Joyce Steven: General Debate 
Joyce Steven: General Debate 
[Volume:674;Page:20479] 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Transport) 
: 
 Remind me to tell the member Lianne Dalziel that cartoons are not real. I think that is important. If she spends half her speech on cartoons then I think she has a wee problem with being in touch with reality. That is a little bit the issue with the New Zealand Labour Party. We had the “Comical Ali” of the New Zealand Labour Party Stuart Nash up here earlier this afternoon criticising the Government and asking how things have changed financially in the last 3 years and how we let that happen. Well there was a thing called the global financial crisis but the “Comical Ali” of the Labour Party does not know that it occurred. He sits in Napier in splendid isolation and says it did not occur. New Zealanders know that these are very challenging times around the world. There is no doubt that New Zealanders know that. Nightly on TV last week we saw the Budget stand-off in the USA—the mightiest economy in the world—and the huge debt mountain it is trying to deal with. We see the shaky finances of many European countries and friends that we know are struggling under mountains of debt. We have seen the riots of London over the last 3 nights and we see the very turbulent nature of the world’s stock markets. We know that it is a very challenging and difficult time in the world. 
New Zealanders know that. They know that it is important to have strong conservative leadership in these times. They are aware of it; it is just a pity that the New Zealand Labour Party is not. The problem for the Labour Party is that it has no understanding of the challenges out there in the world today. The Government is very active in dealing with those challenges. The most important thing any Government can do is to get its Budget under control so it can keep interest rates lower over the cycle. We talk about the cost of living and the cost of living is crucially important. The biggest element for most people is the cost of interest on their mortgages. That is a huge issue for New Zealanders and making sure that Governments control their debt and keep their credit ratings as high as they possibly can is crucial to controlling the cost of living. That is what this Government is doing. 
The second thing this Government is doing is that it is doing it without adding taxes. Have members noticed how often members on the other side have an idea for adding taxes? They have ideas all the time about throwing another tax on the bonfire of taxation. That means they do not understand yet another thing. They do not understand that if New Zealand is to turn itself round and if we are to pay people better then we have to be more competitive in the world. We do not get to be more competitive in the world if we put more handbrakes on people and stop them from achieving things and competing out there in the world. The Labour Party does not understand that that is crucially important if we are going to grow New Zealand stronger in the future. We have to be more competitive. We also have to be more into savings. This Government has helped the New Zealand— 
Brendon Burns 
: You cut KiwiSaver. 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: No we have helped the New Zealand people by setting up a better environment for savings and we are seeing the savings rate grow. What is more if the public endorse a mixed-ownership model they will have something else to invest in besides finance companies which is pretty much what happened under the previous Government. Labour members quite like to conveniently forget that the previous Government was in charge of the biggest meltdown of financial companies in New Zealand’s history. But that is what happened and that is why New Zealanders do not trust Labour. 
We have been dealing with waste and we are putting in huge efforts. We had the Minister for Social Development and Employment getting up yesterday and saying that testing people on the unemployment benefit after 12 months to see whether they are still entitled is saving taxpayers considerable money. Then we have the situation in industry training. I do not want to give the Leader of the Opposition political advice but he really should let that one go. Thousands upon thousands—100000-odd—of phantom trainees in the failing years of the Labour Government in 2008 were not achieving anything. They were not achieving anything. They were not getting any credits. Labour was just doling out the money flat out and there was no accountability. Mr Goff should get off that one because this year 2011 we have increased the number of credits that people are achieving through industry training by spending less taxpayers’ money on it. It is called accountability. 
Here we have it. Labour members oppose all spending cuts during National’s time in Government. They oppose all attempts to get better value for money. They criticised the Government—lest we forget—for failing to spend more money during the global financial crisis and now all the countries that did are having to save money and repay debt. They are out of touch; they are out of reality.