Cosgrove Clayton: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCosgrove Clayton: General Debate[Sitting date: 25 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18877. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour):Well we have an interesting day in the House today because David Parker has put a document on the table. There are our numbers. There is our plan. It is out there 3 months before the election. It is out for scrutiny. The media the analysts and everybody will pore over it but the plan is out there.I have got to say that Bill English has in this Budget projected a $500 million surplus but we know that that surplus of course is balanced against and taken from $500 million out of repair costs in Christchurch. But here is a fact for Bill English: Bill English has never actually achieved a surplus. He has projected one he has targeted one he has promised one but he has never actually delivered one compared with the Government that David Parker and I were part of which did not deliver one or two or three surpluses but delivered surpluses every year for the 9 years that it was in Government—every year for 9 years. [Interruption] Do not worry Tau; there will be a job at the Porirua pub where you can go back to being a bouncer or something akin to your skill base. But for 9 years—for 9 years every year—the Labour Government delivered a surplus.So here is the plan: I say as David Parker has said show us the dough. Show us the money. There is our plan—it is out there; open for delivery for scrutiny—and it stands. It stands well because it is a quality document. And what will it do? Well as David Parker said we will actually reduce debt. We will actually reduce and pay for the debt that this Government built up over its last 6 years.Chester Borrows of course talked about who gets what and who pays the majority of tax. But poor old Chester did not get the abacus out did not add three letters in—GST—when he made his spurious calculation. That is the credibility of that economic genius over there. Part of the tax base Chester is derived from a thing called GST which your Government put up after it lied to the people of New Zealand and said that it would not. That is a promise that the Government made and it lied to the people of New Zealand because it broke that promise. Now Mr Borrows in his shonky figures forgets a big chunk of the tax base and he cannot add it into his calculations.As Mr Parker has said everything is paid for in this document. Every line item is paid for in this document plus we achieve a surplus which in the first year of our Government will be the 10th we achieve added of course to the other nine. It will be No. 10. At the same time this document puts in place a series of programmes around employment around health and around education that back the battlers in this country—the good entrepreneurs the people who are trying to get ahead the people who are struggling out there. They need a decent health system not the shonky stuff of course that the Minister of Health has been exposed by today and yesterday around Health Benefits Ltd—the Ponzi scheme that Ms King outlined.People want a decent health system. They want the ability to be trained. We have a policy for that the dole for apprenticeships and if it had been implemented 3½ years ago we would have 40000 or 50000 young people who would be trade trained swinging hammers in Canterbury and around the country contributing to our rebuild off the dole paying tax—including GST Chester in case you have forgotten—and actually contributing to our economy.We do not know from this mob over there whether when we get into Government anything will be left after the big tax cut for the big end of town and whether David Parker as Minister of Finance will be left with economic archaeology—an industrial graveyard—in terms of manufacturing. They talked about who they said they backed but of course they did not tell you and they did not allude to whom they have run into the ground. If you take dairy production away—which is another sleight of hand by Steven Joyce—it is the manufacturing base which in large part provides a heck of a lot of jobs in this country—Hon Chester Borrows: How much are you going to tax them?Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: —that Mr Borrows and his ilk have left and driven into the ground. National does not have a decent monetary policy. Its only monetary policy of course is to say: “Do nothing. Everything is fine.”Hon Chester Borrows: Why isn’t that in your fiscal plan?Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: I invite Mr Borrows to go back to his constituency in Wanganui and maybe ask some manufacturing exporters. We have a plan. It is fully costed. It is all paid for. We will achieve our 10th surplus. We will back our manufacturers and exporters. We will give those on the bottom of the heap a fair go which they have not had for 6 years.