Hodgson Pete: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Hodgson Pete: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:670;Page:16714] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 It falls to me to make the final contribution for Labour in this debate and perhaps to make some observations about the last 3 days of debate. 
A starting point is to remind ourselves that the Standing Orders around the debate on the Prime Minister’s statement have changed in recent times. It used to be that Parliament began every year with the Prime Minister of the day reading out a prime ministerial statement in “prime ministerialese” verbatim. It was vaguely interesting but it did not have any theatre to it. The Leader of the Opposition of the day could then get up as he or she saw fit and make a great speech with lots of theatre drama feeling passion or something and the second speech was always better than the first. 
Then the rules changed. The rules changed in such a way that although the Prime Minister had to put together a prime ministerial speech that was widely distributed prior to being given and was embargoed until delivery the Prime Minister could do what he or she liked in the House. As a result because the Prime Minister of the day was part of the Government and therefore had the agenda one might have expected the first speaker to win. Well that did not happen. Three days ago Phil Goff beat John Key on every point. He had better delivery better content he believed in what he said and he said it with an authority that Mr Key was not able to muster. Mr Key I think is starting to work out that “smile and wave” by itself will not do it any more. It is no longer enough and nor is mincing for that matter. It is getting more serious than that. 
The cost of living really is going up. It is not just that the Labour Party says it is; it is now provably going up. Unemployment went up surprisingly just a few days ago. It had the Prime Minister rushing around saying the unemployment statistics are pretty unstable. He was actually starting to sound like Roger Douglas did in the 1980s. When interest rates went up Roger Douglas said they were “volatile around a downward trend”. So we have unemployment—“volatile around a downward trend”—actually going up. That is not working well for Mr Key and perhaps that was reflected in his performance. His Minister of Finance said this week that a double-dip recession is now on the cards—the same week in which he reminded us that Australia might be having a double-dip recession when in fact it has not even had one. 
None of the plans that Mr Key has put in place in the last couple of years have worked. It seems to me that that might be why his speech was so lacklustre. The plan to dig up the conservation estate did not work. The 9-day working fortnight did not work. The bike track or whatever it was did not work. Waiting and hoping did not work. Restructuring the public sector will not work. Cutting the public sector will not work. In fact it will drive the recession harder. Cutting early childhood education has gone down extremely badly for the Prime Minister. Flying the kite of asset sales has not gone very well for the Prime Minister and it is about to go much more seriously pear-shaped for him as the debate continues and as the information progressively comes into the public arena. While that was happening the Maori Party was fracturing this week just like the ACT Party fractured last year. That is probably why Mr Key’s speech 3 days ago was not very good. It is no wonder he fell back on the okey-dokey blokey-jokey stuff. It is no wonder he moved the earth for precisely no one and it is no wonder he failed to give us any sense that he had any idea of what a plan for recovery might look like. So that set the tone. 
The rest of the National Party then decided that it could do graceless behaviour as well. I should acknowledge that many of them said happy New Year. This afternoon one of them even said so in Chinese which was lovely. It was nice to see the National members not being graceless about the changes and the promotions that some of my colleagues had earlier this week in their portfolios. Therefore I do not want to say they were entirely graceless but they were mostly so. Mostly they said things about the previous Labour Government that are straightforwardly wrong. There were nine Budget surpluses in 9 years under that Government. Public debt was paid down to the point where it did not exist under that Government. Unemployment came down to the point where it was the lowest in the world. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: That’s right. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: Actually not quite. Sometimes South Korea beat us and sometimes we beat them but it was the lowest or second-lowest in the world. If ever a country was going to have some sort of global recession effect boy that was the place to start. 
None of that has been acknowledged by the National members in the last 3 days. It has not been acknowledged right through that period. National had only one idea which was that it wanted us to cut taxes. It wanted us to cut taxes when the economy was growing quickly which of course would be wildly inflationary. That was the only thing that the National members wanted us to do when we were in Government. Yet they have not acknowledged that we delayed tax cuts until 2008 so that we could pay down the debt so that we could get KiwiSaver started so that we could get the New Zealand Superannuation Fund under way and so that we could install implement and embed Working for Families and significantly address child poverty—some would say not significantly enough but to make that progress. 
Actually while we were at it we delayed tax cuts to buy back a couple of things that this country needs—an airline and a railroad—which in the hands of the private sector had fallen into disrepair and were going down the tubes. That is what we did instead of cutting taxes. 
Then in 2008 when the global economy was going down and when everyone was a Keynesian we brought in tax cuts. Those tax cuts did not alter the rich-poor gap in this country one iota because that was one of the conditions that Michael Cullen put on himself before he went ahead with those cuts. None of that has been acknowledged by National members in the last 3 days. We did not need a lot of acknowledgment but it is interesting is it not that even though National is well ahead of us in the polls National members are feeling so graceless that they will not even acknowledge certain things. They said the opposite. They said there were wasted opportunities under the previous Labour Government and it had blown the economy to bits. They have said all sorts of things. They have made a series of assertions with statistics that are simply wrong. It is just in the nature of a debate—who cares—but it is interesting that over 3 days there was that level of gracelessness and that the nice remarks were limited to happy New Year and so on. 
I have only a couple of minutes left so I will just say that the other thing that struck me about the Prime Minister’s speech and about the leadership he gave the rest of his caucus was what he did not talk about. He did not talk about the rich-poor gap. He did not talk about the underclass the existence of poverty social justice or social policy at all. There were a couple of bits and pieces in his statement about how the Government wanted to be a bit harsher on beneficiaries and blame them—classic National stuff—but when Phil Goff stood up at the beginning of the debate and asked why Mr Key had a $1000 a week tax cut advantage while the minimum wage went up by 25c an hour nobody over the last 3 days set up a defence for it—no one. That was interesting. 
The other interesting thing was that neither Mr Key nor anyone else in National over 3 days mentioned the environment. The Greens mentioned hardly anything else—good for them—and we did mention it from time to time. National members have not mentioned the environment at all. The Prime Minister’s statement is supposed to be broad ranging.