Nash Stuart: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 13 April 2016. Volume:713;Page:10489. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): There are a couple of points I want to make just addressing the notes of Mr Scott. He talked about the fact that that Government over there is supporting dams. Well he is talking about the Ruataniwha Water Storage Scheme and what I would like to say is that the Government has taken a really arrogant out-of-touch approach on this. What the Government has said is “We know best.”—in a 1950s-style command and control economy—“This should be built.”The really interesting thing about the Ruataniwha Water Storage Scheme is that those who will extract value from it—i.e. the farmers—have not invested in it. You would think that if anyone was right behind this and if anyone was investing in it it would be the farmers. But yet again it is a classic case of that Government forgetting how to listen to key stakeholders. “We know best we will build it and they will come”—that is not the 21st century economy that New Zealand deserves and not the sort of leadership that I think this country needs.I think that one of the major differences between Labour and National is that National believes that you leave it up to the market and the market will determine the optimal outcomes whereas Labour believes there needs to be a strategy there needs to be a vision and the Government needs to get behind it and put the legislative and regulatory environment in place that allows businesses to really thrive.If we have a look at what happened with exports as a classic case—and we are a trading nation—this Government inherited an economy where exports were 30 percent of GDP. It had a plan to take them to 40 percent of GDP. Well we have found out that it is not a plan because exports are now 28 percent of GDP. There was no plan there; it was fancy rhetoric. What I am finding more and more is that the massive plan—the vision the strategy—is hollow promises. You cannot keep saying these things and hoping they happen. There actually has to be a strategy. Provincial New Zealand is a classic case. We talk about regional economic development and yet we see nothing from this Government in terms of policies except when there is a by-election. When there is a by-election it comes out and promises the world but I look at my own region and I see there is no strategy from central government. Local government has driven growth there in a way that this Government has no idea how to do because it breezes in articulates a couple of platitudes and then it takes off.The other thing that disappoints me is the Minister in the chair Bill English standing up and talking about “more for less”—we expect people to do more for less. He talks about an investment approach but the problem with that is that communities are not about rates of return. Solving police numbers is not about what the rate of return is that we get from moving a police station out of Napier and moving it to Hastings. An interesting thing in the briefing to the incoming Minister of Police was that the first priority was managing within a budget. Moving a police station out of Napier was all about how much money we were going to save. It was nothing to do with communities.I think this Government has stopped listening to communities. It has started telling communities what they need. It has stopped listening and asking: “What do you require?”. It is an arrogant and out-of-touch approach which unfortunately tends to afflict a lot of Governments in the third term. I am brave enough to stand up and say that it happened to Labour and it is happening to National now. The National Government is out of touch it is arrogant and New Zealanders are seeing this. It is just not good.Let me give you an example around overseas investment. We absolutely believe that overseas investment is vital to driving economic growth in this country—I think we would all agree with that—but there is a difference between good economic investment and bad economic investment. The company that I want to talk to you about for 2 seconds is called Hikurangi Forest Farms. It came here 20 years ago—20 years ago—and it bought—[Interruption]The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! David Bennett will stand and withdraw the comment he just made. The suggestion that any company is paying me is something that is completely out of order and he will not do it. Even if he meant it about another member he would still have to withdraw. The member will withdraw.David Bennett: I withdraw.STUART NASH: Thank you Mr Chair. This is a company that in 1996 promised—promised—in an application to New Zealanders that it would build a state-of-the-art sawmill. In 2006 it bought more land and went through the Overseas Investment Office again and what did it promise? To build a state-of-the-art sawmill. In 2007 it bought some more land and—you guessed it—it promised to the Overseas Investment Office which acts on behalf of New Zealanders to build a state-of-the-art sawmill and it has done nothing.