Goff Phil: General Debate 
Goff Phil: General Debate 
[Volume:662;Page:10753] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. Kiwis do not ask for a lot but they expect two things from a Government. They expect the opportunity to find employment and they expect to have a living wage so that at the end of the week their bills do not exceed the income that they earn. I have to say that on both of those fundamentals Kiwi workers have gone backwards not forwards over the last year under this Government. 
I went back and checked what our Prime Minister and our Minister of Finance said about employment this time last year. They boasted about the track record of New Zealand and about the low unemployment which was inherited from a Labour Government in comparison to what was happening in Australia. I ask members to listen to this from John Key: “I do know that New Zealand’s unemployment rate is 5 percent and we can contrast that with the rate in Australia which is 5.7 percent”. He said that showed that National was doing a good job of holding down the unemployment rate in New Zealand. Then Bill English went a step further than that. He said that New Zealand was doing much better because the Government had the fiscal stimulus right. He said: “our fiscal stimulus has kept our unemployment rate down to 5 percent. So which one is it: copy Australia’s plan and force up the unemployment rate up or stick to our plan and keep the unemployment rate lower?” 
The problem was that there was no plan in New Zealand. However there was clearly an effective plan in Australia. Kevin Rudd had a good stimulus package going to the whole of Australia. Research and development there is up 25 percent and money is being invested in skills and training. What are the figures today after those boastful claims from John Key and Bill English? Australian unemployment is down to 5.3 percent; New Zealand unemployment is up to 7.3 percent. For the first time in a decade New Zealand unemployment is running higher than Australia’s. It is one-third higher than Australia’s. What did we do in New Zealand? We had a Job Summit. Do members remember the three big ideas? One was the cycleway. I ask Mr Brownlee how many jobs have been created in the last 14 months in the building of that cycleway since that Job Summit. Does Mr Brownlee know the answer? It is zero; no jobs have been created despite the fact that our unemployment has risen to 168000. 
Then there was the big employment package in August which was rushed through so that John Key could announce it to the National Party conference. We wanted to find out what the thinking was behind that employment package. Radio New Zealand put in an Official Information Act request and for 9 months National refused to respond to it. Today the information was released and New Zealand can see why National tried to cover up the information. Treasury said that the scheme represented poor value for money. Treasury regarded the $120 million scheme as poor value and was unlikely to increase long-term jobs. The jobs that were created by the 6-month short-term subsidies to employers disappeared when the subsidies went. The big package in August was an absolute failure. 
There are 72000 young New Zealanders out of work. The Government spends more money but what about the fact that 37 percent of our teenage Maori and Pasifika kids are out of work not in training and not in education? That figure of 37 percent is a disaster waiting to happen. We had the mega-mining plan that was going to create jobs but suddenly the plan has become modest.