Key John: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Key John: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:623;Page:18247] 
JOHN KEY (National—Helensville) 
: 
 Those were the calm and soothing words of the Hon Phil Goff. Well I have a suggestion for him: “Drink less coffee before you come down to the House.” But it is no wonder Phil Goff is angry because if he had only gone down to the Mad Butcher and bought a few more sausages then he too could have flung them on the barbeque and been Prime Minister of this country. He could have been Prime Minister of this country but he has missed his chance and he is an angry Minister indeed. 
There was no economic vision in the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday for one very good reason: this Government does not have an economic vision. This Government would not know an economic vision if it fell over one. It has been very quick to come down to the House to claim credit for the economy—very quick indeed—and it has been very quick to say that somehow it is responsible for the economic conditions New Zealanders enjoy today. But that is simply not the case and I suggest that the Prime Minister look at a recent speech made by Alan Bollard the Governor of the Reserve Bank about the economy of New Zealand. About 4 or 5 days ago he delivered a speech in which he outlined five reasons why the New Zealand economy has been strong in the last 4 or 5 years. Reason No. 1 was the policies of the 1980s and 1990s. They were the same policies that the Prime Minister said were the daft and nasty policies of the 1990s. That is the No. 1 reason that the Governor of the Reserve Bank thinks the New Zealand economy is strong. 
Reason No. 2 was the low and competitive exchange rate and the high commodity prices. I know that Michael Cullen who now has a war chest of money is on to some crazy little scheme whereby he thinks he can engineer the New Zealand dollar lower but so far even Alan Bollard has not followed that. Last time I looked the Kiwi was 71c. So there is nothing there from this Government. 
The third factor was the post-9/11 implications. Fewer New Zealanders went overseas and I assume the Prime Minister is not taking the credit for that. The fourth reason was the incredibly strong Chinese economy and its impact on the demand for commodities and goods produced in New Zealand. Helen Clark has not had a lot to do with that. The fifth reason was the increased consumption patterns of New Zealanders—the very New Zealanders who now have a mountain of debt because they do not have any after-tax income in their pockets. They have one option under this Government: to rack up the credit card and the mortgage. This Government does not care about them as long as its balance sheet is all right. That is why the economy is strong. Not one of those conditions has anything to do with this Government or with what this Government has done. 
But I want to address just one point. In her euphoria yesterday afternoon the Prime Minister forgot a simple fact. She was pretty quick to come out and say that the conditions and policies of the National Government in the 1990s were daft and nasty. Let us remember how National left the economy in 1999. We left it firing on all cylinders. The growth rate was higher than was enjoyed last year or the year before it. It was much higher than this Government has enjoyed. Certainly we did not leave the economy in the way we inherited the Treasury benches in 1990. We did not leave it with a set of accounts that were nothing short of a lie which said there was a surplus of $89 million when really there was a mystery deficit of billions and billions of dollars. The National Party came into Government and sorted out the fiasco and mess the Labour Government had left it. That is why we did the things we did. New Zealanders know we created that economy. They are not fooled by a Prime Minister who came down to the House with absolutely no vision for this economy at all but was quick to claim credit for something she has not done. Any fool can spend money. It takes a lot of guts courage and vision to create it but this Prime Minister does not do that. 
I was very interested to talk to a couple of journalists yesterday morning. My phone was running hot with journalists ringing me up about the ownership society. They wanted to know a little bit about that. I was interested in having that discussion with them and I asked one or two of them why they had rung me about the ownership society. They told me that on Sunday afternoon the Prime Minister had done a ring-around to journalists to give them a bit of the flavour of what would be in her speech on Tuesday. They were the same journalists who ran stories on the front page of their newspapers across the country about a universal benefit that would be introduced and announced in her speech. Where was the universal benefit yesterday? It was not in the speech. These same journalists were led by the Prime Minister to believe that this Government would come up with a credible solution to the ownership society—not a few words of puffery and words to try to make the feel-good factor but real solutions. She came down to this House with not one real solution at all. She was happy to tell journalists on Sunday afternoon about something but not so happy to front up to the people of New Zealand with some credible solutions. The same Prime Minister said to New Zealanders: “Tax cuts might be on the agenda. Watch out in my speech.” but there was a deafening silence when it came to tax cuts. I notice that when Dr Brash asked her a question this afternoon she pretty much ruled out tax cuts. She was not happy to talk about them in her speech so it was a typical and complete spin job. 
This Government may not have an economic vision but New Zealanders want some very serious questions answered. The first question is: why after 5 years of economic growth are their incomes totally stagnant? If the economic conditions are strong why do New Zealanders not have an extra dollar of real income? Well there is a very simple answer to that: this Government wants to hog the lion’s share of all the benefit of their hard work. This Government is very happy to come in and take $34 billion worth of additional taxes in 5 years. It is very happy to get six out of every seven dollars of economic growth and pocket them for itself leaving New Zealanders racking up their credit cards and drowning in a mountain of debt. That is what happening to New Zealand families at the moment. They are drowning under credit card bills and mortgage payments. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: It’s all from Christmas. 
JOHN KEY 
: It is all very well for the Government to be doing OK but families in New Zealand are certainly not. This Government has overseen an increase in the State sector which means there are now over 300000 State sector employees. It is very similar to the number on the benefit. One in five working New Zealanders now work for the Government. That has been the build-up in the State sector and that is where New Zealanders’ taxpayer dollars are going. They are not going to the police nurses or teachers; they are going—as Bill English said quite correctly in the House today—to bureaucrats in suits and to all sorts of PC nonsense. It is the kind of PC nonsense that is so rotten to the core that the Prime Minister sacked Steve Maharey to take him out of the fiasco he created in the tertiary education sector. That is the truth of it. She sacked Steve Maharey. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Worse than useless. 
JOHN KEY 
: It is absolutely worse than useless. New Zealanders have a lot of other questions they want answered. Why do they not get a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work? When the Government rolled out the Working for Families package why did welfare beneficiaries by and large receive an income supplement from day one? Why do working families have to wait until 2006 to receive the in-work payment? Where does that policy create the right incentives for New Zealanders to get up and work the extra hours to take overtime and to have more New Zealanders in the workforce and to retrain? Where are the incentives in that kind of society? Last week we saw a grant going to Hubbard Foods as part of a $40 million giveaway programme this Government has when the company itself told the media that it would have done it anyway. But the Government gave the company the money—it was on offer so why not take it? Why not go down to the trough if that is where the money is? 
So as members speak in this Parliament this afternoon hard-working New Zealanders are out there having to work longer and harder and they have higher debts and credit card bills so that Jim Anderton can have a photo shoot. I do not think that is fair and I do not think the people of New Zealand are very happy about it. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: And is the cereal any better? 
JOHN KEY 
: The cereal is no better. The best doozy of all came in the Prime Minister’s statement when she came out with this line: “Since 2001 our saving rate has exceeded that of Australia.” Well she is right actually. The public sector savings rate which is all the additional taxes the Government takes from us has gone up but private sector debt has gone through the roof—130 percent of average household income is what New Zealanders owe up from 90 percent in the last 10 years. They are drowning in debt and this Government will not give them an extra dollar to pay those credit card bills. No wonder they are worried! 
There was not one mention of putting New Zealand back in the top half of the OECD. Michael Cullen comes down now and talks about social indicators but that will not put shoes on little Johnny’s feet. It was a disgraceful economic speech.