English Bill: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeEnglish Bill: General Debate[Sitting date: 14 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7208. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): I move That the House take note of miscellaneous business. It has been a great week for New Zealand and a terrible week for the Labour Party—because New Zealand got the Trans-Pacific Partnership and a surplus and the Labour Party got the best advice Grant Robertson could give it. I will tell you why that was bad.Let us just look at the Trans-Pacific Partnership: 800 million potential customers; 40 percent of total world trade covered by the Trans-Pacific Partnership; and small and medium sized businesses all around New Zealand welcoming the prospect of being able to sell their products into large wealthy markets where we could not sell them before without the tariffs. So what did Labour members do? Well they have spent a week trying to work out how to snatch jobs and growth and better incomes from small businesses and regions all around New Zealand. But now it is even more cunning. Now they are working out how to look like they meant to even if they do not succeed. So now they want to look like they failed to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership and actually support it. Only Grant Robertson could have thought of such a stupid damaging short-term strategy—and that is just the Trans-Pacific Partnership.Let us talk about the surplus—let us talk about the surplus. Well the most vulnerable New Zealanders know that because the Government’s books are stable they can expect ongoing and increasing support and better public services. That is the best thing about the surplus. You would think that the Labour Party would be happy about that but what did it do? Under “Genius Grant” it decided to pick the one point on which New Zealanders knew that Labour is absolutely wrong and unreliable; that is saying that the thing that is wrong with the surplus is that you have got too much debt—because everyone knows that the Labour Party would do a much better job of reducing the debt because what Labour would do is cut expenditure and manage it more tightly than the National Government! That is the one thing that no one in New Zealand believes about the Labour Party.There are a lot of other things that they believe. They believe that Labour is opposed to the environmental benefits of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I think that some New Zealanders would believe that. They believe that Labour was opposed to our tax package in 2010 that actually boosted revenue in a way that enabled us to get to surplus. They believe that Labour was opposed to the welfare reforms that have reduced the welfare bill by upwards of about a billion dollars less than we thought just 5 years ago but no one in New Zealand believes that the Labour Party cares more about debt and would have in these circumstances reduced it more quickly.The New Zealand economy has had a great week: access to bigger stronger richer markets by our more resilient adaptable and innovative businesses—that has got to be a plus. In fact the only people apart from Jane Kelsey who think that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is wrong are the Labour Party members—an apparently middle-of-the-road pro-business party opposing the one thing that business is most united on supporting.Hon Gerry Brownlee: What will they talk about at the next cocktail party?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well they will talk about what a genius Grant Robertson is—that is what they will talk about.Maintaining a surplus—of course it is going to be a challenge but the best thing about the surplus is not so much the number but the management of effective public services at its core. I want to acknowledge again the Ministers of our large-spending portfolios in particular and the chief executives of our departments but particularly the front-line public servants who in the end carry the weight of the decisions made by Government. They have done a fantastic job and that is why in 2017 they will be voting for National and not Labour.