Hutchison Paul: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Hutchison Paul: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:637;Page:7292] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 A singularly strange phenomenon occurred in Parliament this afternoon. As we Her Majesty’s most loyal Opposition filed in re-energised enthusiastic and ready to take it to the Government there was an expectation that Helen Clark and her somewhat tawdry followers would also be re-energised. Instead there they were looking tired disenchanted and singularly sick. There was a tirade from the Prime Minister—a 35-minute diatribe—and after that the Government members continued to look tired disenchanted and sick. We now have one glimpse of knowledge as to why they looked so forlorn: finally after 18 months they have made up their minds to expel Taito Phillip Field. 
Just 8 months ago Helen Clark released the half-million-dollar Ingram report which had serious allegations about her former Minister Taito Phillip Field. At that time she emphatically stated that no wrong had been done by Mr Field. She actually explicitly stated that no wrong had been done by Mr Field. This afternoon the credibility of the Prime Minister and the credibility of the Government have literally gone out of the windows and doors of this Parliament. 
Hon David Carter 
: There was never much to go was there? 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: There was not much to go at all. 
In the Prime Minister’s opening remarks she said that educational achievement is up. Yet only this week we learnt that 50 percent or more of young Maori males leave school without having achieved even National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 1. 
The Prime Minister went on to say: “Meeting the challenges our country faces in the 21st century requires substance not slogans.” But what was the slogan she used some years ago? It was “closing the gaps”. Here we have after 7 years of a Labour Government over 50 percent of young Maori males not achieving anything from their State-funded education. 
This afternoon I had a session with members of the Industry Training Federation. They said that a major problem for them is that a substantial number of their 160000 trainees are illiterate and innumerate. So after 7 years of a Labour Government not only are school-leavers illiterate and innumerate but if they are lucky enough to get into skills training—which this Prime Minister says is so important—there are not even facilities to fund them to learn to write or read. This is a major problem for this country and it is a major indictment on this Government after 7 years. Over the last 5 or 6 years we have had one of the greatest scandals in New Zealand—the misspending of $1 billion in tertiary education. We have all heard about Te Wananga o Aotearoa homeopathy for pets and twilight golf. Yet we have a situation where money cannot be directed into the simple things of numeracy and literacy so that our young men and women can actually learn to read the notices in workplaces they might go to—and that might make all the difference to them. 
It is no wonder that Michael Cullen has decided to have a review of tertiary education and no wonder that he has decided to concentrate on of all things standards and quality. There is no doubt that over the last 4 to 5 years we have witnessed a scandal in this country of misspending of vital education dollars. 
The Prime Minister went on to say: “Our challenge is to build a sustainable economy based on innovation and quality in a world where high-volume low-quality services and goods will always undercut us on price.” I agree with that but we must recall that only 18 months ago after the last election the Prime Minister also said that science and innovation were critical to driving the New Zealand economy. She went on to deliver a Budget in which of the new money $1 billion went into interest-free tertiary loans and $1.5 billion went into the Working for Families package—situations that would cement tens of thousands of New Zealanders into welfare dependency. 
This afternoon the Prime Minister went on to talk about taking significant numbers of children out of poverty. She might have done that but she has put them right into dependency. This is one of the great problems with this interfering Labour Government. It has spent billions of dollars on programmes that have caused and cemented in welfare dependency in this country. In that same Budget only $19.4 million of new money was spent on scientific research and development the area that she said was critical to driving our economy. 
She went on to say: “I believe that New Zealand can aim to be the first nation to be truly sustainable”—and she said that word 33 times— 
Hon Member 
: Thirty-six times. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
:—36 times as my colleague said—“across the four pillars of the economy the society the environment and nationhood.” Here is the next Labour slogan: “economic transformation”. The facts are that in 1999 when this Labour Government came into power economic growth was 4.9 percent. It is now approximately between 2 and 3 percent and predicted by Treasury to ease to about 2 percent in the long term. 
Much more worrying than that is the fact that the average Australian wage back in 1999 was in the order of 26 percent more than the average New Zealander’s wage but now that figure is 35 percent. Back in 1999 we were 20th in the OECD out of 30 countries and we are now 21st in the OECD. This is not economic transformation; it is economic transformation going backwards. That is a hugely serious concern for our country. 
The last slogan I will talk about is this extraordinary claim from the Prime Minister that “we can aspire to be carbon neutral in our economy and way of life.” Back when this Labour Government ratified the Kyoto Protocol it said it would show leadership. Pete Hodgson the then Minister of Research Science and Technology and environment Minister said there would be a cheque for $1 billion for New Zealand because of carbon credits. He was over 100 percent wrong; instead it was the billion-dollar mistake made by Pete Hodgson. 
In that bill he also suggested that carbon police would be going on to every farm in New Zealand to check his carbon tax. This was described by a professor of law from Canterbury University as State-sanctioned trespass. 
This Labour Government has got to go.