Macindoe Tim: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMacindoe Tim: General Debate[Sitting date: 05 March 2014. Volume:696;Page:16342. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): What a dreadful start to the year it has been for the beleaguered Labour Opposition and its oleaginous leader du jour Mr David Cunliffe. No wonder the heads were down on the Opposition benches. Those members could not even pretend to be interested or supportive as he was putting questions to the Prime Minister this afternoon. This is the “Member for Herne Bay $2.5 Million Do-uppers” who is trying to pretend to the nation at large that he is a man of the people that he has got the interests of the public at heart and that he understands the common man or whatever the term might be these days. Half of the Labour Opposition looked to be suffering severe pain while he was speaking and the other half looked like possums trapped in the headlights. Most of those members did not want him. You have got to give them credit for that—at least they understood that. They tried to tell Labour’s members and they tried to tell the unions but those other parties in Labour’s overall cluster said: “No we know best and you have got to have him.” and he is proving to be even worse than they feared he would be.Let us see what that veteranNew Zealand Heraldcolumnist John Armstrong who has been around for a long time and who knows the scene had to say today. Under the headline “Two Cunliffe mea culpas in four days smacks of clumsiness” John Armstrong wrote: “That he cannot seem to stop his fingers hovering over the self-destruct button is no surprise to anyone who has watched him for any length of time.” What a devastating comment that is from a man of John Armstrong’s experience. He goes on to say: “It is a great mystery why someone overly blessed with essential political attributes gets it wrong with such frequency. Maybe it is overconfidence. Maybe it is an inability to see the line between being bold and being foolhardy. He got away with it when he held lower ranked positions in the Labour caucus. The role of Leader of the Opposition offers no escape from the spotlight.” and so it goes on. A devastating critique—devastating because of its unbelievable accuracy.This is a leader who relies on dodgy CVs a leader who relies on secret trusts and a leader who relies on blatant bribes for voters with promises that do not stack up and could not possibly be afforded. He is so desperate to win support from a few of his caucus that he is promising them a bonus if they would just go forth and multiply. How ridiculous it is to suggest that the new benchmark for poverty in this country is just a little bit more than a backbench MP’s salary. Boy that is going to be a winner on the hustings this year! It is about as credible as suggesting that a $2.5 million home in Herne Bay is just a modest do-upper in middle New Zealand. Yet it is consistent with all the other nonsense that has been coming out of a party that is hopelessly divided hopelessly bereft of sensible or constructive ideas and hopelessly out of touch with the electorate.The Labour Party hopes to convince New Zealanders later this year that it was not responsible for getting this country into the recession when it was in Government and yet somehow it has also got the best policies for continuing to lead us out of it. Well as the Prime Minister noted in question time today our economy is the envy of most other countries and commentators in the developed world. Why is that? Well the National-led Government’s programme to build a faster-growing economy with more jobs and rising incomes is being shown to deliver.Dr David Clark: Where are the jobs?TIM MACINDOE: There are lots of jobs being created in my electorate and I invite you to come and see it. In fact a lot of the jobs are now in your electorate because Haier has just announced 65 new jobs in Dunedin. Yet your leader that rather confused Mr Cunliffe was opposed to something that has actually turned out to be very good for your own electorate.I would like to put on record a few of the contrasts between what we inherited from the Labour Government and its record and what we have got now. The current account deficit when National took office after 9 years of Labour was 9 percent of GDP. Today the current account deficit is 4.3 percent of GDP. Net external debt under Labour blew out to 84 percent of GDP. Today it is down to 71 percent of GDP. It is still too high and we are getting it down and we must continue to do so. Inflation was running at more than 5 percent under Labour. Today under National it is 1.6 percent. Mortgage interest rates averaged nearly 11 percent. Today they average about half that amount. And so it goes on. These are the important things that matter to New Zealanders these are the things that we can campaign on this year and these are the things that New Zealanders want us to continue to deliver.