Fenton Darien: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Fenton Darien: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:660;Page:8707] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 Mr Deputy Speaker— 
Paul Quinn 
: Oh a heavy hitter! 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Not so much of the “heavy” thank you. 
I wanted to say what a shame about John Key’s speech but now I also have to include the speech from Sandra Goudie the previous speaker because her speech was a real shame. It was really shameful actually. 
John Key and the National Government have talked up the Prime Minister’s speech and my goodness has it ever been put down. The commentators have dissed it and so will New Zealand. John Key has failed his “Big Tuesday” test. We in Labour are not surprised at that. You see it is one thing to come up with rhetoric and slogans during an election campaign and to parade up and down the country with a nice smile on one’s face but it is quite another thing to find real answers. It takes real talent and intelligence to come up with a step change as John Key likes to call it. But John Key has just proved to the country that he has not got it. Today we heard a mediocre speech from a mediocre Prime Minister and a mediocre Government. It was worse than average; it was a fail for National—a fail under the national standards that those members are pushing through. It was actually a D minus. 
I go back to saying that it is a shame about that speech. It is a real shame for the people who believed that the National Government would stop their kids from going off to Australia. What did we read in the paper yesterday? There is a skills shortage in Australia where the unemployment rate is 5.5 percent—30 percent lower than New Zealand’s unemployment rate—and it is looking for skilled workers. It is a shame about the people who believed that the National Government would be able to do something about catching up with Australia’s pay rates. Well we all know that that is rubbish. It is a shame about the half a million dollars that we wasted on the Don Brash manifesto which was in the rubbish bin almost before it was published. 
But then it is a shame about those workers who have lost their jobs in the last year. I feel that it is really shameful that workers’ hours have been cut and that they have been fighting pay freezes and there is more to come. It is a particular shame that workers on the minimum wage will receive a paltry—a miserly—25c an hour increase on 1 April. Those workers include the cleaners who work in Parliament. From 1 April they will be paid $12.75 an hour. It is a shame about all those people who have been laid off through no fault of their own with no redundancy pay and no compensation and there are no answers to that. I feel that it is particularly shameful that 2500 workers lined up for just 150 minimum wage jobs in South Auckland a couple of weeks ago. 
What is also a real shame is the underclass that John Key made much of in his speech a couple of years ago before he became the Prime Minister. It was 17 pages—17 pages—into his statement before he mentioned the underclass at all. Well I guess that is better than nothing because as far as I can see I do not think he has mentioned the so-called underclass since his speech in 2007 or at least not since he paraded young Aroha at Waitangi and we have all seen in the last week what she and her mother think about the way that they have been used. 
I cannot find one word in John Key’s statement today that describes a single idea about how to go about making change real change change for the better and change for the many not the few. Instead we have seen a statement that promises more review groups task forces advisory groups discussion documents action plans and even a working group of experts. What is that? That is a new one is it not? I have not heard that one before—a working group of experts. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: More bureaucrats. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: More people like Don Brash being paid half a million dollars to come up with something that will go in the rubbish bin. 
The other shame is that John Key seems to be pretending that the steep rise in unemployment that was revealed last week does not exist. He must be pretending because otherwise surely today’s statement would have come up with a plan to do something about the nation’s unemployed to help those who are out of work or whose jobs are at risk. And those jobs are still at risk. There are jobs on the line as we speak today. 
A real Prime Minister who cared about these things would have talked about how we will address the skills and the jobs that we need for the future and how we will help current and future workers achieve the skills to get them into work. He would have talked about things like the Adult and Community Education funding cuts that are going on right now as we speak. Workers who are unemployed are unable to access any help with literacy and numeracy but is that not supposed to be the big push of this Government? He would have had a plan to give hope to those who are struggling both those in work and those who are looking for work. 
My attention inevitably turned to one particularly mean little phrase in his statement on page 10 that “the Government will continue to look at whether labour laws are imposing excessive costs on the country and holding back opportunities to create jobs.” That sounds like Don Brash. You know Don Brash managed to sneak one little sentence into this speech. I ask what the point of hitting workers is. Is it a crumb to please the right-wing supporters of the Prime Minister and the Government at the expense of those without economic or bargaining power? We should not fool ourselves that we will get closer to Australia by attacking workers’ pay and conditions. Labour laws did not cause a recession and they will not hold back any recovery but there it is in the statement: nasty little mean stuff about getting into holiday pay cutting back staff and getting into personal grievance provisions. Here we have today laid bare National’s brighter future. Unfortunately it is an empty vessel. 
I want to make it clear that Labour does not will not and cannot support an increase in GST. Labour does not will not and cannot support it because this Government believes that in order to give our richest— 
John Hayes 
: You introduced it! 
Paul Quinn 
: You’ve already done that once. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: That got them going. They do not like that do they! We do not believe that in order to give our richest earners a tax cut the rest of New Zealand should pay for it. Let us talk about who “the rest of New Zealand” is. The rest of New Zealand includes a single parent on $45000 a year who works in the Public Service. We know that the National Government hates the Public Service. The previous speaker talked about the police and so on. Where were members opposite when Department of Corrections staff were out the front protesting about this Government’s plans to privatise their jobs? Where were they? They were not to be seen. All of the people in the Public Service will not be getting a pay increase this year. They did not get one last year not even one to match inflation and they face increases in the cost of living and increases in the cost of accident compensation. That is a 3 percent pay cut. 
The rest of New Zealand includes workers whose families are living off the minimum wage—soon to be $12.75 an hour—and support through Working for Families. Under this Government they are facing increased pressure even to survive. I did not hear anything in the speech today about a plan for them. New Zealand has a wage problem not a tax problem. I remember that when I came into Parliament in 2005 we were delighted that members of the Opposition were saying we needed to catch up with Australia and to increase wages. Labour agrees with that but we need economic activity that creates jobs and a lot more than the pathetic Job Summit that we have seen. 
So many things could have been said in the statement but were not. Where are the job-rich programmes? Where is the green jobs development? Where are the programmes for skills development and apprenticeships? Where is the support to upskill for those who have lost their jobs? Where is the support for research and development? Where is the support to really take our country forward? Instead what we got from our Prime Minister today was 15 percent GST for all low-paid workers and low-income people. No there was not a $15 per hour minimum wage which there should have been but a paltry increase of 25c an hour. 
H V Ross Robertson 
: How much? 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Fifteen percent GST and a 25c an hour increase in the minimum wage. I have a feeling that the people of New Zealand will have a lot to say about this matter. I know that people in Auckland will have an awful lot to say about the local government reform. Shame about this speech—shame!