Key John: Appropriation (2007/08 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
Key John: Appropriation (2007/08 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:641;Page:11054] 
JOHN KEY (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I have to say that I feel a bit sorry for Michael Cullen. He is leaving and they did not even give him a gold watch; they gave him a red box. You see Michael Cullen is the man who is meant to be defending the economy. He is the Minister of Finance. Less than a quarter of his entire caucus bothered to show up to listen to him and as we know from the opinion polls on Sunday night the country not only is fed up with him but has given up on him. The country is not listening. 
 Dr Cullen had 10 minutes in which to get up and tell the people of New Zealand why they should have any faith at all in his economic management and he did not use even 2 minutes of his time on that. He is electoral death to the Labour Party. The more he is on TV the better it is for National. This is the man who is so confused about monetary policy that at one point he was going to suspend the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act under section 12. That was until his boss came back and told him to sit down calm down and say a little bit less “because what you’re doing Michael is you’re telling the people of New Zealand what they already know.” Labour has no answers. It is an economic basket case and New Zealanders are paying for its economic mismanagement. 
I want to talk about the economy and let us get a few facts right. These are the facts that Labour does not want New Zealanders to know. We have the worst brain drain in the developed world. A million New Zealanders have left New Zealand. Kiwis leave at the rate of 760 a week. Do members know what happens when they get out to the airport and as they are having their passports stamped “goodbye”? Do members think they say to the immigration officers and the customs officers on the way out: “I want to thank Michael Cullen for his economic management. He has done such a cracker job for us.”? No; they say: “I’m “outski” I’m outta here until these guys are gone.” 
I come back to the leader of the Labour Party Helen Clark. She came into office telling New Zealanders that New Zealand would go up in the OECD. We were 20th. Under Michael Cullen’s economic management we are 22nd. We are not going up; we are going down. In 1988 they started measuring productivity in the New Zealand economy—and let us get a few facts right. In 1988 the average was roughly 2.5 percent. Well let us ask Michael Cullen today what productivity is. People are at a standstill in traffic jams in Auckland. If people want to start up a business that needs a long-term power contract they will not get one. If they want to get broadband around most of the country they cannot have it. If people in mid-Canterbury want water they will not get it. If people want to get on a train in Auckland it will take an hour and a half to go anywhere. The answer is that productivity is at about 0.5 percent and in the public sector it is negative. New Zealanders are putting in more money and getting less for it. 
Let us get back to what Labour really cares about. Labour Party members want to talk about themselves. They want to talk about electoral law reform about how they can change the rules to make it a bit easier to try to slip back into Parliament. They have no show of doing that. They want to talk about photo opportunities but they do not want to talk about interest rates. I say to Michael that he does not want to talk about interest rates because the reality is that New Zealanders now pay some of the highest interest rates in the developed world. The Sunday papers are full of stories about New Zealanders who today are tossing up whether they can sell their house and be able to afford another one. That is the truth of it. 
Michael Cullen could have done a good job of economic management. He had the chance. This is the Minister of Finance who wrote to his own Cabinet members and said: “Don’t overspend on your budget because if you do interest rates will stay up longer and they will go up higher and the exchange rate will go up.” He completely disregarded that and spent a billion dollars more because he does not care. Those members care about themselves. They care about Labour. They are happy to trawl through fish and chip papers. The Minister of Finance was happy to use 2 minutes of his time in the appropriation debate talking about the economy and 8 minutes talking about me. Labour members are not interested in talking about the economy because they do not have the answers. 
Let us get a few other facts right. Domestic inflation in New Zealand is embedded under Labour. It is running at above 4 percent and it has been doing so for 4 years. The only answer those members have is to spend more money and while they are at it New Zealanders are stuck in traffic jams and have waited 8 years for a tax cut—only to be told that miraculously in 2008 election year there is a chance that Michael Cullen might actually talk to them about that. But we do not really know. 
Even if Michael Cullen does promise tax cuts we know that the last time he rolled out a tax cut he never delivered on it. So if we want to get on to the issue of trust—well he cancelled it. While those members are doing all that New Zealanders will be working the longest hours in the developed world other than Iceland. You see these people have no economic policy at all. Actually that is not true. Helen Clark has an economic policy and she declared it in the  
New Zealand Herald 
. She said: “This is the way it works. We saved up money in the kitty and then we spent it on Working for Families. Then we saved up money in the kitty and then we spent it on early childhood education. Now we are saving up money in the kitty but we have absolutely no clue what the bribes will be like yet but don’t worry we’re working on them.” My colleague Bill English has a description of that. It is called “lolly-nomics”. They save up the lollies then spend it on someone else. 
Here is a place Labour could spend it. Yesterday I received a phone call from a constituent of mine. She is a very good woman and she is a member of a health trust. She rang to tell me this little story. Last Wednesday she went to North Shore Hospital at 10 o’clock in the morning. She had a small thing she needed to have attended to but it was acute and serious and she needed treatment. Did she get treatment? Actually despite Labour doubling the amount of spending on health—and I will come back to that later—by 11 o’clock that night she had not had an operation. Was she given a bed? No. She was given a trolley. She was upgraded to a trolley with a drip and they put her in the corridor. That is where they left her until the next morning. 
Do members know what happened the next morning? This is health under Labour folks. The next morning the chief surgeon came down and spoke to the people on the trolleys—because she was not on her own. There were dozens of them there. This is what the chief surgeon said to the people on the trolleys: “If you know someone in politics ring them up because it’s a disgrace—health under these people. It’s a disgrace.” [ 
Interruption 
] I am happy to talk about the issues I say to Michael Cullen. At exactly the same time at North Shore Hospital they were trying to treat people in an ambulance outside. My constituent finally got her operation. [ 
Interruption 
] Yes she did get it. It was a 5-minute operation which she got on the Friday night. That is what happened—on the Friday night she got her operation. 
You see this is the deal. These people are now annually taking about $20 billion more in taxes off people than they used to. They are spending a billion dollars a week but they do not know how to spend it they do not know where to spend it and they do not know what to get for it. But that is what they are happy to do. They spend so much money waste it then drive up interest rates because they do not care about us and they do not care about New Zealanders—they care about themselves. They care about dishing out a few lollies and they care about themselves. 
Why did Michael Cullen not come down to the House and use his other 8 minutes to talk about the economy? Because he has no answers. Those members have no answers. There are no tax cuts no reform of the Resource Management Act no public use or private use of infrastructure no decisions to try to fix up a failing infrastructure in New Zealand no ability to change labour laws and no interest to privatise and bring in more things like accident compensation. They have no answers. 
I say that the people of New Zealand have an answer. They have had a gutsful of Michael Cullen’s economic management. They have had a gutsful of Labour. Mark my words. When Michael Cullen has gone in 12 months’ time and Steve Maharey is chancellor or whatever he is going to be at Massey University—chancellor or cleaner; one of the two—people will look back on the 9 years under Michael Cullen and say that an economic wave rode over New Zealand and those people failed to do anything with it. I say that the New Zealand public have an answer and the answer is that they want rid of Labour. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: I call Doug Woolerton—[ 
Interruption 
] I am calling a speaker members and I ask for order.