it to be at 12.5 percent. What are we delivering? Fifteen percent R & D tax credit across the economy a billion dollars of a tax break for businesses that invest in innovation over the next four years—a billion dollars to stimulate the development of the new points of comparative advantage that we need to increase the value of our exports to the rest of the world and to prosper in the world in this volume-to-value journey. What else are we doing? Well the regions in New Zealand—in fairness to the National Party they haven't just been ignored by them; it's actually been many decades since there has been adequate attention paid to the growth prospects of the regions. Since the neo-liberal takeover of New Zealand in the 1980s there's been very little regional development. Jim Anderton did a bit under the last Labour Government particularly in the forestry area but other than that there's been virtually none and there was certainly none under the last Government. The Provincial Growth Fund under the stewardship of the Hon Shane Jones is making an enormous difference: $1 billion per annum spent in the regions. In some areas it's infrastructure. Gisborne said that their pressing need was roading expenditure so that they could get their goods to port in order to grow their exports and for their jobs to thrive in those export industries. In other areas it's the development of businesses that just need a bit more capital so that they can reach those overseas markets and employ more people. In addition to that we've got the green growth fund because we're trying to achieve environmental growth within environmental limits and the green growth fund encourages that as does the Provincial Growth Fund. It is true that there are rising trade tensions in the world. It's not true that the Labour Party or the Labour Party in coalition with other parties in Government is the cause of them. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is under threat. We're trying to help fix it. There is rising protectionism on a bilateral basis and protectionist barriers are being erected in countries at an alarming rate greater than we have seen for many decades. Now what are we going to do about that? We've got to try and protect the WTO but you need insurance against that because we don't control that outcome even though we influence it. So we've got a very strong bilateral programme and plurilateral programme. Obviously the biggest news in the last year was finalising the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (CPTTPA). The prior Government had done some work on that and we thank them for that.Andrew Falloon: Oh! Some work? You protested against it.Hon DAVID PARKER: Well a lot of work—a lot of work. It was actually started by the prior Labour Government under Phil Goff but the last National Government after a decade in office couldn't land it. We did. We don't take all of the credit but we take a little bit. It is so galling for them on the other side to have to admit that the Labour Government landed the New Zealand - China Free Trade Agreement and CPTPPA. We're taking responsibility for the China upgrade for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and for the European Union agreement that the National Government couldn't even get started. We hope to finish that on good terms. In the last minute and a half I want to switch to the environment. There are real environmental problems in the world. If New Zealand cannot overcome these problems no one in the world can and if New Zealand can't or doesn't the world won't. That is a very bleak alternative for our children and their children. We can do much better in New Zealand across climate and water. They're the only two things I've got time to talk to today. Climate is being led by the Hon James Shaw. We are bringing forward a zero carbon bill this year. We are establishing the climate commission so that we can try and depoliticise the path towards net zero in 2050 when that target is set in legislation. There is great upside for New Zealand. Imagine not having that enormous oil bill that big cheque that we send to Saudi Arabia and other parts of the world every year. Wouldn't it be great if we were running ourselves on our own renewable energy sources including in the electrification of industrial heat and transport and the development of a hydrogen economy. Great work is being done by the energy Minister the Hon Dr Megan Woods on hydrogen. We've signed an agreement with Japan. We've got the commencement of commercial activity by New Zealand and international players are interested in our green hydrogen and the greening of our energy system. We will get wealthier as well as cleaner.On water the last Government oversaw the continuing decline in the quality of waters in our rivers. They spiked the national policy statement of Judge Sheppard. We are going to do better. Every river in New Zealand should be clean enough to swim in in summer without getting crook."