Robertson Grant: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: General Debate[Sitting date: 07 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12445. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour):Today I want to talk about jobs but before I do I want to say that the allegations that have been raised by Winston Peters in the House today about the accessing of his cellphone records is an extremely serious allegation. It sits alongside the behaviour that we have seen from this Government and from John Key and his office in particular that shows no respect whatsoever for the privacy of New Zealand citizens. Be it a journalist in the form of Andrea Vance be it a politician or be it the Government Communications Security Bureau and all New Zealanders the respect for the rule of law and privacy from this Government is seriously in question today. The fact that the Prime Minister’s office thinks that it can direct Parliamentary Service adds to that. This Government does not respect the privacy of New Zealand citizens and it does not respect the separation between the executive and other parts of the parliamentary complex.The Labour Party was formed on the basis that the value and contribution of workers to the economy need to be recognised. Our guiding beliefs are about the value of work: a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. But more than that Labour recognises that in work lie things that are of great significance to New Zealanders to their self-esteem to their ability to provide for their families and care for their families and to their contribution to society. Work and jobs—good safe jobs—are at the heart of Labour’s vision for the society we want to live in. Jobs and work are at the heart of our policy which is why it gives Labour and me no comfort whatsoever to learn today that 153000 New Zealanders are out of work—unemployed. We have no pleasure that in the last 3 months 5000 jobs have been lost. These are not just statistics; these are real people with families to look after and mortgages to pay who are losing their jobs.From Dunedin to Dannevirke from Nelson to Napier jobs are being lost and families’ lives are being put at risk. And these real stories range right across the age groups from the young graduate who came to see me 8 months after graduating who after 100 applications for jobs but no job does not know what to do with his future to the gentleman from Christchurch whom I found sticking his CV under the door of my electorate office having also applied for nearly 100 jobs since leaving Christchurch to come to Wellington. Those jobs are not there for those people.New Zealanders have given the National Party the benefit of the doubt—the global financial crisis the Christchurch earthquakes—but now is the time when NewZealanders should be seeing some hope from this Government that things will get better on the job front. Instead all there is is fear that they will lose their jobs. In actual fact it is the earthquake or rather the recovery from the earthquake that is now propping up the job market. It is no longer possible for this Government to use the excuse of the earthquake. The Government is meant to be helping with the recovery.It is no longer right for this Government to continue to blame the global financial crisis nearly 5 years after it took office. It promised New Zealanders 170000 new jobs. It will fall woefully short of that mark. In the last 2 years only 17000 jobs have been created. That is across 2 whole years. That is simply not enough from this Government. Imagine just how much worse it would be if 200000 Kiwis had not taken flight to Australia. Unemployment would be well over 8 percent.So what does a proper jobs policy look like? Well from Labour what it will mean is giving exporters a fair go getting research and development going making sure that training of workers is a priority giving Kiwi companies a proper go at Government contracts and real regional development policies that focus on industries where there is growth—in manufacturing in information and communications technology—not the National Party’s approach of the search for a silver bullet that simply cannot be found. It is only with Labour that that change to a real jobs policy will happen.I want to finish with an old saying to try to give comfort to some people who are out there looking for work. They say that a recession is when someone you know loses their job and a depression is when you lose your job. The recovery starts when John Key loses his.