Tolley Anne: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Tolley Anne: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:645;Page:14224] 
ANNE TOLLEY (National—East Coast) 
: 
 I rise to support the motion moved by our leader John Key: “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.” We can easily see that Labour has squandered the very best of economic times that this country has seen in many a year by failing to build strong foundations for the future. It has taken the economic benefits which came about through no efforts on its behalf but by the blood sweat and tears of the reforms of the late 1980s and the 1990s. That is what created the current environment and that together with good weather good prices for our commodities worldwide— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: And Roger Douglas; give him some credit. 
ANNE TOLLEY 
: Roger Douglas did a little bit; yes Labour did a bit. We have enjoyed a period of economic boom and what has this Labour Government done with it? It has spent it. What has it spent it on? Not a lot! As time has gone on it has become more obvious that this Labour Government is more interested in how it stays in power. We saw that with the Electoral Finance Act which is designed to negate any opposition any voice raised against the Government. Labour is more concerned about how it stays in power than what happens to the future of this country. 
We say to Labour members that they should listen to what people are asking and listen to the types of questions we get out on the hustings every day. Why after 8 years of a Labour Government are we paying the second-highest interest rates in the world? People are struggling to pay their mortgages because of these high interest rates—the second-highest in the world. When Labour came to Government the interest rate was 4.25 percent but now it is 8.25 percent. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Really! That has doubled. 
ANNE TOLLEY 
: The rates have doubled under Labour. Why under this Labour-led Government is the gap between our wages and the wages in Australia and other parts of the world getting larger and larger? I am one of those many many New Zealanders who have family who are living and working overseas and saying: “Mum there is no place in the country for me. There’s no way I can come back because there’s nothing there for me.” People ask why it is that in election year Labour can promise them a tax cut. Labour did it last election year too. It promised individuals a personal tax cut. Why do we have to wait for election year when the Government has been sitting on squillions of dollars of surpluses in the in-between years saying that the country cannot afford tax cuts? 
If we look at the education portfolio which I am delighted to have had handed to me today we ask why one in five Kiwi kids leaving school have such poor literacy skills that they cannot even read the instructions on a fire extinguisher. What sort of future do those 40000 kids have? They are leaving school without the skills the qualifications needed to get a skilled job. Also 31000 children every day are missing from school. This Labour Government is doing absolutely nothing about that. It denies there is a problem. We have had 8 years of waiting for the solutions and election year when the Government is behind in the polls is the only time it takes any interest. 
A National Government will focus on the real issues that New Zealanders are asking of the Government. We will not go back and debate tired old political dogma or philosophical arguments that were laid to rest 20 and 30 years ago. We are past all that; we are looking forward. We are in the 21st century now. I say to Labour: “Get with it!”. Unlike Labour we know that New Zealanders want change. They do not want to debate those old philosophies all over again. They want a different forward-looking Government. National will lift wages by driving economic growth which is something that Labour Party members do not understand. They laugh because they do not even believe that it can happen. We will invest in infrastructure and will give personal tax cuts on an ongoing basis. When we say we will deliver them we will. We will not just deliver them in election year; we will deliver them on an ongoing basis. We have been saying that for years. We are going to monitor the quality of Government spending because the issue is not about how much money a Government dumps into something. We have seen that happening in health and education and we are seeing it again in welfare. 
I will refer to the Salvation Army’s state of the nation report which it published this week. I thought it was great that it came out at the same time as the Prime Minister’s statement. Let me quote from it just to get it on the record for Labour Government members opposite. “The social outcomes which we as New Zealanders have achieved over the past five years are somewhat mixed and in some areas quite disappointing. More of our children appear to be at risk of harm more of our young people are engaged in petty crime there is more violent crime and more people in our jails.” It goes on: “While this social spending is essential it seems to have contributed very little to our social progress. Why should this be the case?”. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Who wrote this? 
ANNE TOLLEY 
: The Salvation Army. This is not the National Party or the Business Roundtable saying this. This is by the Salvation Army. What did the Prime Minister do? Did she talk about quality spending did she talk about monitoring what is happening to our families and our kids at risk? No she talked about more money. That is all she talked about. Well more money will not do it. 
I have been on and on at this Labour Government and in particular the Minister for Social Development and Employment about the children that the State takes into its care. When the State steps into a family where children are at risk the State has a responsibility to do better for those children than the families that it is protecting them from. One of the major planks of the Ministry for Social Development and Employment is permanency for children who are taken into State care. I have asked now for 3 years in a row what it defines as “permanency”. I have asked how the ministry measures permanency and what outcomes it expects. What do I get as an answer? The ministry does not define “permanence” at all. It does not have a definition of what it is striving to provide for children. 
Any parent out there knows that the one thing children require is stability; they do not want to be pushed from pillar to post. They do not want to become like some of these statistics that we read about in the information I get from the Minister—such as the 13-year-old male moved seven times in 1 year. This is a boy who has had a very disturbed childhood. He has probably been abused—mentally physically maybe sexually. He is entering puberty which is a very difficult time of his life. What has the State done to protect that boy? It has taken him out of that dangerous situation but it has moved him seven times in the year. So once every 2 months that boy packs a bag and goes to another place. 
 Here we have a 4-year-old boy who was moved seven times in 1 year. Every 2 months that 4-year-old packed up and went to a new home with new people and had to cope with that. 
Finally there is a 2-year-old girl who was moved 8 times in a year. That is not good enough. That is not good enough and those Labour members over there who are part of a Government that does that to the most vulnerable children in this country should hang their heads in shame. And the Prime Minister did not even give those children a mention when she was talking about the social development programme.