Quinn Paul: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Quinn Paul: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 24 March 2010. Volume:661;Page:9781. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
PAUL QUINN (National) 
: 
 I have sat through this hour-long debate in some amazement particularly at the contributions from the Opposition. We started off with the leader-in-waiting Mr Shane Jones. He gave us the ABC of the Opposition power play: lots of hot air lots of bull. It was devoid of any contribution on how to advance this country. We then had Phil Twyford’s contribution to the debate. Do members know what Phil told us? 
John Hayes 
: Put it on the bill? 
PAUL QUINN 
: No no Phil told us that the Minister of Local Government had responsibility for local authorities. It was an outstanding contribution! We did not know that; I thank the member for advising us of that. Then my dear friend and colleague George Hawkins’ contribution to this debate was to confirm that in fact he is Shane Jones’s speech writer in terms of Shane’s Maori Party comments and Maori Party bashing. We concluded with Carmel Sepuloni. I had no idea what she was talking about so I say only that perhaps Lynne Pillay has started in the process of mentoring her in preparation for her new role as the candidate for Waitakere. 
The reason that the Opposition is over there and that this party is now running the country is that there are very serious issues to be dealt with. When this Government came in Government expenditure was out of control. It had increased by 50 percent over 5 years. Household debt was burgeoning as the community and the country went on a spending binge. We have productivity issues. The Public Service was out of control with a 375 percent increase in 5 years in the number of public servants who earned more than $100000 a year. That party over there and that member over there stand and try to tell us that they represent a group of people who earn over and above $100000 a year in wages and income. They then try to tell us that we do not understand the issues that face this country. National took over we moved in because we were elected to establish the framework for running this country. 
One of the reasons this country has gone downhill as my learned colleague Mr John Hayes has already pointed out is that we have not been paying our way. This country cannot go on spending money unless it starts to export more goods. We are not a big enough country to generate economic growth from our own production if we just buy it ourselves. We have to produce quality goods and export them to the rest of the world. That is something unfortunately that Labour when in Government failed to understand. In fact if we look at the period of Labour’s administration we see that throughout it the percentage of the current account deficit to GDP was in the vicinity of 9 percent. In the short period that this administration has been in Government we have reduced that to around 2 percent and it is still improving. 
Those are the sorts of issues that this Government is concerned about and they are some of the reasons that we have tried to expand the economic export base away from our traditional industries such as primary produce dairying and others. We have tried to expand the base because doing the same things will not work. [ 
Interruption 
] I just want to make sure that the member can hear. In fact we have to explore new ideas new territory and grow the economy. That is why we have decided to look at the enormous amount of untapped wealth that this country has in its mineral resources. We will take our time to achieve that. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.