Dalziel Lianne: General Debate 
Dalziel Lianne: General Debate 
[Volume:624;Page:19657] 
LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 This Labour-led Government has a proven track record for promoting opportunity not privilege; for inclusion not marginalisation; and for long-term and sustained progress and security not fear in old age and in times of adversity. The Opposition offers nothing more than a return to the failed policies of the past—deregulation privatisation and cutting back on Government and public services. 
How can people forget the impact of the 1990s on this country? I have heard members opposite talk about the need to support families. Ruth Richardson called National’s flagship Budget the “mother of all Budgets”. What an insult to every mother in the country that Budget was! It was the Budget let me remind people that slashed benefits and saw the minimum wage frozen year after year. It was the Budget that allowed for the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act which destroyed minimum conditions of employment from one end of the country to the other. It was the Budget that saw the apprenticeship system handed over to industry because industry could “do it oh so much better than Government.” and it was the Budget that allowed the competitive market model to come into the health and education systems. 
Do members remember Crown health enterprises competing with each other for diminishing health dollars? The creeping privatisation in both health and education was the legacy of the 1990s. Accident compensation was turned into a “pay as you go” scheme a matter of a few short years before it would have been fully funded. Lump-sum compensation was ripped out of the scheme in 1992 and then the employers account was privatised paving the way for the full privatisation of a scheme that is the envy of the world. Market rents for State houses were imposed on people who could not earn a market income. National sold 13000 State houses. The floor below which superannuation could not fall was knocked back under a National Government. That was an effective cut to the pension of several dollars a week; and it was growing every year. 
Not one Auckland road opened under a National Government. It cut spending on public transport. It sold rail and allowed the infrastructure of this country to be run down. Look what National did to the electricity system for goodness’ sake! It left it in an absolute mess. That was Max Bradford’s legacy to New Zealand. National amalgamated traffic with police to deliver the extra police that John Banks had promised. Smoke and mirrors was National’s way of dealing with those promises. More cuts were on the way before we took office. 
Why would anyone want to turn to a party that in April of an election year has not produced a single policy other than to promise tax cuts? That means reduced expenditure without saying where it will come from other than the public sector. We should make it clear and put it on the record that this means that National is promising fewer doctors fewer nurses fewer teachers and fewer police. National is promising fewer social workers for Child Youth and Family Services; fewer Department of Corrections staff despite an increasing prison population; and fewer probation officers and Customs Service officers. If nurses think they would be able to hold on to their multi-employer collative agreement after a National Government takes office I say: “Dream on!” because it will not happen. Those Opposition members have been sitting on select committees saying they wished they had destroyed the multi-employer collective agreement of the teachers. The nurses’ agreement will be gone as well. The only way those public servants will be able to maintain increases in their wages and conditions of employment is through their multi-employer collective agreements. This Government supports those agreements. National is opposed to them. 
If National is saying it will cut back on public servants what else does that mean? It means it will sell more assets. There will be more asset sales under National. What will it mean? It will mean: New Zealand Post—gone; electricity and the rest of it—gone; Accident Compensation Corporation—gone; Land Corporation—gone; Solid Energy Kiwibank and TVNZ—all of them gone. That is what would happen if National got the chance and of course we already know that National has its eye on the roading network. This Government took office in 1999 and inherited the legacy of a run-down public sector and all National is promising is to do it all over again.