Robertson Grant: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Robertson Grant: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:660;Page:8979] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 It was fascinating to hear Nicky Wagner end on the topic of the importance of supporting science and innovation in New Zealand. No one on this side of the House would disagree with that. But let us turn to what the Prime Minister’s statement says about science and innovation. It states: “Science and innovation are therefore key elements of the Government’s economic agenda both this year and into the future.” That sounds good. But then we read a little further down: “As I indicated earlier the fiscal situation means that future new spending allowances can only be very modest and most agencies will miss out on funding increases altogether.” So there we go: the Government thinks science and innovation is important and that it will contribute to growing our economy but it does not want to fund it. 
That is typical of the Prime Minister’s statement that we are talking about today. Some people have criticised the Labour Party for suggesting that the statement was both timid and dangerous that it was a kind of “Danger Mouse” statement by the Prime Minister. The reality is that the statement is both timid and dangerous because we have a Government that is forced by electoral imperatives to adopt a vast range of popular Labour policies but is bridling against them. John Hayes does not really support Working for Families 20 hours’ free early childhood education or interest-free student loans but he knows National had to support them in order to get elected. The desire is there to reward National’s mates and to get back to trickle-down economics because that worked really well did it not? The Government wants to get back to privatisation and to reducing the size of the State. That is what Government members really want to do. 
We saw in the Prime Minister’s statement the Government bridling against that. Bill was not happy though was he? It took him a long time to get up in the debate and when he finally did he kept saying: “Well we’re just considering it. We’re not quite sure whether we’re going to go through with this.” It was a timid speech but what underlay it was a dangerous agenda to take New Zealand down a path where we look after only the few not the many. It is a dangerous path to be going down when we look at a situation where a tax cut change could deliver $500 a week to the Prime Minister and only 30-odd cents to somebody on the minimum wage. That is a very dangerous path for New Zealand to go down because it is a recipe for inequity and instability in our society. It is not a path that the Labour Party favours going down. 
It has been a difficult time for the Government since the Prime Minister delivered his statement. Things have got very very messy in terms of some of the key elements like GST. We are not certain where the Prime Minister stands on GST. However the one thing we do know is that before the election the Prime Minister ruled out an increase in GST but now he is not so sure. He is contemplating an increase in GST to 15 percent but only if the Maori Party agrees to it. However that position appeared to change this week as well. It was the same with Whanau Ora. After the speech we began believing that Whanau Ora was only for Maori. Tariana Turia developed it and we understood that it would be funded through Te Puni Kokiri. That is fine; it was only going to be there. That was the Maori Party’s clear position. Suddenly John Key says: “No it is for everybody—and it is also a waterbed. It is both of those things.” He is a master of the English language. There is total confusion about Whanau Ora and about GST. 
My colleague Darren Hughes has already talked about the foreshore and seabed. There is complete confusion about what is happening there. This is a very very messy coalition arrangement and the Prime Minister is reduced to being some kind of deranged ambulance driver running around and trying to pick up all the casualties of his coalition. He is trying to hold it all together and as a result there is no clear plan emerging from this. All we see emerging is a Government that is grappling with itself and with the fact that what it really wants to do is move further in the direction of privatisation and of rewarding National’s friends. But National members know they cannot do that because they will not get re-elected. That is the tension. That was the “Danger Mouse” speech by the Prime Minister. He came through with a speech that does not deliver a plan because he cannot quite manage to do it. 
A key element of the Government’s agenda is supposedly to get us better public services. All New Zealanders want better public services. Certainly the Labour Party wants to see public services adapt and change and to look like the 21st century public services we want them to be. Labour made some good advances in that direction in our term in Government but there is much more to do. National’s vision for public services simply will not deliver improved public services. In its first year in Government it said the message was: “We want to do more with less.” The problem is that National is now doing less with less. It has managed to cut indiscriminately across the public sector. It has cut into institutions like Child Youth and Family and the Ministry of Social Development. Those places are under even more pressure now as we come out of the recession. They are the places that National has cut. National has a policy that is based on a complete fabrication about something called front-line services and backroom services. 
In the select committee deliberations on the estimates we managed to ask most of the agencies what front-line services were. We managed to get almost every agency to deliver a different definition of what front-line services are. Some people said they had been told by the State Services Commission what they were and some people said the State Services Commission did not have a definition. Archives New Zealand is an institution that I am personally very proud of but I did not quite agree with it when it said that 80 percent of its staff are front-line workers. I am struggling to work out how it could be 80 percent. I think Maurice Williamson probably would not agree that 80 percent of Archives New Zealand’s staff are front-line workers. This is the problem when we set up artificial definitions but that is the cornerstone of National’s policy. 
The reality is that if we start making arbitrary distinctions like that in institutions such as district health boards we will start to get into trouble. We have already seen it with administrative staff being laid off in district health boards and that means only one thing: doctors and nurses spending less time with patients and more time filling in forms and doing administrative work. Making artificial distinctions between the front line and the back room simply will not deliver better services for New Zealand. 
I hate to say this but morale in the public service in New Zealand is very low at the moment. It is because people are having to do the jobs of two and three people. They are under huge pressure. They have been told by the Prime Minister in his statement that there will be no funding for 5 years in many of those departments—5 years. At the same time the Government is saying that it also wants the Public Service to be innovative take on new technology and look at different ways of doing things. Well that is proving impossible for people who are covering for their mates who have lost their jobs and they are having to do more and more work with fewer resources around for them. It simply is not on to suddenly say to snap one’s fingers and public services will be better. We have to invest in public services. We have to invest in public servants to ensure they can deliver the 21st century Public Service we all want. 
The other point concerning public services is that this is the year in which primary school teachers and nurses will renegotiate their contracts. I think the Government needs to tread very carefully here. It is saying to those people that there is no new money for 5 years. We are already seeing industrial action in places like the Ministry of Justice with court staff. The Inland Revenue Department is not far away from the same thing. We will have major problems and disruption in this country if the Government is not prepared to invest in public services invest in the teachers and nurses and make sure they have good rates of pay. That is a major problem coming ahead for this Government and I do not see anything in this statement that would enable us to believe that the Government wants to invest in public services. We see a recipe for increasing unfairness in the Prime Minister’s statement. It is Robin Hood in reverse. It is taking from the poor and giving to the rich. That is what we are seeing in this statement. 
I want to end on a positive note about what Labour is doing at the moment. Labour is working through its policy process at the moment. The important thing for Labour at the moment is to work out how we can take this country forward with a sustainable economy. Time and time again I hear colleagues in the National Party tell us that the economy and the environment are two separate things. If this country is to go forward prosperously we need to ensure that the economy and the environment are considered together. It is ridiculous to find in the Prime Minister’s statement a section called “Unlocking resources” which is code for mining our national parks. If we cannot bring the economy and the environment together New Zealand has no future. We need to ensure that we invest in people we support children in the early years of their lives and we educate people and give them the skills to contribute. Then we will have a productive economy. Unfortunately there is none of that in the Prime Minister’s statement.