Cunliffe David: General Debate 
Cunliffe David: General Debate 
[Volume:667;Page:14651] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 This Government is out of touch. It actually thinks that things are getting better for ordinary Kiwi families. It thinks that wages are going up but Statistics New Zealand does not. Statistics New Zealand has told us that median wages fell $9 a week to June last year—$9 a week. That is enough to make a difference in most working families’ budgets but it is not enough for those National members. They live in a different New Zealand. They live in the New Zealand of cocktail parties European cars and money trading. [ 
Interruption 
] I drive a Toyota Prius—there you go. 
The Government is so out of touch that it is crowing about inflation. Its best line is that in the middle of a global recession it managed to get inflation down. I want to imagine for a moment the scene in the Beehive when Bill English called in the spin doctors. There is no good news. Unemployment is above 6 percent and is heading for 7 percent. Growth is going backwards according to the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research. Manufacturing collapsed by 26 percent in the last quarter. Confidence is down and business investment is negative. What can they do? Wayne Eagleson said they should say they are waiting for summer. John Key comes in and says that his sense is that they—meaning the peasants—will feel a little better now that summer is coming. Well that did not work. That was a joke that got laughed at in the media as it should have done. 
In came “Captain Panic Pants” who said they should make up some numbers and tell people that they are better off. So National took the GDP statistics and claimed credit for Labour’s 2008 tax cuts. It used a different series of data from Statistics New Zealand divided it by the square root of Bill English’s housing allowance and came up with some shonky numbers. It did that just to try to convince ordinary Kiwi families that they were better off. But the numbers do not lie. The median income earner the bloke or blokess in the middle went back nine bucks a week end of story. And that was before inflation. 
The spin doctors came in and said they should crow about inflation and tell people that at least they fixed that one. There is a problem with that conquering of inflation in the middle of a recession. It is a shame about the 160000 unemployed. It is a shame that growth was only 0.2 percent in the last quarter. It is a shame that Alan Bollard called the recovery fragile. It is a shame that New Zealanders have not felt the recovery in a supermarket queue near them. It is a shame that we have had 1.1 percent inflation in the last quarter alone and that is before Bill English’s 2.5 percent GST increase and the 5.9 percent inflation that Treasury says we can look forward to next year. Will this Government give ordinary New Zealanders in the middle of the income curve a 5.9 percent pay increase next year just to keep even? I do not think so. Wages are predicted to grow only 2 percent. Kiwis will be worse off and they know it. 
That is why they are pleased that Labour is taking a bold new direction in policy. We reject the politics of laissez-faire. We reject the idea that the Government can have no role in making conditions better for ordinary people. We reject the idea that we should be selling off our farmland acre by acre and farm by farm to those who are enjoying surpluses while we cannot. We want Kiwi sharemilkers to be able to own the farms that they are milking on. We want New Zealanders to own their own homes not to be forced to sell to foreign buyers. That Government is out of touch. It is a one-term National Government