Cosgrove Clayton: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Cosgrove Clayton: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
[Sitting date: 26 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3375. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour) 
: 
 So now we have it. After 3½ years National has announced some targets. Remember it had some targets 3½ years ago when it won its first election. What were those targets? A brighter future was the first one. Closing the gap with Oz—that is gone; that has been torpedoed vaporised. 
Then it had the target—and the member speaking before me Todd McClay talked about unemployment—“Oh we’re going to get unemployment down. We’re going to assist.” In fact the Minister for Social Development Ms Bennett said: “We are going to assist people into jobs.” Well here is the go. Now we have 50000 more people unemployed than there were 3½ years ago thanks to that target thanks to that Minister. 
Then of course National was going to reverse immigration. Remember that? Andrew Williams talked about that. That was another target 3½ years ago. Now we have of course 52000 people a year—1000 people a week—going to Australia. As my colleague David Parker said it has nothing to do with Greece or Spain or Portugal or the global financial crisis or the world economic meltdown. Oh no! They are off for the brighter future on the Gold Coast. So they were the targets that National had—50000 more people unemployed. And it asks us what we would do. 
At the last election we had a really simple thing. I note that Todd McClay of course never mentioned the earthquake. The earthquake is a tragedy but the earthquake is also an opportunity. It is the world’s biggest training scheme. That is what it is—the world’s biggest training scheme. We knew—the Government knew—almost 2 years ago now when the first one hit that we were going to need 20000 30000 40000 or some people say 50000 trades-trained individuals. We have the other side of the equation thanks to Paula Bennett of nearly 89000 young people not in work not in training languishing in the dole queue. I think that is another target displaced and disregarded by the National Government. 
The question for the National Government is this: why is it that it cannot match a large group—89000 young people—to a massive training opportunity in Christchurch? We now know that the Government has spent a minuscule amount on trades training of the trades-training budget—$42 million was put aside; I think it has spent $7 million. Right? So why can it not get the group of unemployed off the dole and into training? Yes it might cost some money; yes that is true. But the payback is that those young people had they been put through trades training and started it 2 years ago would be two-thirds through their time—productive young people swinging the hammers turning the screwdrivers picking up the trowel laying the bricks rebuilding our second-largest city and by the way in jobs and paying tax. 
You might ask: “Well hang on we’ve got no dough. How do we pay for that?”. Well we did have a simple policy. It was to take a year’s dole and give it to the boss and the boss tops it up with a couple of hundred dollars a week. The boss gets that for the first year to get that young person over the sort of hump when they are not productive and when they are actually a cost to the business and thereafter the boss bites the wage bill and trains that person. A guy in Christchurch called Brent Mettrick who is from one of the biggest residential construction firms in Christchurch said that he had 20 gangs out there and he would take 20 people tomorrow. It does not cost a penny because it is fiscally neutral because either you pay the young person to sit on the dole and languish or you give the money to the boss and the deal with the boss is that they train that person in a trade. 
Now I reckon that that is a goer. It is a bit of innovation it is a bit of smarts and it is backed by the business community which desperately needs it. But oh what have we got over there? Nothing. Members opposite cannot even convince—and they cannot even use the money they allocated themselves to match 89000 young people to 50000 potential trades training jobs. Not a thing. 
So here is the prediction. Here is the prediction. What will happen when the gun goes off in Christchurch is that those geniuses over there will turn the immigration tap on because a victim does not care who does their house—they just want their house back—and you cannot tell a business to wait 3 more years until the National Government gets its act together and starts training some people. So in will come the flow of trades qualified people from offshore. In fact they are coming now. Of course the missed opportunity here is that the taxpayer will still be paying as they do every day for more and more unemployed folk. Paula Bennett’s great legacy will be—to date and counting—50000 more people on the dole queue. I just say do you remember the target that National had to get unemployment down close the gap with Oz and turn the immigration tide round? 
Remember the cycleway? The cycleway was going to be the big king-hit. We had Chris Tremain the Associate Minister of Tourism in before the Commerce Committee last week. We asked him after a couple of years of sort of cycling around the cycleway: “How many jobs Minister?”. He did not know. Well I can tell him. There are a couple of hundred permanent jobs in constructing the cycleway—a couple of hundred—and that Minister could not name a figure. So then we asked him further because the target of course was 4000 to 5000 jobs out of this wonderful cycleway. He could not tell us. The best we could find out was by flicking through some statistics to work out that there might be a couple of hundred people in construction. 
Then we asked the Minister: “How many businesses?” because on 17 July 2009 I think when John Key launched this great initiative he said: “There will be businesses opening up everywhere. They will be lining up down each side of the track to sell to tourists. They will be flocking in.” So we asked the Associate Minister of Tourism: “How many businesses?”. Well he told the truth. He said that in Napier I think one was a fish and chip shop but I am not sure. There were two businesses that he named. One I think was a cycle shop actually—he will correct me when he gets up and takes a call. He named two businesses and good on him. I will admit that that is progress but it ain’t the target National set for this country in its manifesto. 
An Associate Minister of Tourism could not tell us after 2½ years how many jobs there would be how many jobs there are now whether he had reset the target whether there is going to be an evaluation—well there is apparently; evaluating what I do not know—or how many businesses the great cycleway had generated. He could not tell us because it ain’t many. We know that there are two in New Zealand and to those two businesses in Napier I say congratulations. What a fantastic opportunity they have got. Those two businesses have kicked a goal for the country and good on them. 
Then of course we had the financial hub. That was announced and it was going to be the king-hit. That was going to be the new target the silver bullet for the country and it has disappeared off the face of the earth. Gone—never mentioned now in the 120-point plan. 
So I say to National members that the best strategy that they have got—the only thing they have put up—is to rip off paper boys kick the elderly in the guts with the asset testing tinker around the edges and flog off the family silver. That is all they have got. I ask them now: what is the target for jobs in the next 3 years how many jobs will be created how much growth and how many new export markets will be created as a result of selling assets? A big fat zero. They crow that they have announced 10 more targets—10 more targets. Well announcing targets does not put bread on the table for people. It does not pay off the debt that the Government is racking up at 300 million bucks a week as a result of a tax cut where 10 percent—the top 10 percent—got 40 percent. 
So the Government just keeps announcing targets and you know when a Government is sort of out of ideas because there are just more targets coming out. You know it says there is a war on this and a target on that and the best gimmick it could come up with last week was Anne Tolley standing on the wreck of a car body. What a genius! 
Hon Annette King 
: In her stilettos. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: In her stilettos. Well I do not own a pair of stilettos but I am told by Annette King that it is rather difficult— 
Hon Members 
: Are you sure? 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: I am sure about that—I am sure about that. It is difficult they say to stand on the bonnet of a car in stilettos and sort of “Rambo-ette”-like was Anne Tolley. 
So the National Government’s plan is to re-announce and re-announce targets such as a 10-point plan for the Public Service and to tinker around the edges with no real strategy and no mention of what the growth target is or how many export markets will be opened up. Even the clichés from Todd McClay: “We want to help people into employment.”—great aim; we all agree with it. But where is the evidence that anything has happened? “We have got 10 targets”—he said—“for the Public Service.” Great! You have had 3½ years to actually produce the goods and the country has gone backwards absolutely backwards. 
I say that this crew even “Rusty” in the corner over there—even “Old Rusty”—has no targets. What will she say to her people? “Well unemployment’s up. The gap with Australia’s opened—they’re 38 percent ahead in wages. Well the country’s gone backwards but we’ve announced some more targets. We’ve announced some more targets.” Well I say this. It is going to be a big target all right. It is going to be a big bull’s-eye. It is going to go on the back of every member over there and the people of New Zealand will take aim. They will take aim in 2014 and by God they will hit the bull’s-eye.