Ryall Tony: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Ryall Tony: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:670;Page:16734] 
Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health) 
: 
 I think members of the House will agree that the Prime Minister gave a speech that set out a great plan of action for the next 12 months to 3 years of what this Government intends to do in order to continue building a better economy better public services and a stronger community in New Zealand. 
There is no doubt that the Government inherited an economy in free fall with no new jobs having been created in the export part of our economy—the productive part of our economy—for 3 or 4 years. Not one new job was created from exporting in 3 or 4 years. In fact we lost jobs in the productive part of the New Zealand economy. It was the non-productive part of the economy or the non-tradables sector as the economists call it that grew substantially. We had a large increase in the Public Service and in the number of jobs in real estate and property but when it came to the productive base of the economy the number of jobs fell fell fell by tens of thousands under the previous Government. That is what this Government inherited—a country whose engine the export economy had dropped to having about a fifth of the job creation that was needed. 
Hon Maryan Street 
: Lowest unemployment in the OECD. 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: The member opposite said we had the lowest unemployment. Well when the country had had 7 or 8 years of great economic indicators driven by the world economy of course there were opportunities for New Zealand. But when things tightened up we started to see the fact that the previous Government was just a paper man. 
The Prime Minister has set out some very clear expectations of what the Government and the community will seek to achieve over the next year. He talked about how we will help New Zealanders to have the skills that they need in order to participate in the global economy with our strong focus on education and on supporting our schools and our teachers to implement national standards. If there was ever a time when the Opposition was out of touch with mainstream New Zealanders it is now with its backing of the isolated teachers unions against parents who are in favour of knowing how well their kids are doing and who strongly support having national standards in literacy and numeracy. We heard from the Minister of Education today about the expanded opportunities in the Youth Guarantee scheme which deals with those kids who do not fit into the usual secondary school system that we have in New Zealand. The Minister of Education has been around the country in the last week or so opening a number of these trades academies and we have made huge achievements there. 
The Prime Minister talked about what we are doing to build better social services in New Zealand. One of our flagship programmes is Whanau Ora which integrates health welfare and justice funding in order to have a real focus on what really matters for families and communities. Our Prime Minister also outlined together with our Minister for Social Development and Employment Paula Bennett the special focus that we want to have this year on vulnerable children. We want to give Kiwi kids every opportunity to succeed and we are dealing with that across a whole range of Government departments and services in the most comprehensive way. It is not a little slogan that is written up as a new direction but something that is tangible and is being delivered. 
First we are delivering better support for children in State care. The outcomes and the problems of children in State care are not what you and I would want for these kids. Many of these kids have come from hard backgrounds and difficult lives and the previous Government was happy for that to carry on. We do not want that to happen and we are doing more to help the kids in State care. We also have a real focus on child abuse and on how we can fix that. Secondly in the area of justice we have a lot of work under way to protect kids from abuse. We will have tougher penalties for neglect and we are helping those children who have to go to court as witnesses or victims. 
In health we have the best immunisation rates that we have ever had. If we can give kids a healthy start in life that really sets them up for their childhood and adult life. We have record levels of immunisation. You know the previous Labour Government spent 9 years talking about closing the gaps between Maori and non-Maori; we have closed the gap on immunisation to the lowest level at which it has ever been. That is the fantastic work that has been going on in the health service. We are also improving maternity services and early parenthood services. We have a strong focus on trying to eradicate rheumatic fever from New Zealand and we will be talking about that. There will be further announcements on that. A lot of investment is going into health. We are fixing the B4 School checks. That is all part of the special focus on vulnerable children. In education of course we are promoting participation in early childhood education and helping children to succeed at school. 
But the times are tough. Everyone knows that the global financial crisis had a dramatic impact not only on our country’s tax base but also internationally on the demand from consumers overseas. The Government is seeking to protect and grow our public services with a strong investment in health and education and it also has a strong commitment to improve the productive and export part of the economy. But here is what will put that at risk: extravagant spending promises from the party opposite if it ever has the opportunity to be in Government again. 
We know that over the last few short months Labour has promised over $5 billion of extra spending—$5 billion of extra spending over the last few months. The tax-free threshold of $1.3 billion is just a huge and totally ill-thought-through pledge that will put up the taxes on middle-income New Zealanders. Taking GST off fresh fruit and vegetables will cost $250 million. Having no dividends from the State-owned power companies which is one of Labour’s promises will cost $700 million. Labour would restore all the changes we have made to early childhood education; that is another $400 million. Restoring the research and development tax credit would be another $330 million. Extending paid parental leave to 18 weeks is estimated to cost half a billion dollars and Labour is promising that. Restoring capital contributions to the Superannuation Fund is another $2 billion cost that the party opposite has promised. It has promised to back-pay the disability support workers who did sleepovers. That is a $500 million promise as well. Labour has promised to provide back-pay for 6 years in terms of the sleepovers case plus to pay the workers in future for sleepovers. That is another $500 million promise. 
That is a huge bill of over $5 billion that the Labour Opposition has promised to pay. The only good news is that Labour will never get the opportunity to have to keep any of those promises. But it is a very serious situation when the leading Opposition party in New Zealand does not accept that this is a time for financial discipline. This is not a time to start promising to spend huge amounts of money when we know those promises simply cannot be delivered on. 
The Prime Minister has set out an agenda. We will be working very hard to get the economy sorted and to get it moving and providing benefits for New Zealanders. There are positive signs out there that the export economy is ramping up and providing more job opportunities but after the last 9 or 10 years of the previous Government—and there was no job creation in the export sector in its last 3 or 4 years—the improvement is taking a lot longer than many people had expected. 
This Government is also looking at how we can improve public services with the investment that we currently have. The New Zealand Government—under National the Maori Party ACT and United Future—has put $1.2 billion extra into the public health service. We have sought to protect and grow the public health service. We are providing more than 400 extra operations a week in elective services for New Zealanders which means that 400 extra Kiwis a week are receiving elective surgery. We are speeding up the emergency departments so that people who turn up with their families when they feel vulnerable receive service much faster. We are also making a real commitment to make sure that we lift the performance in a whole lot of our preventive health areas with more immunisations more help for smokers and a better focus on diabetes. All those services are important. We are also making a stronger investment in cardiac services to make sure they work better for New Zealanders. 
This is an exciting period in New Zealand: a time of challenge given the difficult financial situation that we face. The Prime Minister has set out a clear agenda that focuses on what really matters to the New Zealand economy right now—that is a focus on the export part of our economy and on improved savings and investment so that we have the resources to back the productive part of the economy to enable it to create jobs and wealth for New Zealand. The responsibility of members on this side of the House is to make sure that we support that effort by the Prime Minister. We want to make sure that we can deliver the brighter future that New Zealanders are looking for. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I call the Hon Trevor Mallard. There are fewer than 10 minutes remaining and I will give the member a bell at 2 minutes.