Joyce Steven: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeJoyce Steven: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 01 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19071. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development):With the greatest respect to Mr Grant Robertson his argument is as always a mile wide and an inch deep. He actually does not do any work. He criticises the Government for not working for New Zealand yet he still has not actually got off his chuff and read the Business Growth Agenda at all which could never be described as a Labour Party - like glossy document because it is written in a font that is too small for Grant to be able to read. That is the challenge for him. He has not done any work and his party has not done any work over the last 5 years and now they are turning up with some platitudes.He says that Labour will have a full employment plan. Well let us go back a little bit. Just at the beginning of the global financial crisis Labour’s numbers were already worse than the numbers that we have got now as the recovery continues. He brings up Dunedin. Well with the greatest respect Dunedin’s unemployment rate—currently the Otago unemployment rate is 4.6 percent. It is apparently a disaster—4.6 percent is a disaster according to Mr Robertson. Well he should go down there. He should go back to where he came from. I think the last time he went back there he tried to run a student protest when I was there and he was heard to lament that the students did not turn up—the students did not turn up. The world has moved on since Grant was there. Well I tell you Mr Robertson the world has moved on from your view of economics. The world has moved on to understand that things do change over time.In the case of Otago University and Otago research the good news is that there is a lot more money going in. The Health Research Council has just given the university the biggest amount of research money that it has ever had in one year. We have introduced two new centres of research excellence in Dunedin. There is lots of additional investment going into that region.The difficulty I have with Mr Robertson’s approach—in fact with the whole Labour Party’s approach—is that his view is that nothing should change. It is completely what could be described only as preservational economics which is that nothing should ever change—no matter whether the world has changed and things need to be done nothing should change. Labour members have actually taken it even further. They have gone to resuscitation economics where they now propose as their big economic proposal to bring back the moa. I think that is at least innovative which is more than we can say for the last 6 years of Labour Party policy. It at least has the merit of being something that is new and not being tired rhetoric. But I hate to refer to that particular example too much because I think I need to point out to the member who raised it that Jurassic Park was a movie not a documentary. It was a movie and not a documentary so sadly for the member’s idea I think it falls apart about there. Nevertheless he should at least be rewarded for coming up with it. I imagine he will get a promotion back to the front bench on the strength of the moa resuscitation plan but maybe it is something he will have to wait for until after a certain election event coming up.The other thing that Mr Robertson raised was the performance of young Māori and Pasifika. I personally believe that this Government has a lot to be proud of in terms of improving the training outcomes and study outcomes of young Māori and Pasifika. Today between 3000 and 4000 more young Māori people a year are studying at university than when those guys were in Government in 2007 and there are 3000 or 4000 more young Pasifika. Their completion rates are improving dramatically—they are not there yet but improving dramatically—from where they were when that lot disgracefully left them when they left office. Also we have many more initiatives like the Youth Guarantee like the Māori and Pasifika trades training initiatives and like the trades academies which are lifting the skill levels of young people of all ethnicities and ensuring they have the opportunity to participate in this recovery. The recovery by the way has generated 84000 more jobs in the last 12 months—84000 more jobs. What is going on there?The other thing that Mr Robertson was talking about was that somehow the roading projects announced at the weekend constituted the whole regional development strategy of the Government. Well it is one of those things where you create a straw person and then you knock it over. In Mr Robertson’s case that is something he does all too regularly. He does it all too regularly and yet it is all rubbish.Actually this Government has a comprehensive economic development strategy. I went through some of it in the House this afternoon. The limitation of time stopped me going through all the rest of it. I am happy to add a little bit more for members at the moment because it is really important. Our strategy is around providing opportunities for New Zealand companies to be more competitive wherever they are and in whichever region. Different regions need different things. This Government is working with every region and that is being well received by the local councils including in Gisborne. With the greatest respect to Mr Robertson if he wants to make the case that the Motu Bridge should stay that way for ever then I invite him to go to Gisborne and say that. Actually nobody believes that. It is a one-lane bridge. It is a one-lane bridge—Mark Mitchell: They’ll never see him again.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: They would never see him again—that would be the reality of it. Anyway there is a whole range of things.In the innovation space there is the Primary Growth Partnership and research and development funding through Callaghan Innovation—miles more than was ever done under Labour. Now Labour members are saying they will have an innovation plan and that it is part of their economic upgrade. Well first they have to explain why they did not do very much at all during all the time they were in Government. They also have to explain why the only policy they have announced in the last 6 years—nine separate times—is their research and development tax credits which have been well overtaken by time. They need something new.Also in the skills space they are going to do all these things about skills but so far the only thing they have said in that space—the only thing they have said—is that they are going to bring back some of the adult and community education funding that was withdrawn in 2010 which was the stuff that could be described as hobby courses. So the big innovation for Labour is that it is going to bring back the hobby courses. Good on Labour—that is the skills space.Meanwhile we are doing the Youth Guarantee the New Zealand Apprenticeships the Māori and Pasifika trades training the trades academies—all these innovations including working with the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs and all these things—and the Labour Party is stuck in 2008 once again not having done the work. But it is worse than that. It is worse than that because Labour says it will get alongside the regions. Well explain to me New Zealand Labour Party and your mates in the Greens how a carbon price at five times the world price would ever constitute getting alongside New Zealand’s regions. I hope you promote that strongly both of you in the election campaign. I know Labour has been very quiet so far—neither confirm nor deny—but that is the Green Party’s policy and Labour has not backed away from it. Labour has not come out and said it will not support that and the regions are noticing.The second one is having a capital gains tax on every productive business and farm in this country supported by both of those parties. They say it is all about discouraging investment in property and encouraging investment in businesses. Well how do they explain the fact that it is a tax on 100 percent of businesses and only about a third of housing? How does that simple explanation work? That is the second area that the regions will be looking at and going: “I don’t think so.”Then there is the small matter of trade which of course is hugely important to our export-focused regions and one of the reasons they are doing well at the moment. Well in the trade space the Labour Party says: “Oh we’re not sure about the TPP. Don’t know whether we’ll do that.” The Greens are flat out against it. The regions notice that too.And then there is the small matter of the dairy industry and oil and gas. They are not the whole story of our regions but they are significant in some regions so let us have a look at them. Anti - irrigation and water storage; anti-dairy in fact; anti - oil and gas; and anti any form of international investment. Apart from that they are really in favour of the regions. So apart from the capital gains tax the carbon price the wind-blown timber on the West Coast the rolling back of the Resource Management Act reforms trade investment oil and gas—I think that is everything but there might be more. Apart from all of those things they are well behind the regions. They are all supporting the regions apart from all of those reasonably crucial things that most of regional New Zealand is noticing.Here is the good news: this Government is not going to do any of those things. Oh there is another one: the high water-resource levies that are being promoted by the Greens and the Labour Party. They are also not on the policy list for this Government. This Government has 350 separate initiatives in innovation in skills in opening up markets for our exporters in providing capital and yes in infrastructure which is very very important.