Robertson Grant: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate[Sitting date: 24 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18790. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central):Well there is a member who should know all about the beltway. It is time for Bill English to get out of Messines Road once in a while. He should get out of Messines Road—a lovely part of Wellington Central I might say—and actually see what is going on in New Zealand because an out-of-touch Government is going to deliver an out-of-touch speech like that.Here are some facts and figures for Bill English. Unemployment in Northland is at 8 percent—8 percent of New Zealanders in Northland are unemployed. If he wants to talk about statistics about how people are going how about this for a statistic: 13.2 percent of Māori are unemployed 13 percent of Pasifika people are unemployed and 22.3 percent of 15 to 19-year-olds are unemployed. That is the legacy of the National Government. That is the legacy of a Government that looks after its mates and does not care about the rest of New Zealand.Mr English talks about the Public Service and what we hear from the Public Service. Well what we hear from members of the Public Service is that yes they do work hard and they will work for the Government of the day. But if you cut the police budget year on year you are not going to get the proper service that New Zealanders expect from them. If you cut the courts’ budget every year New Zealanders will not get fair access to justice. If you cut the Ministry for the Environment’s budget and the Department of Conservation’s budget every year then the environment will decline and that is the record of the National Government.This is not a Government that cares about spreading fairly the benefits of economic recovery. This is a Government that says: “We and our mates will hang on to that.” This is the statistic that John Key should worry about: chief executive officer pay is now 26.5 times that of the average employee in companies in New Zealand. That is up over 4 percent since National took office. That is the legacy of the National Government—the benefits are accruing to the very wealthy while others struggle. Forty-six percent of New Zealanders got no pay increase in the past year. A survey out today says that 49 percent of employers are not expecting to give a pay rise next year. That is not a fair share of economic recovery.We on this side of the House know that what National is doing is what National always does which is to manage the economy for itself and its mates. It is not about trying to lift the aspirations—Hon Dr Nick Smith:That doesn’t work anymore after Donghua.GRANT ROBERTSON:Here is Nick Smith interjecting. How about making housing affordable for New Zealanders?Hon Dr Nick Smith: The accord’s done in Wellington. Just did an accord in Wellington.GRANT ROBERTSON: That is a measure of inequality. Once upon a time Dr Smith if you worked in a job in New Zealand and you worked hard you would be able to come home with enough money to save up and buy your own home. That dream is gone. That dream has gone for the next generation.There is a lot of talk at the moment about what will be the defining characteristics of a future Government. I can tell you today that the defining characteristic of a future Labour Government will be that we are for future generations. We are not looking in the rear-view mirror like the National Party; we are saying that a future generation of New Zealanders deserves to be able to buy their own home. That is something New Zealanders have held on to for years and years—the fact that if you work hard and save hard you will be able to buy your own home. That dream is gone.Nick Smith is presiding over reports and accords and gazetting things and consents. People do not live in consents Dr Smith; they live in houses. He is not building enough houses to make them affordable for New Zealanders to buy today. The legacy of this Government is one where they look after the few the wealthy get wealthier and most New Zealanders struggle. It is only those at the very very top who benefit from the National Government. That needs to change in New Zealand.We need to get back to the core egalitarian values that have stood New Zealand in good stead. That means that everybody gets the right to a good education that we make sure that State schools are the best schools in the world and that we make sure that we invest in the best teachers in the world—not coming up with some half-baked hare-brained scheme to take a principal out of school for a couple of days a week because it sounds good but actually investing in every single school and making sure that every single person in New Zealand who wants to work can get a job. Having an ambition for full employment as the Labour Party has is not something that John Key should laugh off and say is impossible. It is impossible only because the Government does not have the political will to stand up and say: “We will make that our priority.”Why not pick up the Labour Party’s policy from the last election which I give credit to Phil Goff for? Why have 18 and 19-year-olds being paid the dole when you could give a subsidy for an apprenticeship so that that person can get skills and work? That would be a policy that a Government that really cared about getting New Zealanders into work would undertake. But that government will not because it will sit on its laurels and let 8 percent of people who live in Northland be unemployed. That is not on.What is required is a proper regional development policy—not another set of Mr Joyce’s lovely glossy documents but practical work on the ground that will make sure that jobs can be created. That is what the Labour Party is committed to. It is about getting alongside regions and saying: “We’ll support you to create those jobs.”What it is not is from on high in Steven Joyce saying: “I have got a silver bullet. I have got a silver bullet and I am going to put that in play in the oil and gas industry.” That is not enough. Disaster recovery is also not an economic plan Mr Joyce. Disaster recovery is what is driving the so-called economic growth in New Zealand. If Mr Joyce was actually committed to this he would be supporting a region like I do not know Dunedin and making sure that it has still got a manufacturing capability at Hillside and making sure that it has still got research and development under way at Invermay. But no he washes his hands of those regions because it does not fit his narrow ideological frame about what makes for a silver bullet.The Labour Party is interested in innovation investment and industry in the regions. We are going to make sure that we invest in the infrastructure. Those members do not care about the people of Gisborne. They do not care about keeping a rail line open up there. They do not care about the people of Ōpōtiki and making sure that they have got a wharf where they can take their aquaculture products and bring them back into port. They do not care about that because they want to dictate from on high what they think will work and it will not. We want to see industry development plans. We have already announced them in manufacturing and in forestry. There is more coming in information and communications technology and other areas. We know that a Government should be an active partner in the economy not sitting back deciding that the market will look after it all. That does not work. That does not work.Hon Steven Joyce: Hang on make up your mind. Either I’m running it or market is.GRANT ROBERTSON: This man over here said “Make up your mind.” He should make up his mind about whether he actually supports New Zealanders or whether he wants to dictate to them from his little narrow ideological frame and we know that it will not work.We are debating the supplementary estimates. I want to say this about the Government’s Budget. Bill English has been quite fond lately of making comparisons with the All Blacks in terms of how we do things around here. Well if you put off your ACC premium reductions of nearly $500 million for a year that is a little bit like saying that the points the All Blacks scored in the second test in Dunedin are going to be fast-forwarded to the game in Hamilton because we want to make that result look a little better than the one in Dunedin. That is the kind of smoke and mirrors in this Budget. The Government reduces the Canterbury recovery budget by $500 million and finds a never-seen-before $375 million loan for a transport project in Auckland all to get itself to its wafer-thin surplus to make it look good. That is the National Government—smoke and mirrors; making sure it looks good without the substance being there.What we need is a focus on the core Kiwi values: work home and families. We need to make sure there is an opportunity to do the job. If the jobs are there they should be done. We need to make sure that New Zealanders get access to homes—access to buy homes and to warm dry rentals. We need to make sure that families and children in particular have the best start in life.We heard from Bill English today that apparently inequality is not getting worse. Well how about this from the Salvation Army report? We know that between the last two censuses the median income of somebody in Mission Bay or St Heliers went up by $6100 in that period of time. If you were living in Māngere or Ōtāhuhu it went down by $200. Up by $6100 in the wealthy and rich bits of Auckland and down by $200 in South Auckland—that is how inequality grows. It grows because a Government lets that happen. It does not lift the minimum wage. It does not work towards a living wage. It does not introduce a capital gains tax. It does not make those paying the top tax rate pay a fair rate. That is what National has done. It has created those two Aucklands. New Zealanders need to know that wherever they live they have a fair chance at life and a fair chance of getting ahead. That is what they will get with a Labour Government.