Sabin Mike: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSabin Mike: General Debate[Sitting date: 25 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18880. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MIKE SABIN (National—Northland):That was a stunning contribution by Tracey Martin I have to say. I honestly believe that people have been making up their minds about this coming election—which I think will probably be the most significant election in a generation for a number of reasons—over the last year or so. There might be a few votes here or there as we get closer to the election and the noise increases but actually I think people having been sitting back living their lives and what it will come down to for them is the direction that the country is heading in. I think it is as simple as that. Does the voter as a New Zealander feel as though the country is heading in the wrong direction or in the right direction? If people believe it is heading in the right direction—and we know from recent articles in the New Zealand Herald and a number of other media commentaries that 60 to 75 percent of the country believe the country is heading in the right direction—the next question then becomes whether the voter has trust and confidence that that direction can be maintained. I actually think that we can stand here and bluster and carry on as we do in this House but out there in the real world for the people whom we are here to serve it boils down to those two things. Is the country heading in the right direction and can they trust the leadership to continue that direction? On both those counts I know why the Opposition is worried and it is because on both those counts the voters believe that the National-led Government is the answer.Then we look at the Labour Party today. As Opposition parties will do it has tried to launch an alternative. It has decided all of a sudden that it has got this new vision of what will resonate with the New Zealand public and it is not all about the beltway. Actually that seldom resonates with people out there in the real world in my view. Labour has now suddenly decided that it has got an alternative financial policy position that it will take that will lead to the promised land. I have a couple of issues with that. One is the fact that it is a sort of Back to the Future tax and spend approach. Nothing Labour has been doing is working so its approach is “Let’s go back to what did work and give that a go.” What we do know is that when that was last working for Labour during the 9 years of the last Labour Government it was a fair-weather sailing situation. The Labour Party is a party that knows how to sail well in fair weather.The reality is though that what this country has faced and what political leaders businesses and families have faced in this country over the last 5 or so years has been very very stormy weather—unprecedented. It was the perfect storm if you actually look at it in that sense. So in many respects the reason that what the Labour Party is saying is not resonating with New Zealanders—“We returned nine surpluses!”—is because that is all well and good when it is fair-weather sailing but when the storm hits I would put it to you that New Zealanders actually understand that that is not good enough. And why is that? It is because for New Zealanders Government is not the answer. The Government simply resources the community to go about doing its best to create the opportunities and to create the jobs through the right economic conditions and the right policy direction. We just enable; we do not provide the answers. That is the problem. The Labour Party has this crisis of thinking that because it delivered nine surpluses during the fair-weather years New Zealanders will think that it can do it now. They actually do not. By now they have been telling us that.I think the issue that the Labour Party has is an identity crisis. New Zealanders might not be completely politically engaged with what the Grant Robertsons of this world believe is important but they are quite savvy; they get a sense of it. The sense they have is that for Labour to be able to form a Government it has got to cobble together and bolt on a whole lot of pieces that actually do not make sense in themselves. They do not actually make sense. They do not make a complete picture. One of the challenges that the Labour Party has in its identity crisis is the Green Party. The Green Party is the political equivalent to that kind of weird uncle who always turns up at Christmas time and makes everyone feel uncomfortable because he is a bit freaky and he does not quite fit in this place. That is the identity crisis here because the public realises that for the Labour Party to be able to in Government it has got to bring the weird uncle into the equation but New Zealanders do not actually want the weird uncle.So what I see is that there are two things on which New Zealanders will determine this election and I believe they have already done it. Those are: are we heading in the right direction and can National continue in that direction? And we can.