Parker David: General Debates 
Parker David: General Debates 
[Volume:607;Page:4435] 
DAVID PARKER (NZ Labour—Otago) 
: 
 I rise to talk about why the Hon Bill English is under threat. His popularity is so low it is subterranean. He has a 7 percent approval rating. Single-digit gestures and single-digit signals are generally not to be ignored. The lack of electorate appeal that Mr English suffers from is a consequence of his failures as a leader his flip-flops on policy and his failures as a former Minister of Finance. His leadership woes are mirrored by the National Party which is in the mire. 
I am from Otago. Otago used to be a proud National Party seat not just for a few years but for decades. I was honoured to be elected in that electorate. I was honoured to be the Labour replacement for the prior National regime and I think I have insight into why National Party support is subterranean why the party is in a hole and why it is digging to China. 
There are two issues behind that. The first issue is economics and the second issue is Max Bradford’s electricity reforms. The electorate’s support—or abysmal lack of support—for the National Party is because the electorate knows that the alternative to English is Brash and it knows that Brash-National with ACT and Mr Hide— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Mr Brash and Mr English. 
DAVID PARKER 
: I am sorry. Dr Brash—I did not mean to be disrespectful. The electorate knows that the alternative to English and National is a coalition of Dr Brash and ACT-Hide— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Mr Hide please. 
DAVID PARKER 
: —ACT-Mr Hide. The electorate knows that that monstrous coalition would be a return to the austerity of the 1990s. 
In most overseas countries the ideology of fundamentalist neoclassical economics has been thrown out. It is too rigid. It is austere it is misguided and it does not work yet the National Party and ACT are both obsessed with that simplistic economic model that is just altogether too narrow to make good sense. Will they change? No they will die in the trenches. They cling to their simplistic neoclassical views. They still think that the issues of distribution and efficiency can be separated. They do not care if there is a great disparity in income and wealth. They speak and act as if that does not matter but we know it is wrong. 
Members should contrast that with our philosophy. We think social cohesiveness and equality of opportunity are important to economic prosperity and to personal security. We think the failed policies of the 1990s ought not to be returned to. We always hear National and ACT rattling on about how Australia has performed so much better than New Zealand and it is true. But those parties do not reflect on when that gap arose—in the decade from 1990 onwards. In 1990 Australia was No. 16 in the OECD rankings; we were No. 19. By the time the National Government left power Australia had gone up to No. 12 but we had languished and gone backwards to No. 20. 
Since the Labour Government has taken over we have returned to policies of growth. We have a 3.9 percent increase in gross domestic product unemployment is at internationally low levels and we have new jobs at unprecedented levels. Provincial areas like Otago—from Alexandra to Queenstown to Oamaru—are thriving. Unemployment is low people are doing well and the electorate knows we have got it right. 
I turn briefly to the electricity problems. We hear Mr Brownlee going on about how the Resource Management Act is behind them. No it is not; it is Max Bradford’s unjust electricity reforms. He forced councils in my area to sell electricity assets at knockdown prices. In doing so he changed the pricing mechanisms of the market in a way that he just did not understand. 
He did not understand and neither did his National Party colleagues. 
Ron Mark 
: Can you fix it? 
DAVID PARKER 
: Yes we can. The market model fails because the pricing for new generation has been changed from being costed across the electricity sector as a whole to a marginal pricing mechanism. It was not thought through. Mr Brownlee’s current answer is to think big. He says that he will go back to the Muldoon days and ram through new power projects—that is “think big” Clutha which was a waste of money. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.