Ross Jami-Lee: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoss Jami-Lee: General Debate[Sitting date: 06 April 2016. Volume:712;Page:10249. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany): There is a reason that the member who finished speaking last Grant Robertson is in charge of the Wellington Town Belt Bill because that speech was so beltway that it is just not funny. If workers were sitting at home watching Parliament TV they would be very concerned to know that the Labour Party has put that man in charge of the future of work in New Zealand. When we are seeing in this country and in this economy that 175000 jobs have been created in the past few years seeing more people getting into work and seeing more people coming off the welfare queue and living a life of opportunity it is hard to know what those members are going on about because New Zealanders are far better off under this Government and they are succeeding better.I grew up in a Labour-supporting household. I grew up in a household where there were freezing workers in my household; a household that believed that the Labour Party was the best party for them because supposedly—supposedly—the Labour Party was all about the workers and all about the future opportunities for workers. But when we hear speaker after speaker from the Labour Party not talking about everyday New Zealanders but getting their heads in the clouds talking about things that are completely irrelevant to everyday New Zealanders then people like my family—where they grew up working in the freezing works thinking that Labour was the party for them—are changing sides and they are moving over to the National Party because they are seeing that we are a party that actually supports workers.The Labour Party of old used to be a party that supported free trade but not any more. It does not support free trade. It does not support the jobs created through free trade. It does not support future opportunities for New Zealand workers. The Labour Party of old also used to be about encouraging people to work but now it is all about providing people free money costing the taxpayer $40 billion - odd for the universal basic income. It would rather send the Government broke than actually encourage people to work. It is no longer about encouraging people to work; it is more about giving people money and coming up with policies to bribe New Zealanders to vote for it.It also used to be the party of independent monetary policy. Now all of a sudden those members think they as politicians are better at setting interest rates than the Reserve Bank and the banks in New Zealand. Those members think that they are the best ones to decide how banks in New Zealand should be setting their interest rates. I do not think that there are many people out there in voter land who believe that politicians know better than the Reserve Bank or think that politicians know better than people who actually set interest rates in this country. I am pretty sure that New Zealanders will be rejecting that idea as well.Labour also used to be the party that welcomed migration. It welcomed people to New Zealand who wanted to come here for future opportunities and wanted to bring skills and investment or come here for training. No longer does it support migrants. It is now more interested in targeting people based on their last name. It is now more interested in targeting people based on which ethnic restaurant they work in and I think New Zealanders are appalled by that.We are seeing more people getting jobs in this economy. That is something that the Labour Party should be supporting and should be celebrating. It should be supporting our future opportunities for New Zealanders through free trade and through more investment in infrastructure but it opposes time after time many of the things that we are doing. We are seeing more people getting jobs in the likes of the manufacturing industry where Labour claims there is a crisis but manufacturing has actually been growing for the past 41 months. The Labour Party opposes many of our roading projects but 35000 people have jobs through the roads of national significance programme. That is 35000 people who would not otherwise have jobs.New Zealanders are seeing improvements under this Government. New Zealanders are seeing more job opportunities under this Government. If I can agree with one thing that Grant Robertson said it is that New Zealanders sit at home and say: “Is my Government backing me?”. The New Zealand Government is backing New Zealanders. The New Zealand Government is providing more jobs through having a better economic policy. We have seen better health services and better education services and we are seeing crime rates coming down. We are backing New Zealanders we are seeing better opportunities for New Zealanders and we reject many of the things that the Labour Party is putting forward.