Guy Nathan: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Guy Nathan: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Sitting date: 29 January 2013. Volume:687;Page:7556. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon NATHAN GUY (National—Otaki) 
: 
 I would just like to reply to the Prime Minister’s statement for 2013. First of all can I wish you a very happy New Year Mr Deputy Speaker and other members of the House who are down here this evening. Certainly the National Party has started this year with a lot of gusto. We heard today when the Prime Minister stood up and laid out his plan for 2013 how much initiative and how much fresh thinking this Government has got to bring to 2013 which is a hugely important year for us. 
But before I get on and start talking about the fantastic address from the Prime Minister today what I wish to talk about is the previous speaker Julie Anne Genter from the Green Party. I think she is the transport spokesperson for the Green Party. She had some amazing quotes in that diatribe just before where she talked about the Government’s approach in terms of building roads of national significance—$12 billion invested over 10 years. She called them “motorways of madness” and extraordinarily wasteful projects. She also went on to say that “Motorways do not reduce congestion”. My constituents who will be sitting in their vehicles now leaving Wellington City and going up to the Kapiti Coast will be horrified to think that the Green Party transport spokesperson thinks that about Transmission Gully and the Kapiti Expressway. They will be sitting in congestion listening to that member bang on about a whole lot of mistruths when in fact congestion is hugely important to the New Zealand economy. People will be sitting in their vehicles now listening to the Green Party member saying “Oh you don’t need to worry about congestion. We shouldn’t be building any roads at all. We should be putting it into the Green Party’s magical sort of dreamland of building more houses raiding the Land Transport Fund so that it can put it into pet projects.” 
Well what the member fails to realise is that the Land Transport Fund actually funds a whole lot of public transport. That helped fund the electrification of trains through to Waikanae which Minister Joyce opened with me a couple of years ago. It was a fantastic project. The Government is focused on public transport it is focused on the plan for KiwiRail and turning that round and it has rolled out the Matangi trains—I hope the member has been on them; I have been—in the Wellington region. They are fantastic trains from Korea and they are doing a great job in terms of moving commuters around the Wellington region. But for the member to stand up here today and say that we should not be investing in roads—and also she went on to say that Auckland taxpayers will be paying for ever for Transmission Gully. Well that is not correct. 
I will tell you one thing: the Green Party is opposed like the Labour Party is to public-private partnerships. We on this side of the House embrace the private sector. We say bring it on step up to the plate help us build Transmission Gully because we need it—it is hugely important. New Zealand collectively is funding the Waterview Connection project in Auckland—it is going to make a huge amount of difference—at $2.2 billion. Transmission Gully is forecasted to be around $1 billion but looking to come down with the private sector funding. The Green Party member should be standing up in the House and that saying this is hugely important for economic growth. Instead she is banging on with a whole lot of mistruths—that actually decent transport infrastructure has little to do with congestion—which are not true at all. 
Of course the other important thing is the changes that we have made with the Resource Management Act that are helping to get these projects up and running quicker which the Green Party opposes and the Labour Party opposes. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
Hon NATHAN GUY 
: Just before the dinner break I was talking about what a fantastic Prime Minister’s statement for 2013 it was. Judging by the delivery the passion and the content of that speech the Prime Minister is certainly going to be delivering a lot more of those statements in this House. Certainly I would see many more statements into the next term as well and beyond. 
In essence what the Prime Minister laid out today was the importance of economic growth and actually how well this Government has been doing in pretty trying times over the last few years. We all understand that we have had the global financial situation which has affected a lot of countries—in fact every country around the world pretty much. The countries that we like to compare ourselves with are the countries in Europe the UK Canada and also the US and we are doing incredibly well in comparison. It is interesting that Treasury has forecast economic growth for the next 3 years of about 2.5 percent which is fantastic. 
That leads me on to talking about the Canterbury rebuild which is of huge significance to the New Zealand economy. The Government has always said that it wants to support the people of Canterbury in getting back on their feet. We are talking about a rebuild somewhere in the vicinity of $30 billion over the next 10 years or so. The Government has a real focus on supporting the people of Canterbury and the people of Christchurch and getting the central business district and all of those precincts that have been rolled out by the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery the Hon Gerry Brownlee to really start to take shape down there as we move out of the demolition phase into the rebuild phase. 
Importantly yesterday as Minister of Immigration I announced that we are going to ensure that the Canterbury Skills and Employment Hub will be even more efficient than it is currently. We have signalled to employers who want to bring in some migrant workers—and we know that in the Canterbury rebuild we will need to bring in some migrant workers—that this Government has a real focus on making sure that Kiwis are first. 
At the end of November we announced the Canterbury Skills and Employment Hub. What has happened since that announcement is that there have been 240 employers who have registered 800 job seekers have put their hands up saying that they wish to seek jobs and there are currently 200 vacancies. Basically how it works is that if an employer is looking for someone to perform in their company then they write in or make an approach to the skills hub. Within 48 hours someone from the Ministry of Social Development makes contact with them and says that yes there are Kiwis available and puts them in contact with one another. If there are not Kiwis available then they go through the immigration process. We believe that we can streamline this and ensure that we have a real focus on Kiwis first but we know that the scale of the Canterbury rebuild will mean that we will need to bring some migrant workers in. 
What we also heard from the Prime Minister’s statement today was a strong focus on education. We have set some clearly very courageous and determined targets for young students to ensure that we get 98 percent participation by 2016 in early childhood education. That then rolls on to national standards. I heard the Labour benchers have a bit of a chuckle because we all know that they are opposed to national standards. When I read my kids’ reports just before Christmas time I thought it was fantastic that now we have plain reporting and I understand like all the other parents do how well my kids are doing in terms of those core subjects that all parents want their kids to do better at than they currently are doing: reading writing and maths. 
Importantly we have also set another very strong target which is for the National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 to ensure that we get 85 percent of our 18-year-olds up to this by 2017. We are also increasing the proportion of 25 to 34-year-olds who achieve a level 4 diploma or degree so we have a real focus on education. 
 We also have a real focus on law and order and on ensuring that we keep our communities safe. Putting my local MP hat on in my home township of Levin I can say that we have now the most police officers ever in the history of our township on the beat. And that is under this Government and we should be very proud of that fact. 
What we had the other day was Mr Shearer rolling out his state of the nation speech with no new policy. By the way all he said was: “Woops! Mea culpa. I made a mistake. Actually our housing proposals are all wrong. We can’t build houses for Auckland for $300000. It is actually going to cost $550000 to build a four-bedroom house in Auckland.” So it was interesting that that is all we heard from Mr Shearer and that is all we are really going to hear from him for the next 12 months or 24 months. But of course he has to survive the leadership struggle. We know there is a vote coming up. Will he survive that? We also know that there is a reshuffle coming up. Of course that is going to mean that some of the front bench will be moving to the back bench and we wait to see where he puts Mr Cunliffe.