Robertson Grant: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Robertson Grant: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 26 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5669. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 Well there we have it the Government’s new economic growth agenda: a prison on every corner. That is the answer from Anne Tolley. If we just built a prison on every corner in New Zealand we would solve the problems. It is another great economic growth strategy from the Government. 
The Government’s handling of the Kim Dotcom case and the involvement of the Government Communications Security Bureau in that is a circus. We are forced in this House to endure the statement that we have to believe that our spy agency is so incompetent that it could not even use Google and google “Kim Dotcom residency”. If it did it would come up with 6 million hits. There are 6 million pages on Kim Dotcom’s residency but the Government Communications Security Bureau we are told was not even able to identify that he was a resident. This is on the back of an operation that has been so badly botched. There were illegal search warrants. We now know there was illegal surveillance. It has been described as Keystone Kops but if we are to believe just how incompetent these people are it actually should be called “John Key’s stoned cops” because that is how badly it is doing it. 
The ringmaster of this circus is John Key. Once upon a time the casual relaxed John Key was who the public wanted to see but when it comes to having oversight of our security agencies it is not a place for the casual relaxed John Key. Mr Key is the sole democratic check on how these security agencies operate. He is the person charged on our behalf as New Zealanders with oversight of these security agencies and he has failed. Along with his deputy leader Bill English he has failed to uphold acceptable standards of oversight over organisations that have extraordinary powers. 
Many New Zealanders will accept that we need in our society the ability to ensure that we monitor those who would act against our country. I think it is highly questionable in this case whether it meets that test but people in New Zealand will accept that. They will accept that on the basis that there is some kind of oversight—that there is somebody in Government who is making sure that these agencies are acting appropriately. That is the job of the Prime Minister and he has failed to do that. He should be held to account for the actions of this agency. He cannot keep coming down to this House and saying he is not responsible. He is the Minister responsible for the Government Communications Security Bureau and he is responsible for the actions of this agency that has behaved so incompetently in this situation. 
The Prime Minister claims that he has had 15 meetings with the Government Communications Security Bureau this year—15 meetings. He says that Kim Dotcom did not come up in any of those meetings. I find it incredible that a situation like this has not been raised with the Prime Minister in that role or in the many other roles that he has. He could not even tell us today whether or not his own department had been involved. That defies belief and it speaks of a Prime Minister whose once casual relaxed attitude is now seeing him missing in action on critical issues for this country. 
The National Government is now so totally distracted and embroiled in its own scandals—scandals of its own making—with John Banks and the Kim Dotcom affair that it is neglecting the core job that it has and that is to help New Zealanders stay in work. Time after time in this House we get the excuses from Steven Joyce and others but the reality is that hundreds and in fact thousands of New Zealanders are losing their jobs every day as this Government stands by and says that it can do nothing. In the last year 54000 people went to Australia and this Government stands by and says it can do nothing. 
Once upon a time this Government gave some hope to New Zealanders. It said there would be a brighter future. Mr Key said there would be higher standards of Ministers. There is no brighter future. There is no brighter future for the families of the hundreds of people who are losing their jobs at the Spring Creek Mine and in Kawerau and right around New Zealand. There is no hope for those people. This Government has let New Zealanders down. It promised big. It said that it would build a brighter future for New Zealanders. The only brighter future New Zealanders are finding is in Australia at the moment. This Government is missing in action and totally distracted in its own scandals. It has no idea how to create jobs. It has no idea how to grow the economy and it should go.