Williamson Maurice: Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
Williamson Maurice: Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:617;Page:13480] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 This Parliament will regret 2004. There will be a time in future years when politicians of all persuasions will look back at this measure and ask why on earth our entire focus was on scrapping over the crumbs left on the plate rather than on trying actually to grow the pie so that there could be reasonable distribution to all. That is the answer here. It is to do with economic growth. For most people out in radioland the words “economic growth” are words that spring off the tongues of politicians but do not mean much. I say to ordinary voters that it is to do with our ability to pay—that is our ability actually to fund quality health-care our ability to provide first-class education services. 
This Government set a laudable aim when it first came in. It was going to return our gross domestic product (GDP) to being within the top half of the OECD. Again for the ordinary punter “GDP” is just three letters and sounds like it stands for the German Democratic Republic or something but it is actually to do with our ability to pay. It is our wealth. GDP per capita is the wealth of individuals—we divide the value of the total economic pie by the number of people. In this Budget we see that growth in our ability to pay is forecast to increase at absolutely pathetic levels; it is forecast to be less over the next 10 years—this is Dr Cullen’s own Treasury’s forecast—than we have already experienced. That is a recipe for slipping even further behind. So we will be back here in 10 years with people still not getting heart surgery or hip replacements and with kids still not getting access to quality education and still fighting over student loans. Why? Because we will be slipping further and further down the tree. 
 I found that the Catching the Knowledge Wave conference had some exciting figures for us. It showed that our GDP per capita which was once second in the world has continued to slide and—listen to this—we were passed 3 years ago by Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is now wealthier per person than us. Slovenia passed us last year. The forecast on the Standard and Poor’s McKenzie website suggests that Uruguay will pass us by 2010 which is about when some of these benefits come in. So what we are doing is sitting here and scrapping and arguing over how we redistribute some of the crumbs instead of over how the hell we grow the pie. 
During this debate I have heard a few things from Dr Cullen that are a bit rich. He got up and started screaming on about whether the National Party would repeal this legislation. Well “repeal” is not normally the solution for anything to do with income support; “replace” is normally the word. And my word I am happy to commit to replacing this legislation with stuff that works. 
But let me get to the rich stuff from Dr Cullen. I have a list this long which I am soon to publish of the absolute promises from Labour as to what it would repeal when it got into office. I will give the absolute mother of all the repeals: the Maritime Transport Act. When that bill was going through this House Labour members sat here every night and said: “When we are in Government it will be gone—gone by lunchtime.” That is what they said but for the 5 years they have been in Government they have not touched it—not a mutter not a murmur not a sausage. It was the same with the benefit cuts in 1991. When Ruth Richardson carried out what was a desperately needed measure because of economic mismanagement by the previous Labour Government and actually did cut benefits what did those members say? They said it was an outrage and a disgrace. They said it was just unacceptable and they would not tolerate it. When they were elected to Government in 1999 did they reinstate benefit levels back to where they were? No they did not. Did they do it in 2000? No they did not. Did they do it in 2001? No they did not. I could not have more fun than this! So we do not want Dr Cullen shedding crocodile tears about whether we will repeal this measure because quite frankly the public have had a gutsful of promises to repeal that have never come through. 
If I ever want a touchstone a measure of whether the National Party is on the right track it is my old mate the Rev. Charles Waldegrave. If he thinks something is good people had better look out because there is a man who has got it wrong on every occasion in the past. I am proud to be opposing this bill and I want the Minister for Social Development and Employment to tell us why it has to be debated under urgency.