Barry Maggie: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Barry Maggie: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 24 October 2012. Volume:685;Page:6137. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore) 
: 
 I am very proud to be a member of this John Key - led Government. I think we have a shared vision and a plan to support New Zealanders through these troubled economic times. We believe in helping New Zealanders make the best of their opportunities. We recognise personal responsibilities and we also believe very strongly that people need to be rewarded for their hard work and their enterprise. These are values that I believe in and these are values that underpin what is driving our plan to help the New Zealand economy. Let us look at some of the business investment initiatives that lead to new jobs—specific measures including the 90-day trial period and reducing company tax to 28 percent. We have reduced ACC levies and saved $600 million a year with that measure alone. We have also removed 170 unnecessary and excessive regulations because we are not about red tape. We are not about binding up business and holding back the economy unlike the Opposition. Most of these measures are completely lost on the Opposition. Those members have had their crack at it and they have failed dismally. We are not about to be sidetracked or distracted by the braying of the opposing forces. 
I think that one of the things that has worked most successfully in the past year has been the efforts that we have made—and the Hon Paula Bennett in particular is to be congratulated on this—in getting people off benefits and back into work. That is vital. It is vital for themselves for their self-esteem and their mana and also for the future of their family economy and the wider economy as well. These are vital things. What have we done to help people back into work particularly our young people? What have we done specifically? In the Youth Opportunities package alone there is $152 million which includes 4000 places in Job Ops. In the past 2 years in net terms something like 60000 more New Zealanders have been put into work. Our unemployment forecast is definitely forecast to fall. This has all been possible because the economy has grown. It has grown by 2.6 percent in the year to June. Our annual growth forecast is between 2 percent and 3 percent over the next 4 years. That is a lot better than other developed countries are doing at the moment. The after-tax average wage is up by 20 percent from when Labour’s time ended in 2008. We now have—and this is a particularly good thing—the lowest inflation rate since 1999 which means that the cost of living is increasing at its lowest rate in 12 years. This is all good and this is going to support jobs. 
But we are certainly not leaving it to chance nor are we going into loopy mad Green ideas à la Zimbabwe to print money and shut down opportunities for jobs and stall the economy. If printing money was the recipe then that country would be successful. It is not. Printing money increases the money supply so that increases inflation. It would make the very people whom the Opposition is purporting to help suffer more difficulty because everything would go up in price from the price of petrol to the price of groceries. The poor would be the hardest hit. But the Greens and Labour are determined to talk New Zealand down and to promote a bunch of ideas that are in vogue only in the sorts of countries that have run out of all other options. 
We have not run out of options. We have a plan and we are sticking to it. As I have said in the past in this sort of situation standing up in a general debate it is a very good plan and I support it because economic growth produces jobs and that is what we are allowing to happen. But do not just take our word for it. Peter Orzag—as my colleague the Hon Nick Smith referred to recently in his call today—has singled out New Zealand as the only country that has provided the right balance of stimulus for the economy by reducing the deficit in the medium term. This is high praise indeed from someone who has been looking carefully at our measures and looking carefully at what we are able to do. 
I think when it comes to New Zealand’s economic performance for me on the North Shore I look at what has happened with infrastructure and with the broadband rolling out. I can see that people in my area in my electorate of North Shore are delighted with that. I was just looking for some tangible information that I had about this because I have had several letters from my constituents about the growing of the economy and in particular how the broadband has helped. In days gone by when North Shore Hospital was not in such fettle there were real issues about people in corridors and people not getting the level of care that they required. With the broadband roll-out it is now possible to upload and send a file of a sick child within 3 seconds to Starship. These are the kinds of measures that are making a phenomenal difference. That is why in these tough economic times we are continuing to invest in them. 
As far as the Opposition is concerned though it would want to borrow to pay for reducing things like the retirement age. It wants to lower it to 60 years old for many workers. What is that going to do? Borrowing again to pay for the Auckland rail loop—failed policies.