Brash Don: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
Brash Don: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Volume:624;Page:19154] 
6.  
Dr DON BRASH (Leader of the Opposition) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Is her reported statement “a lot of the reasons people left are no longer valid” her only response to the OECD report showing 24.2 percent of New Zealand - born tertiary-educated people live outside New Zealand while only 2.5 percent of Australian-born tertiary-educated people live outside Australia; if not what other response does her Government intend to make? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK (Prime Minister) 
: 
 The words quoted were not a response to the OECD report. They were said in response to a question about the Government’s desire to get expats back home—something Dr Brash described on Radio Rhema yesterday as a great thing to do. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Is she concerned that the gap between the average after-tax wage in Australia and the average after-tax wage in New Zealand has grown from $5000 a year to nearly $9000 a year during her term as Prime Minister and does she not understand that that growing gap is forcing increasing numbers of tertiary-educated New Zealanders to consider leaving the land of their birth? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I want to see New Zealand incomes rise over time. What I know is that freezing wages will not do the job and that that is Dr Brash’s answer. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Is she going to listen to the 25 percent of tertiary-educated New Zealanders who are voting with their feet and leaving these shores and respond with positive policies to attract them back or is she going to continue to say: “This is as good as it gets.” and decline to confront one of the greatest challenges facing this country? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I am certainly going to listen to a range of people including those who notwithstanding that financially they may have been better off elsewhere give as reasons for coming back home the fact that New Zealand has the comforts and security of home and guns riots and “white flight” are not issues the proximity to most other family members and the simple presumption that one would be closer to the land of one’s birth. Those were the reasons given by Dr Don Brash for coming home. 
Rodney Hide 
: Does she accept the OECD report that states that 24.2 percent of New Zealand tertiary-educated people live outside New Zealand compared with only 2.5 percent for those born in Australia and does that concern her or does she think it is another example of pointing out comparable statistics and bagging New Zealand? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I thank the member for his question. As he will have looked at the OECD report he will also know that the proportion of tertiary-educated people away from New Zealand is precisely the same as the number of such people who are away from Ireland. What are the two characteristics we have in common with Ireland? We are small countries and we have other major and affluent markets close to us where our people find very good jobs because they have a lot of skills to offer. 
Dr Don Brash 
: Why does the Prime Minister continue to claim that the reasons people left are no longer valid when New Zealanders are currently emigrating to Australia at the rate of 550 per week and what level will that have to reach in order for her to realise that in fact something in New Zealand is going terribly wrong? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: What I know is going terribly right is that we have the lowest unemployment in the Western World—at 3.6 percent—that we have one of the fastest-growing economies in the OECD that we have falling net debt and best of all that the National Party is not in Government. 
Dr Don Brash 
: I seek the leave of the House to table the front page from last Saturday’s  
Weekend Herald  
highlighting the results of the OECD report. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table the OECD document. Is there any objection? There is objection. The document will not be tabled. 
Dr Don Brash 
: I seek leave to table official Government statistics showing that in the last 5 years of the Labour Government almost 18000 people have moved from New Zealand to Australia net per year compared with about half that number when National was in Government. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is objection. The document is not to be tabled. 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: I seek leave to table the page from Dr Brash’s book where he states that among the reasons he came home was that he had met Mr Muldoon a few times at the New Zealand Embassy was struck by his brilliant mind—as sharp as a razor—and remembered thinking to himself that that guy was really going to take New Zealand places. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Rodney Hide 
: I seek leave to table the OECD report called  
Counting Immigrants and Expatriates in OECD Countries 
 which provides the raw data. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? Yes there is. It will not be tabled.