Cunliffe David: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Cunliffe David: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:653;Page:2422] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 It is entirely appropriate that you reference those financial statements Mr Chair; I recommend them for people’s reading. 
I begin with a quote: “It is part of the New Zealand way of life that when New Zealanders face economic uncertainty they look to their Government not necessarily to take away that uncertainty but to show a path through it.” What have New Zealanders found out today? They found out today that in the face of growing uncertainty in the world economy and in our own economy this Government has no idea what it is doing. The quote is from Bill English. 
Despite the fact that National inherited a sound economy from the previous Labour Government—with by the Minister’s own admission some of the strongest growth lowest debt and lowest unemployment in the Western World—it is true that we stand in this Chamber today on a day when unemployment is forecast to rise by another 60000 this year. Sixty thousand workers 60000 families—60000-plus New Zealanders—fear for their homes and livelihoods and they are wondering how they will put bread on the table. 
This situation is a serious economic challenge. We have spoken about it many times in this House. The reports today bear upon the truth of the matter. Rather than the world economy growing by 2 percent this year it will shrink by nearly 6 percent. It is an unprecedented falling off the cliff for the global economy. It hurts us in two ways: New Zealand businesses out there in the world cannot borrow like they used to and we cannot export our services. But that is the world as it is. What concerns the Opposition—and I think all New Zealanders—is the Government’s response to that situation. The response has been inadequate on a number of fronts. National’s construction of the stimulus it has put into this economy is misleading and overstated; it largely re-brands work Labour did prior to the election. The programme includes double-counting low-quality investments and smoke and mirrors. 
National’s tax cuts—the centrepiece of its programme—are completely inappropriate. The tax cuts take nearly $1 billion from the poor—those below - average income earners—and give it to the wealthy. One-third of the total tax remission goes to the top 3 percent of earners and 70 percent of New Zealanders with children get nothing at all. People who earn less than $40000 and have children get nothing—nothing at all. The economics of that situation are lunacy. We all know and all the commentators know that the wealthy will save or otherwise dispose of—but not spend—what they get in tax cuts. That is why the multiplier is lower for tax cuts for those on higher incomes than it is for tax cuts for those at the bottom. Not only are National’s tax cuts inequitable but they make no economic sense either. 
The so-called rolling maul of initiatives has been the subject of much debate over the last few days. It was one thing for Bill English to describe his leader as hopping benignly from cloud to cloud. It kind of suited the spin—if anyone still believes it—that somehow “Labour-lite” in drag got elected. Now the truth is clear: what the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister think are completely different. The Minister said this weekend that there is no way the Government will fund $50 million for a cycleway—not this year he said with a smirk and not next year or the year after. The Prime Minister says that we will come out of the recession aggressively in 2009; the Minister says we certainly will not. They cannot even agree on the nature of the problem so how can we hope they will agree on the solution? They cannot even agree on the problem. 
The term “rolling maul” was convenient when National believed that it could get out initiatives in dribs and drabs and that New Zealanders would somehow be satisfied with that but we come back to the Minister’s own words. New Zealanders do not expect the Government to take away the international recession but they expect a credible game plan upon which to invest and build their businesses and that will protect their families. This Government has no such plan. It has a series of contradictory show pony initiatives like the cycleway to nowhere. In the background the Government is cut cut cutting its way deeper into the recession.