Mallard Trevor: General Debate 
Mallard Trevor: General Debate 
[Volume:665;Page:12991] 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I agree with about 90 percent of what the preceding speaker Tim Groser said. To highlight the differences would not be appropriate today. I think that today a lot of New Zealanders will be in some shock. As the Hon Simon Power and I have been discussing today in a small country like New Zealand there are always cases of really one degree of separation as in this particular case. 
I think it is important though that we get back to the general debate and start asking what happened to the fundamental purpose of John Key’s Government. John Key said before the last election that the fundamental purpose of his Government would be to close the wage gap with Australia. We have been asking what has happened to the purpose the raison d’être the plan for that Government. That plan does not exist. We know that it does not exist because there is a web page with the National Party’s plan as its header that shows a completely blank page for the rest of that plan. 
It is not a matter of National moving to close the gaps or making any decisions that would cause the gaps to be closed. What has happened is that the gaps have opened up since that time when comparing average weekly earnings from Statistics New Zealand’s series available from the Parliamentary Library. I am sure that a very specific series will be made available yet again from members here because we are not afraid to give the source of our figures. We are not afraid to have our figures analysed. We are prepared to stand by the truth and not to massage figures in our offices because those figures from the library show that the wage gap with Australian workers has increased by more than $50 a week since National was elected to Government. 
We have had question after question on this issue in the last couple of weeks and I will not go into a lot of the detail of an answer given this afternoon because that is not the proper way of bringing up that answer. But I will say that last week when Gerry Brownlee was asked whether there were milestones he said yes. Gerry Brownlee said yes. So I want to see those milestones. We want to look at them. We want to hold the Government to account. We want to see the official documentation. We want to know what stands behind Gerry Brownlee when he made that assertion. We want to know what the Prime Minister means when he says that that gap is being closed. 
We have just about accepted that there is not a plan but let us see which goal we are aiming for. It is a bit like the All Whites really. I have a feeling that the All Whites knew which way they were playing but that the Prime Minister and Gerry Brownlee do not know which way they are playing at all. I might say that I found it interesting to get feedback from the people who were away and at the soccer when a particular match occurred. At the Italy game a fellow in a white jersey stood up in the crowd and people started booing. People started booing our Prime Minister; they thought he was trying to take advantage in a political way and in a way that was inappropriate. 
I ask National members to think about whether they want to have the Rugby World Cup before or after the election next year. It is a very real question for them. But most of all I want to ask about the plan. Seventy-eight percent of Australian companies will lift salaries this year; only about half of New Zealand companies will do that. We are closing some gaps. The unemployment gap has closed. We used to have a lower rate of unemployment and Australia had a higher one. The gap closed but now it is opening again. Where is the plan?