Macindoe Tim: Address in Reply 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Macindoe Tim: Address in Reply 
[Sitting date: 07 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:117. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson. Thank you for the call and a very happy New Year to you. It is a pleasure as always to follow Mr Twyford but I would have thought now that he is an electorate member for Auckland—and with his transport role in the diminished Labour Party caucus—he would be particularly aware that this Government has made a very significant investment in rail in his area. It is a very important investment. I would have thought he would welcome that not ignore it in his contribution.  
I also want to say as a Waikato member how thrilled I am as we speak about that roading development that the Waikato Expressway is on track. It is going to deliver more for our region—and I am sure my colleague the member for Hamilton East will agree with me—than anything else in recent times. It is the single most important thing we can do for the economic development and the social development of our region. It will get people moving it will get businesses moving and it will create employment. It is a great development. Yes it is important and that is why we as a Government have been putting so much emphasis on the roads of national significance. I look forward to Mr Twyford coming up to speed getting to understand what it is all about and throwing his wholehearted support behind it.  
Mr Assistant Speaker could I at the outset congratulate you on your reappointment to your position and also Mr Speaker the Deputy Speaker and the other Assistant Speaker. We are well served by our presiding officers in Parliament and I wish you well. I would also like to thank the electors of Hamilton West for the great honour that they have done me by returning me with an increased majority. I was very proud to achieve that result and I am very conscious of the honour and the responsibility that I have. I will be doing my best to justify the faith that they have again placed in me and will be working as hard as I can for the benefit of our exciting city and our vitally important region.  
On this day as we marked in Parliament the diamond anniversary of our Sovereign I would like to pay my respects to Her Majesty the Queen. I am personally a very strong supporter of our current constitutional arrangements. I believe that she in her role as head of the Commonwealth has shown a devotion to duty and a lifetime of service that are admirable and really worth acknowledging. I do thank her for that. I also pay my respects to His Excellency and Lady Mateparae as they settle into their new viceregal responsibilities. I believe that they are off to a very good start and that they will serve us well over the next 4½ years.  
The Address in Reply debate of course focuses on what we heard from the Crown through the Governor-General at the opening of the Parliament. There were no surprises in it because it is essentially a reflection of the issues that were very well canvassed in last year’s general election. What did that election result give us? It gave a Government that for one of the few times in my lifetime actually saw its share of the party vote go up and its numbers go up. It saw an Opposition that could not really work out where it stood on the issues and did not have any credible policy pay the price for that disarray and substantially go down. And it saw the return of one party the enlargement of another and a little bit of moving around. But essentially the most important thing is that it gave us another strong John Key - led Government and a very clear mandate to press on with the issues and the policies that the electorate unquestionably endorsed at the ballot box.  
I want to welcome all new members of this House and congratulate them. It is a very significant honour; I wish you well. I know that there are very talented people who have come into the House. You come in of course at a time of very considerable challenges to us as a country and to the whole world. We are still in the grip of a global economic downturn that has really had a significant impact—there is no question. For instance we need only look at the fact that in last year’s election we were defending a zero Budget. If you had told me as I was defending one of the marginal seats in the country that I would have to go into an election defending a zero Budget I think I would have gone pretty white. Some say I have gone pretty white! Nevertheless it was what the public understood we needed to do. So I wish the new members the very best of luck as you join us to discharge your responsibilities. I look forward to constructive contributions and I particularly look forward to hearing your maiden statements over the next few weeks.  
Because of those challenges that I have just mentioned the critical importance of having an economic plan that is appropriate and is going to achieve what we need to do is patently apparent. There are of course no easy answers to the position we are in. Borrow and hope is clearly not an option. We need only look at what has been happening in Europe in recent times to realise how dire the position of some previously admired economies is; we do not want to go down that path. New Zealand is doing everything it can under the John Key - led Government to get our borrowing under control and to ensure that we are back in surplus by 2014-15. Notwithstanding all those major challenges particularly the devastation in the Canterbury region in the last 18 months or so we remain on our path to doing that. I salute Bill English and the team working with him for that significant achievement.  
When we are not borrowing when we are back in surplus we have choices. We can continue to invest in the things we want to rather than simply being constrained and having to spend quite a bit of what we earn on interest repayments. We were forced into that borrowing option by the previous Government and let us never forget that. Wasteful expenditure—incredibly wasteful expenditure—on a whole range of things meant that this Government came into office already in a recession having to rein it in and get our spending back under control because you cannot continue spending what you do not earn without imperilling future generations. That is what the last Labour Government did that is why New Zealanders threw it out of office and that is why they are saying to us: “For the sake of future generations do what you are doing National-led Government because there is no alternative.”  
Tax and spend is not an option. Tax and spend is not an option because—[ 
Interruption 
] I did enjoy seeing  
The Iron Lady 
 or “ 
The Iron Maiden 
” or whatever it is called. What a wonderful film—a fine performance by Meryl Streep. I have to say that I think Margaret Thatcher was a pretty impressive person. She faced similar challenges. She rose to that. She rose to that challenge as well and good on her. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Labour is an alternative—not a good one but it is an alternative. 
TIM MACINDOE 
: Fortunately it is not one Mr Williamson that New Zealanders are showing any enthusiasm for opting for at the moment.  
What did those members want to offer? More tax and spend—a failed philosophy that simply stifles investment and productivity and drives anyone of an entrepreneurial spirit who can do so offshore in search of greener pastures. That is the last thing we want. We know that some New Zealanders have gone. We are a very nomadic country; we have a very large expatriate population living offshore. That is not altogether bad because they pick up skills and as long as they come back eventually we benefit from that. But we must ensure that this is an attractive country with an economy that welcomes them home and that attracts them to invest here because that is what we need for our long-term prosperity.  
As a Government we are naturally very focused on the need to care for all our citizens. There are many who are struggling through the recession and there are many who need the assistance of the State and we are committed to providing that. But we cannot do it if we do not have the economy under control.  
We are of course committed to promoting sustainability of our environment. It is a topic that has certainly become far more popular to talk about in recent times. We are dedicated to doing it. We are very much focused on lifting educational achievement—no apologies about that. We are passionate about achieving that and our dynamic new Minister of Education is determined to do it. I wish her well. I know that she is off to an excellent start and she is earning the respect of people in that area and I wish them all well as they lift educational achievement for the good of our country and particularly for our young people.  
Welfare reform is crucial and as a member of the Social Services Committee in the last Parliament—we began to look at this—I am delighted that we will be working on this. If we are going to have a social security system that is responsive and is appropriate it must not trap people in long-term dependency it must ensure that everybody who can work is working and it must ensure that all the right incentives are there. Those incentives have been whacked off balance in recent times; we are going to get them back on track. There are some important challenges there.  
I mentioned Christchurch and Canterbury a short time ago. Time moves on and the media sometimes shifts its focus but we are conscious of the fact that Cantabrians have now faced over 10000 aftershocks. They had those terribly big ones devastating as they were just before Christmas. We remain focused on doing the job. As Mr Bennett mentioned a minute ago that is a long-term commitment and we will ensure that we do not let them down.  
These are exciting times. These are going to be challenging times and they will be difficult times for us as a Government. I am really excited however by the plan that we have got on offer. I know that the country has huge confidence in what we are delivering. Let us get on with it—there is no time to lose.