Brownlee Gerry: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Brownlee Gerry: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 21 July 2010. Volume:665;Page:12532. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Economic Development) 
: 
 That has to be one of the saddest speeches this Parliament has ever heard. I say that because all that the Leader of the Opposition the previous speaker could do was to bring out an issue that is seriously now yesterday’s issue and try to rewrite history around it. In February of this year the Hon Phil Goff said he thought most New Zealanders wanted to see balance and wanted to see some less-sensitive conservation areas available to environmentally sensitive mining. That was what Phil Goff said in February of this year. He went on further in February of this year to say he thought there was scope in some conservation land to extract minerals if it was done without damage to the environment. He said Labour did that in Paparoa National Park with the Pike River coalfield. This man is grasping at whatever straw he can in order to try to impress his colleagues rather than speaking directly to the people of New Zealand. 
It is utterly absurd for the Leader of the Opposition to say that because the Government took heed of public opinion and took heed of what it learnt in a discussion document somehow that represents a massive failing of leadership. I think that tells us that the Labour Party has never ever operated in a democratic sense. It has always relied on the sort of dictatorial leadership that Helen Clark offered the country. She had all of her Ministers doing exactly the sort of bidding that she wanted. I have not seen Phil Goff give such a vein-popping speech as that one since he was a frustrated Minister of Foreign Affairs in the previous Helen Clark - led Labour Government. 
I could talk this afternoon about the 82 mines that that Labour Government approved on conservation land and I could talk about the one mine that it approved on schedule 4 land. But I want to talk about the real issues that worry New Zealanders. They are the cost of living and New Zealanders’ place in the economy. In the last 5 years of the previous Labour Government when we had very very good economic times the non-tradables sector grew astronomically. The non-tradables sector of our economy under that Labour Government grew and it took that as an indication that our economy was in good health. The purchasing power of New Zealanders’ dollars fell under that Labour Government. We had a decline in exports of 5 percent per year for the last 5 years of that Labour Government. All the time its members talked about doing things on a sustainable basis having an export year and having all sorts of task forces for this and committees for that—talk talk talk. 
This is a Government that will do things. This is a Government that is not afraid to go out and ask New Zealanders: “What about this idea?”. If they reject it they reject it. If they accept it they accept it. Mr Goff came in here this afternoon and suggested—very interestingly I think—that because a Prime Minister says we are looking at something somehow that is it; it is black and white and cast in stone. That is the sort of legacy that those members want to re-inflict on New Zealanders—the dictatorial listen to no one know what is best approach. I think the pathetic efforts by the Leader of the Opposition this afternoon to say: “Our Ministers were better than your Ministers.” shows that Labour is still a party in total denial. Labour does not recognise that there is a new style of Government in this country. It is a new style of Government that does not mind asking people what they think and then acting on that advice. That is not unreasonable. That is why we have a democracy. 
The other thing that struck me in that speech was the way that poor old Mr Goff’s friends—I was going to call them our opponents—in the caucus had their heads down. They were quite embarrassed and completely unable to show the animated support one would expect for a leader. I think that is sad.