Lee Melissa: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Lee Melissa: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:670;Page:16570] 
MELISSA LEE (National) 
: 
 Before I begin I would like to wish everybody a happy New Year. We have had a long break over Christmas and I hope everybody has returned safely and well rested. To those celebrating the lunar new year I would like to greet them in their mother tongue. Gong xi fa chai. Xin nian kuai le. Sun nin fai lok. Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu. Se hae bok mani baduseyo. Those greetings were in Chinese Japanese and Korean wishing those people a happy New Year. May they receive lots of luck and blessings in this Year of the Golden Rabbit. 
Lianne Dalziel is right and that is probably a very strange thing for members to hear. She said that New Zealanders got empty promises in 2005 and she is right. She probably meant to say 2008 but maybe it was her subconscious that was talking. She said that New Zealanders got empty promises in 2005. That is right. New Zealand voted for the wrong party to become Government in 2005. Labour returned to Government and continued to mismanage New Zealand’s economy. Had New Zealanders voted for National back in 2005 perhaps growth would not be as small as it is now. If a John Key - led National Government had been in power in 2005 we would have implemented the recovery process sooner and the growth would have taken better faster steps. Perhaps Ms Dalziel is seeing 20/20 and in hindsight realises in her heart of hearts—and she does have a heart; I know I serve on a select committee with her—that John Key is doing so well that she wishes National had been in Government in 2005. Maybe she realises that in 2005 the Labour Government gave New Zealand the empty promises and raw deal that she was talking about. 
Building a brighter future is the key for New Zealand and that is the message our Prime Minister the Rt Hon John Key gave in today’s statement to Parliament. I am right behind him in his vision to make New Zealand a much better place for all New Zealanders. To make New Zealand a better place for all of us to live in we need a stronger economy. To achieve a stronger economy we need to build the foundations. It is like growing vegetables. We cannot just throw seeds on to rock and hope they will grow. We need to prepare the soil sow the seeds water them so that they do not drown have a good amount of sunshine and for me since I am not much of a gardener I suppose a little bit of prayer as well so that the seeds will turn into something yummy that one can harvest and put on the dinner table. 
Labour leader Mr Goff in his state of the nation speech promised to make the first $5000 of annual income tax free for everyone including the wealthiest of Kiwis. That is a $1.3 billion promise. That is like throwing seeds on to rock and hoping they will turn into a fruitful harvest. Well he is dreaming. This is Labour’s borrow and hope recipe—borrow more owe more overseas and hope for the best for this economy. It would add hundreds of millions of dollars more to the Government’s borrowing. How else will he pay for his spending promises? They are currently sitting at around $5 billion and climbing as the days go by. Labour will borrow borrow and borrow more and hope that everything will be OK. That is what Labour did in its 9 long years in Government. Where did New Zealand end up? In the best economic times we did not have the growth we should have achieved. New Zealanders are not going to be hoodwinked again. The only way New Zealanders and their families can get better jobs higher incomes and achieve the living standards they aspire to—and actually deserve—is to make sure we build the foundations for a stronger economy. 
One of the ways we can achieve a stronger economy is to rebalance the way New Zealand has operated for a long time. Earlier other speakers mentioned that we cannot spend until we have earned. That is one of the basics that we teach our children. No one in this whole House would even dream of managing their own finances in that way. It is so irresponsible to earn nothing but to go on a spending spree. But that is what Mr Phil Goff is hoping we will do. We cannot afford debt-fuelled consumption and Government spending. We need to save. We also need to invest in sectors where we can earn export dollars. Anyone who runs a household budget knows that if one has overspent in one month one must tighten the belt and reduce spending for hopefully the next month. That is what New Zealand must do as well so we can return to surplus sooner rather than later. We must get out of the habit of spending more than what we can earn. 
Let me speak about the Korean community in New Zealand for a little while. They came here with great hopes. My parents were among the very first to settle here in the late 1980s. They came with great hopes but settled into a new country where there were language issues cultural issues and no friends or family to turn to for support in difficult times. They had nobody to turn to. When our migrant communities like my parents settled here they did not turn to the Government and say “Give me money.” They worked hard. Most of them learnt. They had this attitude: they would work their normal job and they would get a second job even a third even a fourth to make sure they could secure a brighter future not just for themselves but for their children and their grandchildren. They do not want the taxes they paid through sweat and tears to be pilfered away to pay for the interest we will owe if we keep borrowing more from overseas as the Labour Party is suggesting we do in its spending promise. 
Labour is promising to borrow another $400 million to increase spending on early childhood education. Earlier my colleague Louise Upston mentioned that the National Government is spending $1.4 billion on early childhood education this year. That is more than anything that Labour has ever done for early childhood education. They keep talking about the apparent cuts that the National Government is making to early childhood education. That is an outright lie. It is a lie. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: The member cannot say “That is a lie.” Speaker’s ruling 42/5 says that you cannot use that word. I ask the member to withdraw that comment. 
MELISSA LEE 
: I withdraw that comment. It is wrong to claim that we are cutting because we are not. We are spending more on early childhood education than Labour has ever done. 
What about Labour’s promises to cut GST on fresh fruit and vegetables? That is another $250 million a year. What will honest hard-working New Zealanders who work hard for their money to pay taxes say about their money being pilfered away like that? They will not accept it. 
Under the previous Government one in five New Zealand children left school without reading writing or maths skills. That is a disgusting legacy of the previous Labour Government. There were 30000 people culled from surgical waiting lists across New Zealand; that is the legacy Labour left behind. Doubling the health budget doubling the bureaucracy reducing services—that is what Labour is known for. In the 2 years that National has been in Government it has provided elective surgery for 20000 more people a year—20000 more people a year are getting elective surgery like joint replacement and cataract surgeries. That is 400 extra New Zealanders getting surgery every week. That is how this Government is turning round the terrible legacy that the previous Labour Government left behind. 
We need to grow this economy. We need to grow this country. A National-led Government is the way to go. I stand by our Prime Minister the Rt Hon John Key in his vision for delivering and building a brighter future for all New Zealanders. Thank you.