Goff Phil: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Goff Phil: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Sitting date: 13 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:7797. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill) 
: 
 The member Dr Nick Smith who just resumed his seat said that New Zealanders are concerned about housing affordability. Of course they are Dr Smith because the statistics that came out 2 weeks ago showed that New Zealand has become in the last few years one of the countries with the least affordable housing for low-income people. This Government is at the start of its fifth year in office and this Minister of Housing says that he is now working on some plans to deal with the housing crisis. The housing crisis has been there for 5 years. Young people cannot get into their first home unless they have help from their parents. This Government has sat on the sidelines it has twiddled its thumbs and it has done nothing while house prices have soared rents have gone up and we have a crisis of housing shortage and affordability. 
It is the fifth year of this party in Government and I remember the first year when we had a job summit. The Job Summit turned out to be exactly what I said—a talkfest. And there was the cycleway. John Key said that that was going to produce thousands of jobs. How many did it produce? A couple of hundred—a couple of hundred. I want to talk about the reality of jobs. I opened a new supermarket Countdown in Stoddard Road in Mount Roskill on the day after Waitangi Day. Lovely new supermarket great manager—Mike Uri— 
Hon Steven Joyce 
: Possible under the RMA changes. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: —and 120 jobs—120 jobs. I was really pleased to have 120 new jobs in my electorate. But I said to Mike: “How many people Mike applied for those jobs?”. Mr Joyce do you know what the answer to that question was? 
Hon Steven Joyce 
: No. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: It was 2600—2600 people applied for 120 relatively low-paid jobs in my electorate. 
That is the reality of the legacy of stuff-ups in providing jobs and skill training and getting the economy going in this country. I remember John Key saying in 2009: “Next year we’ll move aggressively towards dropping unemployment.” The latest figures last week showed that in the last quarter of last year there was a net loss of 23000 jobs. We had the lowest level of labour force participation Mr Joyce in 10 years. This Government has failed and it has failed in every way. What about the restructuring and the mismanagement of that in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade? Did this Government accept responsibility? No. Murray McCully bravely blamed his head of department. Then there was the Defence Force. There was 22.6 percent attrition last year Mr Joyce in the Navy in Auckland—22.6 percent—and the lowest morale in the Ongoing Attitude Survey since that survey began. 
But I want to talk about another couple of botch-ups. There is the education botch-up. What did I hear John Key say? “Hekia Parata is one of the smoothest communicators in politics.” Well Mr Speaker might have some thoughts about that. Five times today he asked her to answer the question and she never did. If the Prime Minister is going to be sacking incompetent Ministers—that is why apparently he sacked Phil Heatley and Kate Wilkinson without the respect of even letting them know in advance to show that he was the tough guy—why did he leave Hekia Parata and Craig Foss in their positions? 
Hon Steven Joyce 
: Why has your guy not done any reshuffles at all eh? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Surely they are the least competent Ministers not only in the House now but also as long as I can remember. Novopay—yeah you are meant to be the fix-up man Mr Joyce but why did the stuff-up happen in the first place? Why did three Ministers sign off on that programme? Why can she not answer the questions? Why is she closing schools in Christchurch adding to the trauma of people affected by the earthquake? Why did she close the Salisbury School when the court ruled her action illegal? Why did she try to increase class sizes when the Prime Minister said in the  
Listener  
that he sent his kids to private schools because they had lower class sizes and then said to everybody else: “Oh it won’t affect you.”? A total botch-up. A total botch-up in education. It is not good enough. It is not fair on our kids and the future we want to provide for them. 
But I want to touch on another botch-up now and this was first raised in the House by my colleagues Clayton Cosgrove and Damien O’Connor. It was the botch-up over the handling of the issue of contamination of our dairy products by dicyandiamide. Let us get one thing right at the start: dicyandiamide is not a health or food safety issue. It is not a health or food safety issue but Mr Joyce it is a contamination issue and it is an issue about reputation and about branding. We go out into the world as I did for years as Minister of Trade proudly promoting this country as “100% Pure New Zealand” and this issue comes along. For 4 long months after Fonterra realised it was a problem nothing happened. Nothing was said by this Government until the contamination was released to the public by a media article in the  
Wall Street Journal 
. I feel sorry for our ambassador in Beijing Carl Worker—a competent diplomat. And what did Mr Worker have to say? He was clearly left out of the loop. Four months after this Government knew about the problem he was forced to go out and say that it was “regrettable” that New Zealand did not forewarn Chinese authorities which led to he said “confusion and unnecessary doubt”. 
I remember when we had the melamine crisis and the San Lu company and I tell you our Cabinet came together within 24 hours in an emergency meeting and had informed the Chinese authorities within that time frame. We headed off a disaster we headed off a crisis because it was “New Zealand Inc.” It was Ministers working together talking to each other. I want to know when the Minister for Primary Industries told the Minister of Trade and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and then I want to know why none of them said anything publicly until they were forced to because it was revealed publicly. In fact Clayton Cosgrove was responding to things the Minister should have been responding to 5 days before the Minister would even make a comment. I say this: why did the Chinese Government and the Chinese public learn about the problem only through an article in the  
Wall Street Journal 
 that described the contamination as “toxic”? It was not toxic but the perception was left that it must have been because New Zealand had tried to cover it over. 
Why were we not open and transparent? Why were we not proactive about this problem so we could head it off and stop any damage? China is our biggest market. I fought hard to get a free-trade agreement with it. We have trebled our exports to that country and I do not want to see this proud legacy of a Labour Government trampled upon by an incompetent National Government that cannot handle these issues right. China Central Television has an audience of millions—hundreds of millions. They were running this and headlining this as a scandal. A weibo which is China’s Twitter ran thousands of postings from people expressing concern. It ran a survey where over half of the respondents said that they did not trust and they were not sure about the quality or safety of New Zealand dairy products. That should never have happened. It did not need to happen and a competent Government would have prevented it from happening. 
Let us look at what Biopure Health said. It is one of the Kiwi exporters. It said that it was a public relations disaster for this Government—a public relations disaster. That is a front-line company. It said that its products which had been doubling in value and sales every week went to zero—went to zero. There is another company New Image which is a baby formula exporter. It said that the industry was in damage control and it blamed the Government for the lack of warning. I want to say this: I hope that this problem can now be contained. It is in all of our interests as New Zealanders that it is. But surely the Prime Minister John Key and this incompetent National Government need to learn the lessons from it. Be proactive have a strategy be open and transparent head it off and protect New Zealand’s interests—those are the responsibilities of a Government and this National Government failed in those responsibilities.