Brownlee Gerry: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Brownlee Gerry: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:670;Page:16514] 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Economic Development) 
: 
 I am pleased to support the motion moved by the Prime Minister today in support of his statement to the House. The Prime Minister outlined the programme for the Government that will lead us into the November election. The Prime Minister made it very clear that this is a Government that is not prepared to mislead New Zealanders about the difficult economic circumstances that we live in. It is not prepared to mislead New Zealanders about how tough it is at the moment to make progress and it is not prepared to go to New Zealanders with outrageous promises of expenditure without any plan for where that money may come from. 
In reply to the Prime Minister’s speech Mr Goff essentially outlined—if I may paraphrase his 20 minutes—a pile of what one could say were the worst aspects of his 9 years as a Minister in the previous Government with all of the misfortunate events that occurred during that time. Mr Goff outlined the rise in so many bad social statistics during that time then said that Mr Key had had 2¼ years to fix them but he had not and had failed. Mr Goff said that was why New Zealanders would go running back to the Labour Party. Well that shows the headspace that the Opposition is in. It shows that those members are not connected to what New Zealanders are thinking and feeling on a daily basis. 
It is no wonder then that at the end of Mr Goff’s speech he failed to move a vote of no confidence in the Government. He knows that when it comes to the simple thing of the wages that New Zealanders collect today those on the average wage are taking home $64 more a week than they were in 2008. He knows that the rise in wages for New Zealanders over the last 2 years has more than twice outstripped what Labour achieved in 9 years of Government. In those 9 years wages rose by 4 percent for those on the average wage. After 2 years of a National Government the increase in the average wage is a bit over 10 percent. Mr Goff knows that and that is why he was not prepared to move a vote of no confidence against the Government. 
Mr Goff went on and talked about some of the pressures that New Zealanders face in their lives and his abhorrence of the concept of asset sales. Everyone knows that this country has a very heavy borrowing programme. This country is deeply deeply in debt. Our debt is 85 percent of GDP. As measured against other countries we are a Portugal we are an Ireland and we are a Greece. Our country is in significant economic difficulty. Mr Goff and his party goes out there and freely promise $5 billion of extra spending a year without telling New Zealanders where that money will come from. New Zealanders are not silly. They know it will come from that $64 a week extra that this National Government has ensured they get each week in their pay packets. [ 
Interruption 
] That is not a bad title. Mr Goff talked about the asset sales issue as if his own hands were completely clean in that matter. He was a Minister in a Government that sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of New Zealand’s assets and got nothing for them. Mr Key and this Government have outlined to New Zealanders the prospect of asking why we should not sell off a little bit of the assets that we have if that enables us to acquire bigger assets. 
The interesting thing is that the Opposition lauds the fact that it bought back New Zealand rail. That is like buying a lame horse and telling everyone that it will win the Melbourne Cup. It is not credible for the Labour Party to run a policy that says not to look at that particular aspect. David Cunliffe knows that; he said it in a speech just recently. Mr Goff himself has repeatedly said that a public-private mix in the asset portfolio would not be a bad thing. We have quotes from him but I will not go into them today. 
The most extraordinary thing is his suggestion that if there was a minor shareholding sold in the State generating assets power prices would go through the roof. I ask New Zealanders to consider why power prices rose by 72 percent under 9 years of Labour when over the same period of time we saw only 28 percent inflation. That is the sort of extortion that comes from State-owned enterprises at the present time. Before Christmas Mr Goff went out with a policy that said that Labour would not take dividends from State-owned enterprises. He said it would not take any dividends from electricity companies and that that would keep prices down. Then after Christmas he came back and said: “Oh no we need that $700 million a year to pay for part of our programme.” I tell him that he cannot have it both ways. Mr Goff cannot go out with a record like Labour has on power prices and make the sort of claims he is making. 
The last 2¼ years of a National Government have seen a considerable slowing in the pace of power price rises. This Government conducted the most comprehensive reform of the electricity industry that this country has seen in 20 years with the Electricity Industry Act passed last year. That legislation will lead to stable prices. The record speaks for itself. Between November 2008 and November 2010 the price in real terms was a 1.1 percent increase. That excludes GST and excludes the costs of carbon that are applied to those things but none the less it is an extremely impressive record for the Government to date. 
If we couple the regulatory environment with that record then New Zealanders should not fear that they will not get the opportunity to invest in those companies. I want to answer Mr Anderton in respect of his suggestion that somehow those companies will end up in foreign ownership. For a start the Government has made it clear that if New Zealanders return National to these benches beyond 26 November the Government will continue to hold 51 percent of those companies. Today Contact Energy is 24 percent owned by New Zealanders and 16 percent owned by local fund managers and local funds including ACC the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and KiwiSaver providers. That is a significant amount of Contact Energy where there is no protection for the majority of the shareholding. The same could be said of Auckland Airport. New Zealanders currently hold 35 percent of it the fourth-biggest company in New Zealand with a further 9 percent held by institutions. Air New Zealand is 70-odd percent owned by the Government and 26 percent owned by New Zealanders. That is the model that we should be following. That is the model that we will follow and we will give New Zealanders that opportunity. 
The irony in all this of course is that the Labour Party says that New Zealanders must save more. They pushed forward the KiwiSaver programme which has proved very good but where are the KiwiSaver funds invested? By and large they are invested offshore. So it is an utterly— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Safe. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: “Safe” says Mr Mallard. The financial genius on the other side of the House says “safe”. I tell him to have a look at what has happened to the financial markets internationally over the last couple of years and see just how safe they are. Mr Mallard forgets that as I said at the start of my speech New Zealand is heavily indebted. 
I suggest to the Labour Party that it might like to think about this: no one owns the family silver if the debt is bigger than its value. It is wrong for the Labour Party to even try to convince New Zealanders that they can have their cake and eat it too. We are a Government that is led by an extraordinary Prime Minister who is straight-up with New Zealanders and will give them a good opportunity to prosper beyond the 26 November election.