Calder Cam: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCalder Cam: General Debate[Sitting date: 19 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:16085. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr CAM CALDER (National): It is an extraordinary pleasure to rise to take a call in this debate. We have to acknowledge—and a number of speakers have alluded to this—that the third Labour Party leader in as many years is struggling. I take no pleasure in saying that. I am not intoschadenfreude. I take no pleasure in it but he is struggling. We have noted that he has not been asked to take a call today. He has not been asked to take a call today in this debate. Instead the debate has been led off by the Hon Annette King who it has to be said is one of the better performers in the House. I think that members of the Labour caucus are probably rueing the day that the Hon Annette King said that she did not want to be leader because I think that it is possible that they are overlooking one of their more able performers because the others are in disarray.The others are in disarray and the third Labour leader in as many years made a stuttering start to the year. A Best Start? How could it be anything like that? It was nothing like that. It was a stuttering start talking about middle-class welfare. It was poorly delivered and poorly costed and of course it just goes on from there. So are the members of the Labour caucus disheartened? Well of course they are. Are they scratching their heads? Is there massive debate? Are they saying: “Shane can you take a bit more pressure off the leader?” or “Grant what are you going to do about it?”. Yes we know there are big problems.On this side of the House the Government is managing the economy in a fiscally prudent way. We have managed the recession well and now the economy is making encouraging progress and we are reaping the benefits. This is the stark decision for New Zealand. We have to have the same probity and fiscal rectitude that managed the recession to manage the period of growth that we are entering into. The economy is building good momentum. It is generating more jobs which lifts people out of welfare dependency and is providing more opportunities.Sue Moroney: Come to Hamilton. Come to Hamilton and see.Dr CAM CALDER: It is generating higher incomes and as the member across the House alludes to it is broad-based in the regions. It is broad-based in the regions and more and more New Zealanders are reaping the benefits. They are reaping the benefits from that economic growth. From September 2012 to September 2013 growth was 3.5 percent. The OECD is forecasting that in the year ahead it is going to be even better. But it has to be managed— it has to be managed.The stronger economy improving business and consumer confidence has translated into more jobs. We heard that last year in the September quarter there was a huge increase in growth with 27000 more jobs for New Zealanders—new jobs for New Zealand. The increase in jobs over the year to last September was 53700. There were 53700 more jobs in that September than in the previous September. So employment levels increased by 2.4 percent. This is at the same time as participation increasing to almost 69 percent. So we have been fiscally prudent in our management of the recession and New Zealand now needs prudent management of the period of growth.We have a plan. We have a plan for this with key inputs to lift business opportunities jobs and growth. I refer of course to the Business Growth Agenda where we are going to grow the export markets available to us. Tim Groser is doing a great job on that. Capital markets are going to increase we are sponsoring a massive amount of investment in innovation we are investing in skills and safe workplaces we are exploiting in an appropriately environmentally sound manner our myriad of naturalresources and of course we are building infrastructure. So we have a responsible plan to go forward.What about the Opposition? Well we have heard from a number of speakers that in the first few weeks Labour with its Green acolytes has been promising even more spending. It has been promising $750 million more spending. It is uncosted untargeted and it is more spending. It is ill-conceived middle-class welfare. Really it is a fantasy world that those members are living in. We are back into this tax more borrow more—