Clark David: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clark David: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 12 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8430. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 I am not sure whether the sound system is operating fully so perhaps I should— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: We have people with mikes. 
Dr DAVID CLARK 
: —avail myself of a microphone as I have a very—is that coming through? I do not believe it is coming through. Perhaps I will wait. 
Hon Member 
: Turn it on. 
Dr DAVID CLARK 
: How do you turn this machine on? 
Hon Member 
: It’s 104. 
Dr DAVID CLARK 
: 104? It is 104? The number 104 is on it? I shall carry on and allow those operating the sound room— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Well we will get another mike to you. 
Dr DAVID CLARK 
: OK we will wait. 
Hon Member 
: We want to give you the blue mike. 
Dr Rajen Prasad 
: That won’t work. 
Dr DAVID CLARK 
: It will not work. Thank you Mr Chair. I shall perhaps endeavour to continue despite the absence of the microphone. I fear other members may miss my contribution because my quiet and retiring voice may not travel across the Chamber. But the members opposite already know that I will say loudly and clearly to them that I am disappointed with economic development progress because this Government has the worst record of any Government in New Zealand in the last 60 years. 
Hon Members 
: 60? 
Dr DAVID CLARK 
: It has the worst economic development record in the last— 
Jonathan Young 
: 60 years? 
Dr DAVID CLARK 
: I should say 50 years. I must correct myself. It probably is 60 years but I should not exaggerate. So we will stick with 50 years—the years are adding up but it certainly has a poor record over a long period of time. The Government’s promise to deliver on a Building a Brighter Future plan that would create 170000 new jobs over 4 years sounded great but the reality has proven to be something altogether different. It is a hands-off Government and I think that its hands-off approach to creating jobs in this country is really really really showing through in the absence of progress. 
Nowhere is this approach better epitomised than when we look across to “Mobie” the Government’s new creation— 
Hon Annette King 
: The whale! 
Dr DAVID CLARK 
: —the big white whale which is an agglomeration of many other ministries. The interesting thing about the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment is that the Government is so hands-off that the ministry has no Minister in charge. I do not know whether this is unprecedented—some more mature and experienced members may wish to comment—but I think it is very unusual to have a Government ministry that has nobody in charge of it. That is truly hands-off. That is taking hands-off to a whole new level. 
Perhaps that is a picture—something that we can look to in order to understand how this Government is approaching the job crisis that we see developing in New Zealand. We know that the unemployment rate at 6.9 percent is as bad as it has been. It is the worst it has been for a very long time. It is getting back to levels we saw in the 1990s when National was last in power. We know that 1000 people a week have been leaving for Australia. I guess that is for the Government a positive thing because it brings that unemployment rate down. But it is not a positive thing for New Zealand’s future—40 percent of those people permanently leaving New Zealand for Australia every week are young people. They are our future. They are the people who will increase our GDP and who will grow our economy in the future and I am afraid those young people are fleeing from this country because there are no prospects here for them. 
The wage gap which National promised to close when it took office has grown 50 percent—a full 50 percent the wage gap with Australia has grown. That is an embarrassment surely to this Government when it has said that it would close the wage gap and stop the loved ones heading offshore. 
So the economic development record of this Government is in tatters. Steven Joyce’s Business Growth Agenda has proven to be nothing more than a year of spin. There have been no substantial announcements in that Business Growth Agenda—an awful lot of re-announcements of policy already in place much of it introduced by previous Governments. We have seen wasted resource in my view merely re-announcing old plans and dabbling in the old meek idea here and there. 
What is very clear is that that will not work because if we do not change anything nothing will change. If we carry on with the policies of the 1980s that this Government is so comfortable with we will not have jobs created. We will see the ongoing pattern that we have now of skilled people heading offshore and more and more and more young people ending up on the scrap heap because they have not got any prospects. Glossy brochures will not fix that. We need a real plan for the economy and that involves doing bold things such as pro-growth tax reform. Let us see some research and development tax credits. Let us see some capital gains tax that neutralises the investment signals so that we actually get some investment in our export markets—those businesses that would produce for our export markets. Let us see universal KiwiSaver so that we actually start to get some depth into our savings so that there is some resource to support our businesses. Let us see some pro - New Zealand procurement policies. 
We saw this week Steven Joyce announcing effectively that he was going to announce current policy—