Joyce Steven: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeJoyce Steven: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 29 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10497. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon STEVEN JOYCE: It was called the global financial crisis young fellow. Compared with Australia unemployment is 6.2 percent—slightly higher—but interestingly in terms of employment we are significantly higher than the Australians with 63.7 percent of adult New Zealanders employed in this country. In Australia it is only 61.7 percent of Australians. And we have more full-time employment in this country. Seventy-eight percent of New Zealanders in work are in full-time employment. In Australia it is just 70 percent.This Government is doing a very good job with the New Zealand economy. We are dealing with the challenges of a high exchange rate because we are seen as doing better than many other countries in the world and we are focusing on growing our exports. Exports of goods and services have gone up 4.6 percent a year on average in the 4 years to March last year. Our comprehensive Business Growth Agenda is delivering the results of increasing exports despite the headwinds of a high dollar and the ongoing international financial crisis.So you see the initiatives in building exports and you see our initiatives in building innovation and we talked about those earlier today in question time. We see the importance of building up the capital markets and investment. One of the great ironies is the Opposition’s approach to the mixed-ownership model when one of the most important things in this country is boosting our capital markets to be able to get more companies more opportunities for investing in growth and jobs.Then we come to skills and all the investments we are making in our university sector in our polytech sector and in industry training. There are the Resource Management Act reforms in our natural resources space and of course the building of infrastructure. There is a massive programme going on and the public of New Zealand know it. They know it and they endorse it. We see that in the polls that are going on right now around the country. There have now been three polls. The average result for the Government after 4½ years is now 48-point-something percent. For the National Party alone it is 48-point-something percent and the Labour Party is down at 33 percent.So why is the Labour Party down there on 33 percent? Because it has hitched its wagon with the Green Party and we now have the anti-growth coalition—the Labour - Greens anti-growth coalition. These guys have an uncanny ability to have precisely the wrong ideas at exactly the wrong time. It is uncanny how badly they come up with ideas—for example the capital gains tax. How do you encourage business growth in New Zealand? I know slap a new tax on every productive business in the New Zealand economy. That would be a smart idea—not. Then they talk about what else they could do to help the economy and they say: “Let’s increase the cost of the emissions trading scheme. Let’s put up the emissions trading scheme costs”. They grizzle about the petrol tax but they want to put $500 a year on New Zealand households with the emissions trading scheme.Their next plan—if they have not wrecked the economy enough by then—is to nationalise an industry a big industry of New Zealand. So they want to nationalise the power industry to teach those terrible KiwiSavers and those dodgy investors that they should not be interested in a Labour-Greens Government—and the good news is that they are not. They have worked it out.Also Labour members want to borrow more money rather than pay down debt. Then there is the coup des grace: the print money division—the Greens’ print money division.So here you have it—the wrong policies at the wrong time while opposing everything that encourages jobs and growth. They are opposing the Resource Management Act reforms—that was just this weekend—opposing the convention centre opposing oil and gas opposing international investment opposing Denniston and opposing aquaculture. We are not quite sure whether they oppose Denniston or not but we think they do.So on the one hand you have a Government that is focused on encouraging new investment encouraging growth and jobs internationally focused and lifting real incomes for Kiwi families and on the other hand you have an Opposition that is reactionary inward-looking intent on scratching every political itch no matter what it means frankly anti-growth and at times—with Winston—downright xenophobic. It is a very straightforward choice. Eighteen months out we are very happy with the contrast.Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I do take offence at a member of this House being described as xenophobic. That has been ruled out on a number of occasions and that member did it then.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Yes it has. I would ask the member to withdraw that comment.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I do withdraw it.