Robertson Grant: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 28 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:2920. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central):If ever the National Party wanted to signal to New Zealanders that it was out of touch and out of ideas it would put up David Bennett as the first speaker in a debate. David Bennett stood up in this Chamber and said that it has never been easier for New Zealanders to buy their first home. Well tell that to the people who live in Auckland Mr Bennett. Tell that to the people in Auckland who see a house on the North Shore make more money than most people who go to work each day earn in a year in Auckland because that is what we are seeing in Auckland today. In these financial statements what we see is a Government that is out of touch out of ideas arrogant in its third term breaking promises and lowering the standards that we would expect from a Government.We heard from the Prime Minister this week that he is the most casual Prime Minister in New Zealand’s history. I will tell you what: he is pretty casual about wages and the fact that they are not keeping up. He is pretty casual about the fact that unemployment is still higher than it was when the global financial crisis started. He is pretty casual about the fact that housing affordability is the worst that it has been in 60 years. And he is very casual indeed about the impact of the neglect of this Government on the regions. If this Government wanted a sign of that it came in the Northland by-election. The signal to this Government that the regions of New Zealand are feeling neglected and forgotten goes all the way from roads to broadband to the investment that we would expect in the economy. It is not happening from this Government.Ed Miliband in the UK said something interesting the other day when talking about the Conservative Government there. He said that people tell them there is prosperity but most working people feel that that prosperity is happening to someone else somewhere else. That is what the people of Northland have been telling the New Zealand Government and that is what the people of the regions are telling us as we travel around. It is all very well to celebrate an economy built on the recovery from natural disaster and one commodity price but that is not good enough for the New Zealand economy. It is not good enough after 7 years for Bill English to stand up in this Chamber and make excuse after excuse for why he will break his promise to New Zealanders to deliver a surplus and why he will break his promise to New Zealanders to reduce the level of borrowing. The debt today is $85 billion—$85 billion. Bill English has borrowed more money than Rob Muldoon. Rob Muldoon is John Key’s political hero. I do not think he is Bill English’s political hero but Bill English has borrowed more money than him. We are not in a surplus and we will not be in a surplus despite what we have been told. It is a broken promise from this Government.It was Bill English himself who said that getting into surplus was one of the most important things a Government could do in order to safeguard the economy. He said that—he said that—in this Chamber in fact. And today in Parliament he said he recalled saying that but suddenly he has adopted the Prime Minister’s view that getting a surplus is an artificial target that it is like trying to land a Boeing 747 on the head of a pin. Well I tell you what: Michael Cullen must have been a really good pilot because he managed to land that 747 on it nine times in a row. In this Budget we will have seven deficits for seven Budgets from Bill English. I challenge the Minister to stand up in this Chamber and explain to New Zealanders why while they have gone through the last 7 years tightening their belts doing what has been asked of them being told election after election that the surplus would come that the paying down of debt would happen when that occurred yet again the Government fails. Yet again the Government fails to deliver to hard-working New Zealanders who rightly will be looking ahead to this Budget and saying: after 7 years what do we get? Well what they are going to get from this Government if we look at these financial statements is more debt lack of growth in the economy in terms of diversifying it lack of growth in the housing supply not managing demand in terms of housing and neglecting the regions. That is what they will get and after 7 years that is absolutely appalling.Let us look at the promises that the Government has made. It has made the promise that New Zealanders’ average wages will go up to $62000 by September 2017. That was in an open letter that John Key sent to New Zealanders at election time. Well at the moment Bill English is spending all his time talking down wage increases. He is saying New Zealanders should not expect more than 1.5 percent in terms of wage increases. We are talking here about teachers and nurses and people who serve New Zealanders every day who have sat by knowing that the economy was under strain but then Bill English and John Key declare the global financial crisis is over. Where is the dividend for those people? If we look at the promise to get to $62000 average wage by September 2017 it requires a 3 percent year-on-year wage increase. Bill English is saying only 1.5 percent this year. This is broken promise No. 1.Then the National Government tells us that we are going to see unemployment go down and go down to around where the OECD averages are. Well what we know is that in the last cycle unemployment went up. It went up to 5.7 percent. The only reason it even looks partly good is the Christchurch rebuild. We are not seeing the sustained investment in the New Zealand economy to diversify. If we look at a region like—shall we pick Wanganui? It is a great region of New Zealand neglected by this Government which now sees the highest unemployment rate in the country. It is higher than Northland higher than the East Coast. It is places like Gisborne Wanganui and Northland that are saying: where is this Government? Where is the investment in the economy beyond commodity prices because we are seeing dairy prices slip further and further? That is what this economy has relied on under National—commodity prices; riding the wave of commodity prices. We are now looking at a $7 billion hole in the New Zealand economy because dairy prices have come off so far. That does not affect just the famers who wear that; it affects every rural and provincial community in New Zealand because they will see the impact of the loss of that money. So there is a broken promise around employment fuelled by this Government not being prepared to invest.But then when we look seriously at the regions and look at issues like investment in transport and investment in broadband activity in rural broadband is happening only because communities are doing it ahead of the Government. This is a Government that has forgotten where it has come from. It is interesting to stand up on this side of the Chamber and realise that this Government is now so out of touch with its own voters in the regions that it neglects them in an attempt to try to milk the rest of the Christchurch rebuild in order to show that it has got some kind of vision for the economy. What we now have is a Government that has been reliant for so long on commodity prices that has relied for several years now on the rebuild of Christchurch but still tries to use it as an excuse and that is out of ideas. When Bill English stood up in the election campaign when he was asked what new idea he had to grow the economy he could not come up with one. Now he says there are no new ideas for housing either. The Government is out of touch out of ideas. It is an arrogant Government in its third term.Once upon a time the slogan was “ambitious for New Zealand”. Now it should be “embarrassed for New Zealand” because that is what we are getting from this Government: an embarrassing lack of investment in the economy a Prime Minister who goes around embarrassing the whole country and a Government that does not have any ideas to grow the economy long term and in a sustainable way. These financial statements speak of a Government that has lost touch with where ordinary New Zealanders are. The questions we get asked when we are out in the community are: where are the new jobs coming from where is the investment in new industries in adding value in information and communications technology in high value manufacturing? New Zealanders have the ideas. They have got the interest but they do not have a Government that will back them. They have got a Government that is complacent. It is sitting there waiting for those commodity prices to rise again. The message for this Government is that it is not going to happen. Over the next 5 to 10 years there is a glut in global milk supply. We have got to do something different. Do you know what the Government’s response is? It is to change the targets for exports.When National came into Government it said: 40 percent of GDP for exports. And what does it do now? Well 30 percent was what National had when it came in. It fiddled around a little bit with the way it worked it out but it is below 30 percent. It is dropping. It is 28 percent. We will not thrive as a country if we do not build our export base. This Government is out of ideas. It is out of touch with New Zealanders and it has completely failed to invest in the regions. It has failed in housing in a way that no Government before it has done. It has completely failed to build houses and it has completely failed to manage demand. Now we have the Governor of the Reserve Bank telling the National Government that it has failed on housing. No building no increase in supply and now the Reserve Bank is saying no control of demand. This is a Government with its head in the sand. John Key tells us there is no crisis in housing; there is a crisis.