Williamson Maurice: Address in ReplyText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliamson Maurice: Address in Reply[Sitting date: 29 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:393. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga):It is a great delight to take part in this my 10th Address in Reply debate and boy have I seen things change over the millennium that I have been here.I want to pay tribute tonight to a very special group of New Zealanders. I have heard so many of the speakers pay tribute to their party or their leader and in fact in many cases they pay a lot of tribute to themselves. I want to pay tribute to a special group of New Zealanders and that is the voters because they once again have shown that they are actually quite a common-sense bloc of several million people who will make a determination about what is right and what is not. I have held a view for decades that voters vote really on only two things. It is a good lesson if members would like to listen. I am actually doing this to be helpful. They actually vote on only two things: their hip pocket and their kids’ future. They take every one of the issues that are up for judgment and they actually even bring it down to one more simple little test and the test goes like this—and if members from the Labour Party listen I think this will be helpful. The test goes like this: is this lot heading in the right direction and delivering a reasonable set of outcomes or are they tired arrogant and out of touch and is it time for a change?I have been around this place when I have seen the public make that judgment in both directions. I was here in 1990 when National really only just had to show up. Labour was so dishevelled and was in such in shambles. Phil Goff lost Mt Roskill Trevor Mallard lost Hamilton West and Annette King lost Horowhenua. Labour was absolutely stuffed and National only had to just be there on the day. But I have been there on the other side of the coin. In 1999 no matter what we tried to do to stem the haemorrhaging flow of voters who were rushing out of the body corporate called National we could not stop it. Every day we used to sit there and say: “Right we are going to launch the next policy and this will make a change.” We would announce it and 2 nights later the polling would come in and we had gone another two points down in the polls. I was around in 2002 when it was quite clear that the public thought that Labour was heading in the right direction it was doing the right things and National was not offering a time for a change. So that is the simple formula that the voting public uses.Not every voter does that. I accept that. There is a bloc of around about 40 percent of voters who are hard-line left wing—pretty much either Labour or Green—and if you add them together they will fluctuate around that 40 percent and there is about 40 percent of the general voting public who sit to the right of centre mainly National and a bit of ACT sometimes. It has only a bit of a fluctuation. Then there is a 15 to 20 percent middle group of New Zealanders who really do want to move according to where they think their best interests lie. Those voting categories are quite simple. At the last election we picked up a 47 percent party vote for National. That is about 7 percent more than that core hard-line right wing. You take the Greens and Labour together; they got 36 percent so they are down about 4 percent on their core. Then you can spread the rest across—what was it—8.6 percent for New Zealand First about 4 percent for the Conservatives and so on.In the end the voters were a little bit like the mythical reef fish where millions of reef fish can be swimming in one direction and all of a sudden decide to turn and go in another direction. They make no sound. Scientists cannot work out how they did it but the million reef fish communicate with each other by some unknown way and make the right decision. I am not making any claims for future elections. All I am telling the members of this House is that voters made the determination this time that the country was going in the right direction and that things were pretty good overall. There are often things they do not like. Voters do not get 457 votes. If they did they would say: “National has been good on this but Labour is better on that and I like the Greens on this.” They get just the one vote. They get just the one vote—the party vote. So they have to actually amalgamate all of their views across the whole spectrum of things and make a decision.With regards to that I want to pay a huge tribute to Bill English because he deserves the gold star for a Minister of Finance’s management of an economy over the last 6 years. Why do I say that? It is a little bit like why I argue that teachers’ pay should be based on performance. The teachers come back and say: “We don’t want performance pay. That’s not fair. It’s not right. If you’ve got a decile 1 school with kids who are being abused at home and not being fed the teacher will never be able to have the same outcomes as a teacher who has got a decile 10 school with fantastic parents with lots of money.” And I agree with them. I absolutely agree with them but what I would like the performance pay for teachers to be based on is the difference that they make and whether they take somebody who was really really poor and lift them up to quite good as opposed to maybe a decile 10 teacher who took stunning kids and just kept them about there.And you know what? The same thing applies with Bill English as the Minister of Finance. Anyone can be a good Minister of Finance when the world is booming when there are economic surpluses and when you have got money coming out of your pockets as Michael Cullen did. He did not know what to spend it on. He had surpluses that he did not know what to do with.Carmel Sepuloni: Lucky for that Government.Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: Do not let Labour take too much credit for this because the world economy was booming. Then what happened? Suddenly during the course of the year 2008 the election year the world almost fell out of bed and the whole global financial crisis swept across it. At the end of that year after New Zealand was already in recession poor old Bill English became the new Minister of Finance. I would have to say that that would be the worst timing that anyone has ever had in their appointment to a new job. You would have been able to almost excuse a Minister of Finance saying: “Well look under the circumstances it has been so hard. We’ve mucked up but we had very little option.” That is what happened in Greece Turkey Spain and Ireland and so on—and you can go through the list. But no Bill English sat down and mapped out with Ministers a definitive plan about how to manage the spending of this country without cutting it with a slasher and about making sure that good public services—better public services—were delivered with the amount of money that was there. So the focus was how many operations we got in our hospitals not what the funding level was.If I could say to members of this House—in the last 3 minutes I have—please when you are developing policy focus on outcomes and drop the dogma about deliverables and the old adage of who used to be doing what. This idea that Michael Joseph Savage walked down a pathway and opened the new State house—look I am sorry; that was in the 1930s. We need to start looking at the outcomes. I do not think we have a difference of view about what the end outcome is. The end outcome is to deliver some quality housing for people who are in need. I do not think we have a disagreement on that. But does the State need to own that building or does it need to facilitate access to its use? Does it need to fund by way of an accommodation supplement? Does it need to provide some incentive payments? I do not know what your view of a lot of Government agencies is but in my view some are them are pretty fat dumb and lazy and you could strip out some fat from Government agencies and that would allow for a much more efficient much more productive delivery of the same outcomes.Labour members have to drop their dogma. They get stuck back in the old days: “Oh we’re still in the trade union movement and the boss class is trying to drive the workers into the ground.” Rubbish! Absolute rubbish! If you are an employer in this country your greatest asset is your workforce and you know that if you treat them well your outcome your productivity and your efficiency will go through the roof. Of course there are a couple of ratbag employers out there like there are a couple of ratbag MPs but in general the vast bulk of employers know what they are on about.So I say once again to these members: “Focus on the outcomes.” Take for example the asset sale issue. I was just gobsmacked by Labour opposing the sale of assets. Much of the asset class the Government currently owns is rooted in the 1920s—hydro-electricity dams that were built then. How about we start focusing on the new asset classes like fibre optics and things that will make the future work? Let me put it this way. Does any household keep all its old assets when it is wanting new ones? No it says: “I don’t need this little house any more. I want to get a better one. I’m going to sell the old one and I am going to invest in a new one.” So the mixed-ownership model was a clear statement to the public of this country that a lot of the old assets do not need to be owned by the Government any more. But what we do need is a new class of assets and fibre optics is certainly one of them. A better motorway system is certainly another one as are roads of national significance. I just plead again to members on the other side of the House. Getting a new leader will not help you. What will help you is focusing on outcomes and dropping the dogma about how you deliver it.