Ardern Jacinda: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Ardern Jacinda: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 27 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3424. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. There have been a few lessons this week and one of them from the Government has been “If in doubt make up a target.” That is absolutely what the Government has done but be under no illusion: a target does not equal a plan. We have seen no better evidence of that coming out of not Mexico not Greece not Spain but New Zealand. Over the past 4 years this is not the first time we have had a set of targets issued. In fact let me for the sake of the House go through some of the plans and targets that this Government has produced before. 
Chris Hipkins 
: You’ve only got 5 minutes. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: Harking back to 2010—I will keep it brief Mr Hipkins; I know the list is long. Back in 2010 we had a six-point plan for securing a brighter future. In 2011 the Government revised that six-point plan and added 41 action points. That was the post-election action plan—keep up! Joyce and English then issued their own six-point plan for business growth. Just to recap that is six plus six plus six. Nick Smith not wanting to be a superstitious man with the 666 then brought in an eight-point plan for local government. John Key not wanting to be one-upped by Nick Smith came up with his own 10-point plan recently. If anyone cares to add that up that equals still no plan. The brighter future that this Government talked about? To date we still have not seen the outcome of any of those targets. 
Let us reflect on some of the evidence of what has been generated. We were promised 4 percent growth. What did we get? Projections of 2.6 percent growth as a consequence of the last Budget. We were promised in the last Budget 170000 jobs. That has been downgraded by 16000 jobs. Unemployment just to highlight what it was when this Government came in was almost 18000 and now the unemployment benefit recipient numbers are almost 50000. National said that the value of goods exported would rise; it fell by 17 percent last year. What about wages? What about wages—the thing that makes a difference between whether New Zealanders stay in New Zealand or whether they look overseas? They are doing that in droves and why? Wage growth will peak at 1.6 percent and then it will decline. This is the brighter future we were promised and I can tell you that the lights are out. Steven Joyce Bill English and John Key are fighting over a flashlight desperately looking for targets in the dark but all we see is an absolute epic fail. 
In Labour we are all for accountability. We are all for aspiration but targets without a plan are absolutely meaningless. Let us drill down into one or two of them—rheumatic fever for instance. Of course we support trying to reduce rheumatic fever rates. But you cannot swab your way to reducing the true cause of rheumatic fever. What is that cause? Poverty. Poverty is one of the direct causes of rheumatic fever via overcrowded housing poor conditions and cold damp houses for children. And there are no targets for that. The Government’s plan is to put $12 million into swabbing. Will that reduce the incidence of group A streptococcus? It will not and that is why as soon as that money is removed unless poverty is addressed rheumatic fever will skyrocket. 
Let us look at welfare. The Government says it wants to reduce welfare dependency—those who have been on a benefit for 12 months or more—by 30 percent. But the Government has left a stark gap in between as to how it is going to achieve that. We looked at the numbers yesterday. Based on the numbers Labour had available to us at the time because the Ministry of Social Development releases slightly sporadic numbers to us we calculated that there would be significantly more on welfare for 12 months or more even with the Government’s targets. After the Minister for Social Development tabled her figures yesterday I did go back and look at them and those numbers are revised down. But even with the Minister’s 30 percent target in place the number on welfare will be higher than when Labour left office. This set of targets is about trying to be as good as Labour was when we were in Government. If you want to help kids target poverty. If you want to fix welfare fix the economy. That is a plan.