Parker David: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Parker David: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 01 August 2012. Volume:682;Page:4183. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I am interested to hear from the Minister of Finance why he thinks that after 4 years in Government it is acceptable to be overseeing an economy where record numbers of New Zealanders are moving to Australia notwithstanding the fact that New Zealand has had the best terms of trade in a lifetime and notwithstanding the fact that our two main trading partners China and Australia have been having very good rates of growth. How can he say that he is succeeding as Minister of Finance when record numbers of people are leaving for Australia given that that is the very metric that he invited the New Zealand public to judge him by prior to being elected? He said that if National were elected they would say to goodbye to higher taxes not their loved ones—I think that was one of its catchphrases. Another catchphrase was promising New Zealand a brighter future. How can he accept that 4 years into his Government he can blame Greece? He stands up in this house and he says that “Planet Labour” is out to lunch—that is essentially what he says. 
He tries to claim the excuse that the problems of other parts of the world like Europe are responsible for the record number of people leaving from New Zealand to Australia. I think it is 158000 people since he took office and 53000 people in the last year alone and 40 percent of them are between the ages of 18 and 30. These are people who should have hope and opportunity in New Zealand who have given up on a decent lifestyle in New Zealand and are instead putting their shoulder to the wheel of the Australian economy. I want to suggest to the Minister that the reason that they are doing that is that he has failed in his ambitions and he has not rebalanced the economy towards the jobs and growing incomes that New Zealand needs from growing our productive export sector. He has not pulled the levers that need to be pulled in order to grow the depth of our capital markets through having a universal KiwiSaver scheme. He has not addressed the concern that was raised by Treasury in its briefing to the incoming Minister where it said that this differential between taxing capital income and other sources of income needs to be fixed otherwise we have too much money going into the speculative sector and not into the productive export sector. He is not willing to pull those levers and as a consequence we have a rising current account deficit. We are getting poorer every year as a country. This is projected to get worse. 
By 2016 the very cause of the last downgrade of New Zealand’s credit rating is said to be getting worse again rising to over 6 percent of GDP. In the 2016 year—by which time if we are unfortunate to have a National Government it would have been in power for 8 years—New Zealand’s current account deficit will be at 6.7 percent of GDP. We will have borrowed or sold assets worth $16.8 billion in that year alone because our economy will have not rebalanced and this Government is not bringing forward the new jobs the new exports that we need not only to get wealthier in the world but also to keep our New Zealanders in our own country by giving them hope and opportunity. 
We are seeing the hollowing out of the provinces. This is not just a city problem. In fact it is worse in the provinces because the inflow that we have from migration is largely concentrated in Auckland yet the people that we are losing are from Whangarei for example with 1200 people from Whangarei going to Australia and 460 from Nelson to Australia. These are big population losses. These are our young productive people. We have an ageing population as a consequence of this according to the demographer from Massey University Paul Spooner on  
Q+A 
 recently 
— 
Phil Twyford 
: Spoonley. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Sorry Paul Spoonley from Massey University told us on  
Q+A 
 that this increases the problem we have with an ageing population which is another problem that this Government will not address. This Budget—this zero Budget as National tried to describe it at the start—brings forward assets sales that make the Government deficit worse by $100 million a year that do not change the output of the economy that put up power prices and that put up the current account deficit. The centrepiece of Mr English’s Budget was wrecked within days when the Prime Minister backtracked on improving student outcomes by increasing class sizes which was never a good idea.