Bridges Simon: Address in Reply 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Bridges Simon: Address in Reply 
[Sitting date: 14 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:341. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga) 
: 
 Congratulations Mr Deputy Speaker on your well-deserved elevation to the position you hold in this Parliament which I know you will serve with grace and dignity. I have to say in talking about the speech I have just heard from Clare Curran that maybe it is just me but there is a deep and twisted irony in what she is saying about broadcasting. On the one hand she talks about freedom and the need to let freedom reign within the broadcasting world but on the other she is straight in attacking the Sky TVs—the ones who are doing well in this area. Ultimately—and I am pretty sure I am right in terms of the policies Labour espoused on broadcasting before the last election—it comes down to the same old same old from that party and that is more regulation more State regulation and ultimately more State control with the State controlling broadcasting. And if she wants to know about a State inappropriately deciding what is on television all we need to do is go down the road that Clare Curran wants us to go down which she espoused and which was roundly rejected at the last election. 
You see in National we believe in freedom and we want to see people out there in the free marketplace of ideas talking about these things and not being bullied down because their idea does not fit with someone’s view. I want to give you a quotation I read in this morning’s  
New Zealand Herald  
from Greek finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos. He said: “Our country has an acute issue of survival. The question is not whether some salaries and pensions will be curtailed but whether we will be able to pay even these reduced wages and pensions. When you have to choose between bad and worse you will pick what is bad to avoid what is worse.” I am no economist but I chair the Finance and Expenditure Committee; I am literate in these matters. But ultimately what happened in Greece is pretty simple. For way too long it spent more than it earned. I think that New Zealanders roundly rejected that sort of approach which we saw from the Labour Party opposite in the election campaign. You see Labour wants to take this country down that route. Now Phil Goff in campaigning at the last election made—I think at last count Amy Adams was saying it was $15 billion more in spending promises than National; I thought it was more like $20 billion. But what I do know is that it is a whole lot of money that Labour— 
Hon Annette King 
: It was just made up. 
SIMON BRIDGES 
: Well it was made up; I agree with Annette King. That is exactly what it was. It was made up by Phil Goff. He was shown up in the debates for making it up because he did not know where his figures came from and he just kept on promising. Actually just as we have seen in Greece it does not work and it does not work here either. So we are determined to be fiscally conservative and to get our spending and our debt down in this country and to return to surplus in 2014-15. When National talks this way many of the members on the other side—and David Cunliffe committed this crime if I can put it this way—say: “Oh but we got debt down.” Well let me explain something to the Labour Party. There is a fundamental difference between spending and debt—right? They are different concepts. And yes that is right. In the best economy the world has probably ever seen it is true that Michael Cullen was able to return surpluses arguably I would say by taxing more than he needed to. But he was able to return big surpluses. But how did he do that? Well from 2005 we know that he spent like a drunken sailor. Every day day in day out he was spending much more than he needed to do and he was not spending it on productive stuff on the kinds of things Clare Curran harped on about before—innovation this innovation that. No he put it into the non-productive economy. And why did he do that? Well a cynic might say he did that to buy elections. But fortunately New Zealanders woke up. They knew it was a hopeless set of policies that Labour was selling. They did not want the “Greek-onomics” - styled stuff that Labour was putting in place. 
I was talking to a top economist just last week. He said to me that doing a good job by the economy comes down to two things. You can dress it up in all sorts of ways and you can talk about 15 things but it comes down to two things. Firstly it comes down to spending less and having less debt. They are different things but related. Secondly it comes down to building a more competitive and productive economy. And that is precisely what National wants to do. He also said this to me on the competitive and productive economy: “Actually it doesn’t come down to one big thing; it comes down to lots and lots of little things done right over time incrementally. That is how you make a difference in an economy.” [ 
Interruption 
] I hear Rajen Prasad and I know that on that side of the House Labour and probably the Greens as well says: “Actually it does come down to two or three things. You can just have some big bang. You know the innovation economy or the green economy and we just do all these magic little things.” Well that is exactly what it is; it is the magic theory of economics. It is the idea that the Government can just magic up industries and suddenly hey presto we are billionaires. Well let me tell the Opposition that that is actually not how the real economy works.  
Hon Annette King 
: How are you going to magic the 170000 jobs? 
SIMON BRIDGES 
: There is no magic on this side of the House Annette King or Kris Faafoi. What there is is lots of things—a 120-point plan that adds up over time to making a step change in this economy. I know; I understand; Labour does not like it. Labour members are good people. They are well-meaning people but they are wrong fundamentally on the economics. [ 
Interruption 
] Well I am being generous. I wanted to be generous. They do have the magic wand theory of economics. As I say just dream up an industry. For Clare Curran it is innovation and for the Green Party it is a green economy. Actually we just want to build a more productive and competitive economy and we do that by reforming the economy day in and day out with lots of things. Labour says there is no plan—well here it is. They can get it on www.national.org.nz. I will go through some of these things: connect 58000 premises to ultra-fast broadband including 221 schools. 
Hon Annette King 
: How? 
SIMON BRIDGES 
: How? Well we put them in the ground Annette. They dig them up and it works kind of well. Also there is changing ACC to allow choice in the work account reduce business costs and promote growth. We will pass legislation to implement the start-out wage to ensure our young people are not locked out of the job market. It is all of these things 120 things that make a substantial difference to the economy and do mean that we can deliver a brighter future for this country. 
I also have to say that there is something else that is needed to deliver a brighter future. It is basically attitudinal; it is not being a misery guts like some of the members opposite are when they stand up—“Woe is me!” and all this and that. Not that I have done it often but when you have been to South-east Asia to the so-called tiger economies and you read their newspapers you see that they focus on “can do” on what can be done on how a road can be built. They do not as Steven Joyce pointed out in what I thought was a stellar column in the  
New Zealand Herald  
focus on all the “can’ts” all the things you cannot do. They do not say: “There is this problem and that.” They do not shut off things here there and everywhere. Their papers are relentlessly positive. They talk about economic growth the things they are doing the broadband plans and this and that and we could do with a dose of that attitude and that optimism because there is room for optimism. When we look around the world at Europe and its issues at America which is doing better than it was but has its issues and we look at where we are next to the Asian economies—and I include Australia in that which is arguably the richest per capita country in the world right now—there is much room for optimism in New Zealand because we have a great spirit we are optimistic and we have a wonderful Government leading us at this time of trial.