Robertson Grant: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Robertson Grant: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 12 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8427. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 The Super 15 rugby season is under way and there is all kind of interest in that with the Hurricanes on their way to their triumphant first win in Super 15 rugby. One of the things that people may have noticed is an occasional change in the rules when it comes to rugby and one of them is around what happens when a maul collapses. I think the Government should take note of the change in rules. Here is what John Key said in 2009: “we are continuing to put in place our Jobs and Growth Plan. This is a ‘rolling maul’ of initiatives aimed at retaining and growing jobs and preparing the economy for future growth.” Well the Government has collapsed its own maul and that is currently against the rules in Super Rugby and it is not what New Zealand needs either. The rolling maul of initiatives of this Government has fallen apart and it is left with two economic plans: sell assets and sell laws. They are the two plans this Government has got: sell off assets and sell off the laws of New Zealand. Gerry Brownlee is looking quizzically at me. The problem Mr Brownlee is that an economic development plan for National is a big night at Skycity. That is an economic development plan for National but it is not good enough for New Zealand. Selling things off is not going to grow the economy and it is not going to grow jobs. 
If we look back over this year of achievement from this Government when it comes to jobs the achievement that we find is another 50000 people going to Australia 163000 people unemployed and an unemployment rate of 6.9 percent. But bear in mind that that rate of 6.9 percent is there only because 33000 people just left. They left the labour force. They either left for Australia or they gave up looking for jobs. If we actually include those people the real unemployment rate is 8.4 percent which is actually the worst since the mid-1990s. So the real unemployment rate under this Government is as bad as it was in the middle of the 1990s and that is because this Government has absolutely no plan for job growth. 
But this is not just the Labour Opposition saying this. This is businesses saying this and we saw it in a survey that Ernst and Young did that was published in the  
Sunday Star-Times 
. There were several interesting elements to that that this Government needs to take on board. The first of those was that nearly 80 percent of the businesses surveyed said that job creation was a partnership between Government and business and community— 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: That’s right. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: Gerry Brownlee says that that is right but we see no sign whatsoever from this Government of a partnership of it rolling its sleeves up and saying: “We’ll get involved and we’ll help grow jobs.” We do not see that. What we see is hands-off Government from this Government saying: “We’re not involved.” [ 
Interruption 
] Gerry Brownlee is continuing to interject from the chair. I will take a few more seconds for that thank you Mr Assistant Chairperson. Gerry Brownlee knows that this Government could be more hands-on. It could get in and take initiatives that actually help grow jobs. It could support our export sector by doing something about monetary policy. It could do something useful in procurement rather than the words that we are hearing at the moment. But no this Government sits back and it is hands-off and that is what businesses said in this survey. 
But the other thing was that those businesses were asked to rate from one to 10 the National Government’s record on job creation with one being very poor and 10 being outstanding. Well 70 percent of the businesses rated the Government average to very poor below average essentially—a fail mark as the  
Sunday Star-Times 
 called it on job creation. This is not just the Opposition. These are businesses who want to get on and employ people. They are struggling and they are looking for a Government that wants to help them out and it is not happening; it is hands-off. 
The Government and Mr Joyce have been particularly excited. There has been a lot of time spent this year on the Business Growth Agenda—the six glossy documents that have been presented to New Zealanders as some kind of growth agenda. Well unfortunately that did not go down very well with business either because in the same survey 70 percent of businesses ranked the Government five or below on that scale of one to 10 for whether it could actually develop and implement a Business Growth Agenda. So business has given up on this Government. Businesses have said that the Government is not there to help them create jobs and it has not even got the capacity to develop and execute a Business Growth Agenda. That is the loss of confidence that has happened under this Government. That is the loss of confidence that has happened because there is not a real plan for sustainable economic growth. It is not a plan to simply sell off assets and sell off laws so that a casino can have a few more pokies. That is not actually an economic growth agenda. 
An economic growth agenda would say that it was a moral shame on this country to have 90000 15 to 24-year-olds not in employment not in education and not in training. Once upon a time we had Governments and National Ministers who said that we cannot afford to let generations fail. Yet that is exactly what they have done and those numbers go up and they go up. For all the flash programmes and the Job Ops and the Youth Guarantee programmes when we actually go out into the community and we talk to training providers and we talk to the polytechs what we hear is: “There’s so much bureaucracy. We don’t even know if we’re actually able to deliver what the Government wants. It changes every week.” That is not good enough. We have to have as an absolute priority in this country that young people in New Zealand do not fall off a cliff face at the end of secondary school and that we actually actively involve ourselves in making sure there are opportunities not for just one small group picked off at a time but to say that for all of those young people we will give them opportunities to get skills to be able to get into employment. And that is missing from this Government. 
Clare Curran 
: It’s called hope. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: Clare Curran says to me it is called hope and that is exactly what is missing at the moment for young people in New Zealand who see their future in Australia not here in New Zealand because this Government has not been prepared to invest in skills and training and in giving them job opportunities. 
In response to the Ernst and Young survey Phil O’Reilly was asked by the  
Sunday Star-Times 
 about what the Government should do and he said that what the Government needs to do is help subsidise employers so that they can take on young people so they can get skills and training. 
Dr David Clark 
: There’s a good idea. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: And that is a very very good idea from Phil O’Reilly. I knew he would have a good idea eventually and he has had it because that is the policy that the Labour Party took to the election. The National Party did not want to know about it. It did not want to go in there and say to businesses that it will help out. I remember when Labour announced that. We said that for 18 and 19-year-olds we would take that money that has been paid for the dole and give it as a subsidy for apprenticeships. I had employers in my electorate ringing me up and saying: “If you did that I’d take two today. I want to bring people on board. I’m struggling. I need the Government to get in and help out.” This is not the Government doing everything for businesses. It is rolling up its sleeves and being a hands-on Government that gives them a helping hand. That is what is missing from this Government’s approach at the moment and that is what the Labour Party will bring. 
I want to just refer in terms of the economic development ministry back to the question of Skycity because I do think it is important. If this Government has anything to think about back over this year it is the fact that it has mucked around in this space so much that it got a warning from Treasury that the probity of the process in the Skycity deal was questionable and yet it ignored it. Actually the Minister in the chair is the one Minister in that Government who can at least look at the report of the Auditor-General and say that he did something because when he came in he looked at it and he said: “This is an absolute disaster. Why is the Prime Minister’s chief of staff all over this negotiation with Skycity?”. But unfortunately for Gerry Brownlee the damage was well and truly done. The Skycity convention centre sums up this Government. It was a corrupted process. This Government thinks that it can be hands-on by corrupting the process and that is what the report said. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: Rubbish. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: It is very clear Mr Brownlee. The Auditor-General said that up until August 2009 everything was going OK in the negotiations about a convention centre and then along came the Prime Minister who wrote: “Let’s cover off the Skycity angle.” on his briefing paper and from that moment on officials in the Ministry of Economic Development and across Government began behaving in ways that were not appropriate and the Auditor-General said that. They did that only because they had had that direction from the Prime Minister. New Zealanders are getting sick and tired of the cronyism of this Government and they want Government members to focus on job initiatives on rolling up their sleeves supporting businesses to employ people giving people hope in New Zealand and giving people a future. This Government needs to hear the lesson. Young people in New Zealand want those opportunities they want to stay here and they want to work but unless there is a Government that is prepared to be a partner with business then that will not happen. 
New Zealand is a country with great ideas great innovation and great entrepreneurial skills. It needs a Government that is prepared to pull the big levers like monetary policy and the smaller levers like getting alongside a small business and saying: “We’ll make sure you have an apprenticeship in place.” This Government has failed on job creation—that is the view of business and it is the view of the Labour Party—and it must do far better.