Goff Phil: General Debate 
Goff Phil: General Debate 
[Volume:657;Page:6801] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I congratulate Mr Power on acknowledging the good sense of the people of Mt Roskill who have re-elected me nine times as their member of Parliament. They have indeed made a good choice. I found the attempted humour in the member’s speech to be really astonishing. He started off by wanting to talk about the state of the New Zealand economy and unemployment and then he asked the Opposition what its response was to the recession. Well I tell Mr Power that he is a member of the Government today and we are waiting to see his response. It is important that the Minister actually makes a response. At the present time 140000 New Zealand are out of work. People have been losing their jobs at the rate of 2000 per week and Mr Power asked the Opposition what its response is to dealing with that problem. 
I tell Mr Power it is time that the Government stopped being a spectator. It is time that the Government got off the sidelines and did something about this problem. We are seeing internationally at the moment the return of an economic upturn. Hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders are without security of employment. Many have lost their jobs but many more are wondering how to meet the bills at the end of the week because their real incomes are going down. They want to know what this Government will do to ensure that the international recovery translates into an improvement in their living standards their incomes and their job security. 
Workers hear the Government saying time and again not only to public servants but also to the private sector that there will be no wage increases this year. That is the message from the National Government. I want to ask the National Government why it has been strangely mute in the face of this article in the  
Dominion Post 
 this morning reporting that the chief executives of four big companies in New Zealand have awarded themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in pay increases while the profits of those companies have declined by between 40 and 60 percent. Why is the National Government not calling for responsibility on the part of the fat cats of this country and asking them to show some leadership and some restraint instead of telling the ordinary hard-working New Zealanders who are struggling to pay the bills at the end of the week that they must show restraint? Where is the leadership from the National Government which gave its Prime Minister hundreds and hundreds of dollars each week in tax cuts while those who earn under $40000 and who have families got nothing? Where is this Government when it comes to fairness and giving the ordinary hard-working New Zealander a fair go some job security and a better real income rather than the cuts and the freezing of wages it has been calling for? 
I want to talk a little about the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. Bill English said it was crazy for New Zealand to continue to pre-fund superannuation. He said the fund is losing money. Well I tell Mr English that in the last 6 months the New Zealand Superannuation Fund proudly created by the previous Labour Government has made $4.1 billion and has increased its worth by a third. I tell Mr English that his leader John Key told the country last year that there were only two choices: raise the level of entitlement to national superannuation or pre-fund it. What did National do? It cut the pre-funding but it will not own up and say the long-term consequences of doing that—maybe not so long term—are that people will lose their current superannuation entitlements. This year we have lost $1.65 billion from the New Zealand superannuation scheme. At the end of 10 years there will be a $35 billion hole. John Key admitted last year that the number of people in retirement will double in the next 20 years to over a million. What is the National Government doing? It is saying the bill will have to be met by those New Zealanders who are under the age of 45. Instead of the baby boomers—people like John Key and Bill English who should pay—paying in advance the Government will put the burden on the younger generation.