Dunne Peter: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Dunne Peter: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:645;Page:14104] 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 There are three great cycles in New Zealand politics: stagnation gives way to reform reform gives way to consolidation and then the process starts all over again. After the great reforms of the 1980s and 1990s and the consolidation that has occurred over the last decade we now stand at the brink where we either move forward or revert to that cycle and a process of stagnation sets in. 
Despite the speeches today the essential problem that this country has long since confronted remains: we are a small moderately resourced and endowed commodity-based trading economy at the end of the world. Globalisation the loss of guaranteed markets and the freer mobility of peoples have made our problems much greater and our task much harder to address. If we are to survive let alone prosper then we need to develop a new distinctive method. It will not be good enough to do more of the same things that we have done. We have to start to live what we have spoken of for years and become one of the truly smart nations because doing over again what we have done in the past is simply a recipe for stagnation. 
All around us we see other countries moving to be smarter and brighter. It is no coincidence that Tony Blair was elected in Britain a decade ago on the basis of an education revolution and that a decade later Kevin Rudd is promoting the same opportunities for Australia. Yet when we look at the challenges confronting New Zealand and hear the responses put forward we realise it is a pretty sorry story. The two main alternatives presented today were on the one hand a list of very worthy and detailed programmes and on the other hand a litany of negative criticism. There is no future for New Zealand moving forward if either of those options is—to quote the phrase that both members quoted about each other—“as good as it gets” because this country needs to have the chance to lift its game to reassert some of the unique Kiwi characteristics and values that we spoke of when we all eulogised Sir Edmund Hillary and to apply them to the management and governance of our nation. 
This country is a unique mix of peoples. The previous speaker Dr Pita Sharples touched on that to some extent. The strength and opportunity we have as we start to face the challenges of the more modern economy of the 21st century are to draw from that uniqueness and strength and then develop solutions to give effect to them. We talk a lot about sustainability. Well I suggest that if we focused our policies on what was good for the parents of our country and for the families and communities of our country then we would automatically move towards what was sustainable because we would be facing the situation where our development was community-focused—bottom up rather than imposed from the top down. If we really want to deal with dysfunction and disadvantage then we should focus on the points where they are occurring and deal with those situations rather than standing back and either imposing broad-brush programmes that are so broad as to be meaningless or tut-tutting out of fear and doing nothing lest we be accused of scapegoating the very people we are seeking to help. 
I want to talk about one area today that provides us with a way forward to capture some of the feeling that I have spoken of. As I have said we need a renewed sense of optimism about who we are and that will come I believe if we start to talk about the sort of country we want to be moving forward and the types of changes we need to make in order to give effect to that. That is why I for one and United Future as a party are not afraid to confront the issue of our future constitutional arrangements. I get frustrated every time that issue is raised. People say: “Oh yes but not now. It is not the right time. That issue will take care of itself.” We are supposedly proud bold and confident about ourselves but we are scared stiff of engendering any national debate about our constitutional arrangements going forward. Yet if we were to undertake that process and if we were to do what the select committee that I chaired 2 or 3 years ago recommended—establish a public education process on constitutional issues and put together a series of proposals relating to whether or not we become a republic whether we have a written constitution where and how the Treaty of Waitangi principles ought to be accommodated and to a range of other constitutional issues—then I think that a couple of things might just happen. 
Firstly New Zealanders would become more engaged in talking about themselves their country and their future and about their expectations of why they want to be here and what makes us different from some other place. We lament the fact that our kids all go overseas and we say that it is because of the cost of education and because they cannot get a job here or we give some other reason as to why they do not come back. Yet New Zealanders overseas are proud of being New Zealanders and would desperately want to be here. So let us start to create some opportunities. Let us work towards having a referendum on those matters during the term of the next Parliament so that changes can then be put in place for the Parliament that follows and for subsequent elections. Secondly having a focus and a cause like that will bring us back to the basics of what this country’s future is all about will focus us again on the great economic and social issues that we need to confront and will give us a framework within which we can start to consider them. 
At the moment what we have—as this debate this afternoon has typified—is a series of sectional interests from all sectors of the House being promoted in a vacuum. Members say they think we should do more of this or say that no we should do more of that and so on and so forth. There is no coherent overarching strategy or plan and there is certainly no vision of the type of country we want to become. When a great figure like Sir Edmund Hillary dies we can all acknowledge his uniqueness as a New Zealander as being one of the factors that made him great. But we do not make the translation of those skills attributes and values to our nation as a whole. We can just imagine what we could achieve if we were a nation of Hillarys or a nation of Rutherfords Peter Jacksons or whoever the contemporary icon may be. All those unique Kiwi skills have occurred because those people are New Zealanders and because New Zealand has nurtured and embraced them. 
I think what we ought to be doing as we focus this election year on our hopes and aspirations for our country is to start to talk much more about those values and what they can contribute to the potential of this country because at the end of the day whatever we do and whoever wins and forms the Government of this country the challenge that I posed right at the beginning of this speech will still remain. We are small we are isolated we are at the end of the trade routes we are generally a price-taker not a price-maker and we have to do the best we can in circumstances that are unfailingly adverse to us. Doing more of the same thing and doing more of just trying to play the game in the way we used to do because it was safe will not be enough. We had a Catching the Knowledge Wave conference here a few years ago that was supposed to unlock the key to the future. What happened? Its recommendations were too bold too imaginative and too challenging to the Government orthodoxy to be adopted. While that attitude remains New Zealand will remain not just geographically small but also I think nationally small and I for one have greater hopes greater aspirations and a greater confidence in our national ability than that. We can do better; we have to do better. This year and this year’s debate has to be about the mechanisms by which that can occur.