Ardern Shane: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Ardern Shane: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
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SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country) 
: 
 I rise to support 150 percent the Prime Minister’s statement to the House at the opening of Parliament last week. I think there is something quite nice in the notion from this side of the House that Labour members limped to their final political death on their arthritic legs as my colleague Cam Calder so eloquently said before. That is the reason I guess why they have been absolutely no good in this debate at all and have not been able to bring forward anything of any substance as to why they think the Prime Minister’s statement was not the right way forward for New Zealand. 
Who can argue with a Government that has an economic plan to introduce a world-class tax system that is fair to all and that will make a better job of managing public services over the next 9 years than what happened in the last 9 years? Who intends to introduce a higher standard to our education system so that pupils going to our schools will know as they are going through school how they are doing compared not only with their own cohort but also with the international standard? Who will invest in infrastructure on a level that has not been seen in this country for over 50 years? Who could argue that it is an unnecessary or undesirable outcome? Who will reform the regulatory regime in this country—the biggest area of course being the Resource Management Act—and remove roadblocks to business and innovation? 
On the subject of innovation which has already been touched on $40 million this year will be invested in the Primary Growth Partnership by business and the Government in conjunction for research and development in very essential areas such as agriculture which will grow the economy. Labour over 9 years of some of the best times we have ever seen in this country’s economy saw negative or very slow growth. It has been stated recently by the Governor of the Reserve Bank and others that it will be enormously challenging for New Zealand to catch up to Australia. I do not agree with that actually. Our Australian colleagues are very competent and their economy is very strong but in New Zealand we have everything that Australia has plus some. We have more minerals per capita than the Australians; that is the real irony. And we have something that is actually much more sustainable than that—we have protein which comes from three sectors: fish meat and dairy. I hope that we can unleash the potential that lies there. It is happening of course with the very good work that our trade Minister Tim Groser is doing internationally by signing up to new trade deals all over the place. Work is going on in the World Trade Organisation and others are assisting him in that work. I acknowledge my colleague John Hayes who is also playing an active role in that area. 
With those opportunities opening up to us New Zealand has never been better placed to seize on a strong growing economy that will see most of our hopes and aspirations met. The Prime Minister you see does not base his assumptions on pure academic rhetoric; he has life experience in how to make the ship go faster how to make the cake grow quicker and how to earn money and then invest it in an area that will help to grow the economy even beyond that. We are not talking as we have in the past about people who have theory about how they can do it; we have someone who actually has done it. I often refer to the American experience—the American dream of being prosperous. We do not have to look to America for a dream; our Prime Minister is the New Zealand equivalent of the American dream. He started off from a humble background and has been able to make it on his own merits. So we have someone now who has a vision for New Zealand unlike the past when most of the driving was done by a Government that was looking in the rear-vision mirror. We have someone who will take New Zealand forward and who stated in his opening comments to Parliament how he intends to do that. 
In terms of protein we need to look at all of the roadblocks that are stopping those industries from developing growing and being able to carry New Zealand forward. One of those roadblocks concerns the augmentation of water: the distribution availability and storage of water. This Government is looking at what can be done about that particularly but not entirely restricted to the eastern belt and more particularly and probably more important at the moment in regard to Canterbury. We will hear more from the Government over the next few months and years about what can be done in that regard. We look forward to growing the economic cake by growing the agricultural base. That is the thing we are good at the thing we are world class at the thing we are leaders in and where we can do the best we can going forward. 
This Government will not do what the last Government did and put up roadblocks one after the other to every good idea put forward for innovation and investment in these areas. I have always asked how it is that in New Zealand we can grow a  
Pinus radiata 
 tree 5 years quicker on average than the Australians can yet the Australian forestry industry has grown and ours has at best stagnated. How is that? What are the reasons? When we ask the industry they answer that there is too much red tape that it is because of the Resource Management Act that they cannot get consent to put in cogeneration that in Australia they encourage investment—the list goes on. We need to address those issues. The area we are most likely to have the greatest success in addressing those issues at the moment is taxation; and more will be announced about tax in the upcoming Budget. I look forward to finally having a tax system that is competitive not only with Australia but internationally. 
We always hear Labour Governments say that we must be able to put up a fence around New Zealand and pretend that the rest of the world does not exist that we must put up barriers to any type of industry or innovation and that we must put up barriers to growth wherever we can and the world will sail past and not bother us. The problem with that notion is that we are an export nation. The dairy industry exports 94 percent of what it produces; we consume 6 percent of the production. The domestic market is so insignificant to us that putting roadblocks in the way of growth is very destructive to the growth of the New Zealand economy. It defies logic that people would do so but the last Government did. 
The Prime Minister’s statement will take New Zealand forward. It is a vision for New Zealand. It is a plan a blueprint for us to look to to reference and to ask whether we have done this or that and whether we are on track. It is for the first time an achievable goal—an aspirational one but an achievable one. Members on this side of the House are totally in support of the direction the Prime Minister has taken. For me in particular the area of agriculture—the growth in our economy that will inevitably come from the opportunity we have to unleash for rural New Zealand in terms of protein—was clearly outlined in the Prime Minister’s statement. It showed the direction we are heading. There is no doubt that the Labour Party hates it and I can understand why that is the case.