Calder Cam: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Calder Cam: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 26 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5675. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr CAM CALDER (National) 
: 
 The Chinese have a curse expressing the hope that one may live in interesting times. These are interesting times not just in New Zealand but in every country in the developed and developing world. As the IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said recently the global economy is experiencing a widespread decline of confidence as problems mount in the eurozone and beyond. Ms Lagarde said further that policy makers everywhere must maintain a crisis management mode as risks increase. The IMF is pressing Governments around the world to step up their responses as both advanced and emerging economies show troubling slow-downs. 
Here in New Zealand the Government is resolutely focused on guiding our economy through these troubled times. We are reducing our exposure to overseas debt markets as much as possible while still continuing to cushion vulnerable New Zealanders from the harshest edges of the ongoing financial crisis. We have got lots to be happy about and thankful for. Our GDP grew 0.6 percent in the 3 months to 30 June. This took annual growth to 2.6 percent the highest rate since 2007. The first half of this year has seen GDP growing at 1.6 percent. New Zealand’s economy is performing better than those of Japan the US the UK France and Germany and growth in this last quarter is on a par with Australia’s. We cannot hope to influence the external events that impact upon our small country and relatively tiny economy. What we can do what we must do and what we will do is continue to concentrate on our wide-ranging economic programme. It is an economic programme that will increase New Zealand’s long-term competitiveness and give our businesses the best chance of succeeding. 
We focus on growth that is sustainable and built on higher savings and earnings rather than ever-increasing consumption and debt. New Zealand’s households and businesses are recognising that the cheap finance feeding frenzy facilitated under the supervised neglect regime of the last Labour Government is unsustainable untenable and ultimately a road to nowhere other than economic and social stagnation. The message is getting through. New Zealanders are saving more with a positive household savings rate for the first time in a decade. The ANZ bank’s fancifully named truckometer an index based on traffic volumes and selected roads around New Zealand suggests increasingly robust growth in the fourth quarter of this year. 
This Government understands that sustainable economic growth that creates permanent worthwhile jobs is best achieved by building a competitive economy that allows businesses to trade successfully with the rest of the world. There are 60000 more jobs in New Zealand than 2 years ago. New Zealand needs more jobs and higher-paying jobs. Why? Because jobs give people income to support their families. Jobs give people money to pay taxes to pay for public services. And more and more higher-paying jobs mean that more people will choose to live here. 
Jobs depend on businesses—businesses that are competitive and businesses that sell something that people value something unique and something of better quality or at a lower price. This Government understands that businesses in turn depend on six key things including ideas and innovation to create the opportunity or perceive a niche market. It is interesting that New Zealand is now third in Asia and Oceania after Singapore and Hong Kong in the Global Innovation Index. Businesses depend on money to build the business—in other words access to capital—and access to necessary raw materials and resources. Businesses depend on having skilled people to work in them; infrastructure such as reliable electricity broadband transport and networks like that; and customers who want to buy the products. These are the foundation stones of New Zealand’s competitive business success. 
The Opposition is constantly searching for quick fixes. Its latest stood out like a bishop at a naked billiards party in terms of its inappropriateness. I refer to the Opposition’s calls for intervention on New Zealand’s currently high exchange rate. I ask you: surely the major test to intervention must be whether we can make a difference. As mentioned before a lot of the drivers are international events such as the huge currency flows following quantitative easing large countries’ exchange rate policies as well as the continuing uncertainty and perceived risks around the eurozone. With the tsunami-like size of these external forces any New Zealand intervention would be futile.