Brownlee Gerry: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Brownlee Gerry: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:645;Page:14111] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam) 
: 
 That was a speech from Parliament’s astrologist the Hon Annette King the woman who ascribes most of the ills of this country to the movements of the sun and the moon and the tides. 
I rise to support the motion moved by John Key which is that this House has no confidence in the Helen Clark - led Government because it has failed to make significant improvement in the areas of real importance to New Zealanders because it lacks ambition because it is tired and bereft of ideas because it has lost touch with the people who put it in power and because under its lead our country has become a story of lost opportunities. 
Here are some questions that New Zealanders want answered by the current Government. Why after 8 years of Labour are we paying the second-highest interest rates in the developed world? Why after 8 years under Labour is the gap between our wages and wages in Australia and other parts of the world getting bigger and bigger? Why after 8 years of Labour have we not had a tax cut but are now promised one only because it is election year? Why after 8 years of Labour can our hard-working young people not afford to buy their own homes? Why are one in five Kiwi children leaving school with grossly inadequate numeracy and literacy skills? Why after 8 years of Labour which claims to aspire to carbon neutrality are our carbon emissions racing up the scale at an alarming rate? Why has the health system under the Labour Government not provided for the needs of so many New Zealanders despite the money that has been put in place? Why is it that in New Zealand under a Labour Government violent crimes and other crimes against innocent New Zealanders are so much on the rise? 
Let me tell Annette King that the disasters and personal tragedies of the last couple of months have nothing to do with the sun the moon and the tide. They have everything to do with a country becoming more and more impoverished and with opportunities slipping away from far too many people. I think one of the ways that I can best express to this House how many young New Zealanders are feeling is by simply reading a letter that was sent to me late last month. The letter comes from a young man in Christchurch who writes: “I am 32 years of age. My wife is 30 and we have a beautiful 2-year-old daughter. We dearly want to buy a house for our family to call home yet this is becoming impossible with the current property market. Here’s our situation. We have $50000 in the bank. I have a $5000 student loan.” He was at teachers training college in 2007 training for what has to be considered an essential service in this country. He says: “We have no other debt.” This year he has a job at a high school in Christchurch. He starts on a salary of something just over $42000 and he expects with some family support that with one person working the household income will be up around $50000 for the year. He says: “Last week we found a fantastic house in a suburb close to the school I work in. It is a $275000 three-bedroom completely renovated home; a beautiful house. Keep in mind” he says “that this is well below the average house price in New Zealand at present. So I don’t think we are setting our sights too high. It is perfect for us or so we thought. So we went to the bank manager to do the calculations and the answer was ‘impossible’.” With an after-tax income from that $50000 household they would be spending 70 to 80 percent of their income servicing a mortgage. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: That’s wrong. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: Ruth Dyson over there says it is wrong. I challenge her. I will put this man in contact with her and if that member can take him to an institution in this country and organise a $225000 mortgage to buy a very moderate house on a $50000 income then I would accept that she had the upper hand. But that is not the truth. That will not happen and she will not take that challenge. 
He says: “Here is our predicament. There are no options for us other than to rent. So much for every Kiwi being able to own their own home. Why must people like ourselves be forced to rent etc. etc.” He further asked—and I think this is very telling—whether the situation in New Zealand is that a young family with cash in the bank minimal debts a respectable job with an above-average salary who are keen to buy keen to settle and have saved for the last 5 years and by the way in those last 5 years have saved not only $50000 but also paid off a $13000 student loan a huge effort on their part cannot afford to buy a house in this country. Why is that? 
I say to this young person that the problem here is not so much the cost of the housing but in terms of affordability the lack of income that so many New Zealanders now put up with. Under the 8 years of the Labour Government so far the gap between the cost of living and the incomes that people receive has widened enormously. Not a person in this country who has been into a supermarket in the last couple of months has not felt the significant movement in basic food prices. The Government that comes into the House today does not give any hope for people about a better future but simply goes back to the rhetoric of the 1990s and recounts some of the things it thought were important then tells us that it has done them and effectively admits that it has been an abject failure as far as improving the lot of average New Zealanders goes. 
We heard the Prime Minister talk about housing affordability. What is her answer to housing affordability? It is to have more State prescription about the sorts of houses New Zealanders have to live in and to empower local authorities to demand that certain areas inside new subdivisions are for low-cost housing. That completely misses the point because the point is that New Zealanders cannot afford low-cost housing. There was not one thing the Prime Minister said today that would give anyone in this country hope that his or her income may rise any time soon. 
It is interesting when one looks at the events of the last couple of weeks. Michael Cullen has been going out there and spruiking the concept of Labour associating itself with tax cuts to the entire force of the media contingent in the Beehive. We saw headlines in the newspapers saying that Labour is going to give us tax cuts. I think that was on the Wednesday. Then in his speech on the Thursday Michael Cullen said: “Maybe perhaps I am not sure.” In today’s statement from the Prime Minister there was just a very very scant reference to the fact that the Budget may put in place a budget for the delivery of tax cuts. 
So all those people out there who are struggling to pay mortgages who go along to the supermarket and are now paying up to $5 just for a pound of butter or worse still well over $5 for a couple of litres of milk will get nothing from what the Labour Party has offered today. A number of questions I asked at the start of my speech New Zealanders will be asking the current Government. None of those answers will give them any comfort and that is because as time has gone on this Labour Government has concentrated more and more on its own survival and less on the issues that matter to the people who put that Government there in the first place. Worse I think is that as we go through this year it will become clear that this Labour Government has squandered the economic opportunities that New Zealand has had over the past few years. In times past such years would have seen significant increases in incomes. Under Labour that has been completely suppressed. I am very proud to support John Key’s motion and if the House in its widest sense has any sense it will support it too.