Goff Phil: Debate on Budget Policy Statement 
Goff Phil: Debate on Budget Policy Statement 
[Volume:653;Page:2063] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 The member who just resumed his seat Craig Foss clearly demonstrated why Paula Bennett Anne Tolley and even Nick Smith were preferred over him for ministerial appointments. That disgraceful speech bore very little recognition of reality. 
It was a telling comment was it not from Therese Arseneau on Sunday on the  
Q+A 
 programme when having listened to John Key for quarter of an hour she said she could not see whether National had any plan to bring New Zealand through the recession and to make it stronger coming out the other side. I think Therese Arseneau was absolutely right. The Government has done the exact opposite. The Government has not only taken steps to damage the poor and those most vulnerable to the recession in our community but also undermined the future ability of New Zealand to come out of this recession in a stronger state. 
The member Craig Foss said nothing about cutting the research and development tax credit but the information technology firms in his electorate will tell him about the damage that has done. He said nothing about abolishing Fast Forward but every primary producer in his electorate will tell him that that was a key to innovation and creativity. The member said nothing about the fact that the National Government is sitting idle while we are suffering the loss of training opportunities. The number of apprenticeships is down by 15 percent. What will happen in 4 years’ time when this country is out of the recession? We will have a shortage of skilled labour because of the lack of foresight of this pathetic National Government to do anything about it. 
Therese Arseneau was right in saying that there was no plan to deal with the crisis. She might have also said that there is certainly a plan to exploit this crisis as a pretext for bringing in things that were not foreshadowed to the electorate during the campaign such as slashing entitlements to accident compensation and undermining the New Zealand Superannuation Fund meaning that the fund will not have the ability to meet entitlements in a few years’ time. 
Although this Government has been given the benefit of the doubt during its honeymoon phase increasingly media commentators are making criticisms about it. Here is what Gordon Campbell had to say this week: “Plainly the wheels are now falling off the government’s attempts to govern by tokenism and PR gimmicks.” Gordon Campbell is absolutely right. 
The Government decided that it would have a Job Summit. I thought that was a good idea. I thought that showed a little bit of humility from a Government that had no plan to at least go out and listen to others who had ideas. I told John Key that members on this side of the House think that saving jobs is the most important thing. It is about people’s livelihoods. I said that we wanted to be constructive and to help and that we would participate in good faith. What did John Key say? National was 2 months into Government and was already incredibly arrogant. John Key said no. He would not have the 40 percent of the electorate that voted for Labour or for the Greens represented at the Job Summit. So much for inclusiveness in Government! There is a double standard. 
Even better was the wonderfully awful performance of Paula Bennett on  
Morning Report 
 last Friday. What did Paula Bennett say? Apparently we are now a one-party State. She said that people were expected to come along to the regional job summits to listen and to not contribute ideas. Her approach was to ask how the Labour Party dare come up with the constructive idea that we could introduce job-rich job-creation programmes by creating warmer drier healthier homes and that it was outrageous that we had an idea that 99 percent of New Zealanders would support. What a fool she made of herself showing her immaturity and arrogance so early in this term of Government. 
We looked for initiatives from the Job Summit. The National Government came back and told us that there were two key initiatives. One was the 9-day working fortnight. I thought that in certain circumstances it could be a very good thing. I support today’s move to save 60 jobs at Fisher and Paykel Appliances but I ask Mr English why the 60 workers who were laid off today at Solid Energy will not have the option of a 9-day working fortnight because State-owned enterprises are not included under the scheme. I want to know why 80 workers are being laid off at Summit Wool Spinners in Oamaru. Those 80 people being laid off will not have the option of a 9-day working fortnight because they are in a business that employs fewer than 100 workers. Well so are most New Zealanders. Most New Zealanders are excluded from the scheme. 
I actually applauded the Government’s idea of having a 9-day working fortnight with the 10th day being used to provide job skills. We could use this opportunity to upgrade the skills of New Zealand workers so that when we come out of this recession we are stronger. But what did John Key do? He removed entirely the component of funding the job-skill training. Even Roger Douglas asked yesterday in the House how it would help the productivity and the progression of New Zealand to pay people a meagre sum to do nothing on the 10th day. There we are; at least in one area there is a minimum of agreement. 
Then there was the concept of creating a bicycle lane from Cape Reinga to the Bluff. Again I was prepared to give John Key the benefit of the doubt. He is a financier after all is he not? He is one of those money people. He said that he could create 4000 jobs for $50 million. I gave up mathematics quite early in my school career but I sat down and worked it out on the back of an envelope. That worked out to payments of just over $6000 per worker per year. I thought: “That is funny; the minimum wage is four times that amount.” I ask what he will spend on the materials—the concrete and the gravel to make the cycleway. Of course environmental engineers said this week that the cycleway would cost at least $300 million. That is six times the estimate made by the financial genius that the Prime Minister is. When I asked him today what estimates he had received he did not answer. He did not even tell the House whether this concept is still a goer. 
The two big schemes that people came up with at the Job Summit are both in real difficulty. I hoped that something could be made out of both of those schemes. I know that John Key boasted to the Job Summit that 100000 jobs would be saved by the 9-day working fortnight—100000 jobs. Today which is the day before the scheme comes into operation he came into the House and boasted that 60 jobs had been saved and he exaggerated that. He said 350 and Fisher and Paykel Appliances said 60. I say to Mr Key that I am sorry but I believe Fisher and Paykel Appliances. As 60 jobs were saved what is the remainder? It is 99940 jobs still to go. Well I wish Mr Key luck on doing that. 
What National members really could have done at their Job Summit was to make the decision that so many people told them to make. That was to give the tax cuts to those who needed it most where the job stimulation would come from. National did not do that; it gave away the chance to preserve thousands of jobs and hundreds of businesses. It is absolute arrogance that John Key in his financial position stood up last week and told middle-income New Zealanders that they should give their tax cut to charity and should do what the Government has itself refused to do—that is to give decent and reasonable tax cuts to people who are struggling to survive and who would have spent that money created jobs and sustained businesses. 
This Government has been a failure. This Government has another agenda; it is a right-wing agenda. But it has no plan to look after the very most basic need of New Zealanders which is the right to a livelihood.