Heatley Phil: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHeatley Phil: General Debate[Sitting date: 16 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:13944. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei): There must be hundreds of Labour voters across the country—in fact I think there are possibly thousands of Labour voters across the country—but I would imagine that most of them are feeling pretty disillusioned because the Labour Party even after 5 years just does not look ready to govern. In the last 5 years the Labour Party is up to its fourth leader. There have been four leaders in 5 years: Helen Clark Phil Goff David Shearer and now leader No. 4 David Cunliffe.The difficulty of course is that although the Labour Party keeps changing its leaders it has done nothing about the issue of renewal. I remember this when we went out of Government in 1999. There was that period of renewing and refreshing. What the Labour Party does is it changes its leader but the MPs behind them are old and tired so it is a bit like painting over rotting timber. They coined a phrase back in 1999—I think it was “dead wood”. The problem with the Labour Party is that it keeps painting the dead wood the rotting timber on its fourth Labour leader.The problem is that when you are inward-looking you keep changing your leader and when you have stopped making policies you start making things up. That is what we saw from David Cunliffe this week. He was caught out quoting what the 2013 census would actually say and he was caught out with his statistics. What the new Labour Party leader No. 4 said was that “real median weekly incomes have dropped since the last Census by $45 in Southland $50 in Waikato and $24 in Taranaki.” Actually since the census real median after-tax weekly incomes have increased by $76 in Southland not gone down by $45; they have increased by $43 in the Waikato not gone down; and they have increased by $85 in Taranaki not gone down. The Leader of the Opposition is making things up. What I was interested in was that the TV cameras probably turned off as he was quoting those facts and statistics that were all wrong. He went on to say that Jacinda Ardern won Wellington Central Clayton Cosgrove is doing advertising for Pantene and Grant Robertson is actually 6 foot 7! This is a Labour leader who does not give truthful statistics and I do not know whether that is knowingly or not.The fact of the matter is that Government spending went up by 50 percent during the Labour tenure. It is actually well under control now despite the pressures of the recession the global financial crisis and the Canterbury earthquakes. Inflation was running at 5.1 percent; we are now enjoying an inflation rate of only 1.4 percent. Of course people will remember—in fact first-home buyers will remember—mortgage interest rates at about 11 percent. They were around the 9 10 or 11 percent mark under Labour but of course they are averaging about 6 percent at the moment. If you are a first-home buyer you would prefer interest rates to be around 5 6 or 7 percent not the 9 10 or 11 percent that you saw under Labour.Interestingly although the new Labour Party leader No. 4 said that population growth in the provinces was going down I would like to say that in my area in Northland numbers actually went up by 3000. The population rose by 3000 in Northland. It was not all me. It was not all me; a lot of it is to do with Government policy and people just simply enjoying the north.We know that offshore we have got endorsement for what we are doing. Standard and Poor’s recently affirmed New Zealand’s AA+ credit rating. The IMF is “verysupportive” of what is being done by this Government. In its annual check-up of New Zealand’s health the IMF said that National is on the right track with our plan to get to Budget surplus and that it strikes the right balance. So we have got third-party international endorsement of what we are doing. We do not have to make up statistics. We do not have to present what are in fact false facts as the Labour Party is doing. The facts speak for themselves. We are very proud of our record and we will continue to roll out programmes that support New Zealand’s economic growth and jobs.