McClay Todd: General Debate 
McClay Todd: General Debate 
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TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) 
: 
 That last speech by Jacinda Ardern has shown us what is wrong with the Labour Opposition. It shows economic illiteracy: a borrow-and-spend mentality taking other people’s money and sharing it around and then telling New Zealanders they should be grateful and support Labour so it can keep doing it. In my speech I will show a few contrasts.  
On the one hand we have a Government that has worked hard over 2½ years to focus on education so our children can get more and so their mothers and fathers can be assured they will have a better future. We have a Government that has taken the hard edges off the recession that has focused on jobs and that has been delivering for New Zealanders. We have a Government that is particularly looking at what more it needs to do with that forgotten generation of young people who the last Government over 9 years thought could be made dependent and given welfare and that that was OK. We have made New Zealanders safer in the streets and in their homes through a raft of legislation around law and order. On behalf of my constituents I thank the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Police for the hard work they have done over 2½ years to make New Zealand a safer country and to make sure that those who commit crimes and who harm people in our communities are held to account. 
The Minister of Finance Bill English has delivered a Budget that will get the New Zealand economy back on track. Labour members say they want to borrow more and more and more and they tell New Zealanders that that is OK and not to worry about that. Well New Zealanders know that that is not something that is good for them and is not something that is possible. Bill English has delivered a Budget for us that will bring New Zealand back to surplus much sooner—2013 or 2014. The other thing that we have done is to get more from the Public Service. What that means for New Zealanders is that for every dollar of income tax they contribute their Public Service is delivering more for them in terms of hospitals schools and public services across the board.  
On the other side of the House what do we hear? We hear about Labour’s shonky economic policies and proposals. When Anne Tolley spoke earlier in this debate she was right: there is a huge amount of confusion amongst members opposite and sadly most of that rests with the Leader of the Opposition Phil Goff. Now to his credit when he became the Leader of the Opposition soon after the last election I think that Labour was right to have high hopes for him as Leader of the Opposition. Well today standing here when we consider its high hopes for the Leader of the Opposition Phil Goff we see that the hope has gone. When one considers his economic policies he might well be high from time to time because they are crazy and they are disastrous for New Zealanders. Let us have a little look at this. What have we heard over the last few months of this year? We have heard lots of promises to spend lots of policies that say Labour will do more for New Zealanders. But when Mr Goff is asked where the money will come from he has no answer. From memory it would be $12 billion or $13 billion of extra spending. We heard that he might scrap something in the area of defence which is a one-off spend but that $13 billion of additional recurrent spending year upon year upon year would have to be borrowed. New Zealanders see through that façade. They know it is not good for them and they are awake to some of the false promises the Opposition is making to them.  
I think I know what the problem could be. I have just worked it out. When Mr Goff first came to this Parliament I think I was 13 years of age. Simon Bridges was probably 7 years of age and I guess the current member for Rimutaka who will be the member for Rimutaka for probably only about 4 more months was conceived about then. So what has happened in that intervening period? The last speaker from our side Mr Bridges from Tauranga talked about asset sales. There was a wonderful column in the newspaper just today from John Armstrong a very astute writer in the  
New Zealand Herald 
: 
“Labour push against asset sales doomed to fail”. We have not heard a lot about that this week but it is doomed to fail—a very astute reporter that one. So what did Phil Goff do when he was in Government? Seventeen State-owned assets were sold—17 of them were sold. He sold more State-owned assets than any member of this House to my knowledge. I say to New Zealanders listening those who may hear of this afterwards do not trust that Opposition.