Cunliffe David: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Cunliffe David: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Sitting date: 30 January 2013. Volume:687;Page:7654. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 Mr Assistant Speaker it is nice to see you back in the Chair and through you may I compliment the outgoing Speaker Dr Lockwood Smith for his service to this House. 
It is good to see colleagues and members on all sides of this House looking refreshed suntanned and back from their holiday breaks. We are here in this debate to open Parliament and take the long view the broad view on the challenges facing the Government and facing the country. To do that let me quote you National’s formula for economic success. Here it goes. We must get the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less enterprising people. Most of that quote was from the American Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon whose economic policies led directly to the Great Depression of the 1930s but it could equally have come from John Key. 
If there is one thing that history has shown us it is that National’s slash-and-burn economics never works. History has shown us that rewarding big business while penalising ordinary people deregulating the economy in a way that encourages recklessness and making laws that ensure that wealth flows from those at the bottom up to those at the top are a certain recipe for disaster. It did not work in the 1930s it did not work when National last tried it and it has not worked this time around. 
Just this week New Zealand’s manufacturers warned that they may be forced to leave New Zealand. Why? Because National’s hands-off policies have left the New Zealand dollar so high that our manufacturers cannot make a living. Is that good economic management? No it is madness. It is madness and a repeat of the madness that led to the formation of the first Labour Government. 
Dr Paul Hutchison 
: What’s Labour going to do? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: Remember please it was the first Labour Government that set in place just about all that we remember as being good about New Zealand. It was a Government that ensured that people had jobs— 
Dr Paul Hutchison 
: Modesty’s always been over-rated. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: —a Government that ensured that people had houses just like the one John Key grew up in Dr Hutchison. It was a Government that ensured that there were hospitals and health care for all when they needed them and a Government that planted the seeds of economic growth through prudent investment in projects like massive forestry schemes that generate wealth to this day. 
 So let us not make any mistake about this. What National really wants is to turn the country back to a time before the first Labour Government. Where is the proof? National is back to its old tricks: sell our assets rob workers of their rights savage public services chase the Budget down its own fiscal plughole and become an environmental laughing stock to the world. 
National is certainly slashing public services. The result is there for all to see. Unemployment is back up to 7.3 percent. There are 175000 New Zealanders unemployed—that is up 12 percent in just the last year. There are over 100000 families without pride decent incomes or hope for their future; and another 100000 on part-time work or insufficient hours. And the most vulnerable those truly in need of better public services have been thrown to the cold winds of recession and division. National said it would take the rough edges off the recession—remember that? And what did it do? Rather than helping people through the recession National left them to it. There are tens of thousands of families forced to drift between rental homes they cannot afford while their kids get shunted from school to school. Their parents watch and their hearts break. I want to congratulate Annette King and David Shearer on Labour’s plans to put 100000 families back into affordable homes while National does nothing. 
 Real incomes are lower now than when National took office. The gap between rich and poor has widened—almost never been worse—and the rush to the departure gates has become a stampede. Economic growth forecasts have been downsized more regularly than a new year’s diet resolution. New Zealanders widely understand now that the Government’s recipe is not working. Where John Key once looked relaxed he now looks resigned. Where once Kiwis might have had hope they are now just disappointed. They have been hanging out and they have hanging on for the brighter future that never came. 
Labour’s message is that a new era is needed—an era of hands-on Government of real change and of big change—not an era of tinkering. We need change that listens to people in their communities that gives them a stake in their own future—change they have helped build together and share responsibility for. 
Kris Faafoi 
: Change the Government. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: Change the Government. Get change that recognises that the strength of our ideas has always come from the grassroots—change that sees unions for example as a core part of building better workplaces not as a cost to be saved. The way that we will deliver this change the way that we will organise will be robust but it will not be top-down—like Christchurch where people have felt the heavy weight of the Government through its Ministers. We will work with communities; we will do politics with them not to them. When we stand back and look at it we all know that the change we need is remarkably simple and obvious. We need to change from a low-value extractive economy to a high-value high-skill one from an economy that sees workers not as commodities but as part of better business from seeing innovation not as a luxury but as the lifeblood of our future from a tax system that does not reward property speculators but rewards hard work and enterprise and from a monetary policy that leaves our exporters withering on the vine in the harsh winds of an overvalued exchange rate to one that delivers real economic growth. 
Labour has tried tested and proven policies in all of these areas and I have been proud to work on some of them—capital gains tax universal KiwiSaver sustainable superannuation and using those savings to grow and deepen our domestic banking and capital markets—but we need to go further. As the Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union said to the manufacturing inquiry on Monday we need a higher commitment to skills development a more stable exchange rate procurement policies that work for New Zealand and a new commitment to developing our provinces and regions. 
There is so much to do in social policy. We have to recognise that hungry kids do not learn that homeless unsettled kids cannot succeed that stressed parents with the best will in the world cannot provide and that a forgotten beaten generation will not pay for the superannuation of tomorrow. 
We need to remember that our environment is more than a brand to be milked as long as the contaminants do not show up. Our environment is not only what sustains us now; it is what has got to sustain our kids and their kids into the future. Dirty rivers overfished seas and urban jungles are not what we need. Clean green technologies will get us part of the way but let us make no mistake—there is so much to do. Finally it is time we restored pride in being a Kiwi. 
So Labour’s new direction will be built on a strong high-value economy and the values of social inclusion tolerance and diversity that are the hallmark of any great society. Labour under David Shearer is called on again to take up its historic mission of hands-on government of big change of a new era and of a better way that does politics with our people not to them empowers New Zealanders from the bottom up does not slash them from the top down builds a high-value economy delivers an inclusive society champions a sustainable environment and celebrates our unique identity. With Labour New Zealand will have a future worth believing in.