Robertson Grant: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 13 April 2016. Volume:713;Page:10481. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Yes the member David Bennett ranged around there and probably reflected a little of I think the overall theme that we will see in this debate which is that the National Government is bereft of any actual ideas about how to grow the economy in a sustainable way. It is bereft of any ideas about how it is going to ensure that we lift productivity in New Zealand that we lift exports in New Zealand and that we actually have sustainable growth that is going to lead to good high-paying high-value jobs in the future. Instead we will get David Bennett’s fantasy views on what other political parties might say or do. I think unfortunately for Mr Bennett that if he throws his hat in the ring for the mayoralty of Hamilton he is actually going to struggle alongside Tim Macindoe his counterpart. I think we will actually see a meeting of the minds in that contest and David Bennett will come second to Tim Macindoe in that meeting of the minds and not for the first time in his life I might say.The financial statements have some numbers in them that the National Government if it bothered to read them or even to talk about them might be able to put up there and say: “This is why we think we are doing well.” It could point to growth rates that look to be around the 2.5 to 3 percent level and it could say: “Well we know we are doing all right. We have got the economy growing.” But any exploration of those numbers will tell you that the New Zealanders who every single day say “But I’m not feeling the value of that growth rate. My life doesn’t feel like it’s getting better in the way you would expect it to with a growth rate of around 3 percent.”—there is a reason for that. When we actually look at per capita growth in New Zealand per person how is the economy going? It is flat. It is barely moving. It was described by a Westpac economist as sluggish. Most commentators look at it and say that this is not an economy that is growing sustainably. It is barely moving at all and that is the truth.The growth that we have got is simply a result of there being more people here and that is not sustainable. You cannot keep growing the economy just by adding more and more people to it. At some point the economy has to grow because we are more productive because we are smarter and because we are more innovative but that is not the story of the National Government. Its story is the story of a complacent out-of-touch Government that does not actually have the wherewithal to say: “Let’s stop the belief that there is some kind of great trickle-down economic growth that is going to support everybody and actually get in behind New Zealanders grow wealth from the ground up and give everybody a chance to share in prosperity.”What we now see under National is that working people’s share in the economy is actually declining and that those people who have already aggregated wealth are the ones who are succeeding and the value of working people’s wages is going down. In the last set of accounts the Government put out real national disposable income has now dropped not only for the second or third quarter in a row but for the whole year. So the real value of the income that New Zealandershave per person is dropping. We are getting poorer as a nation every day because this Government is relying complacently on the fact that more people are coming into New Zealand at the moment and it is pretending that the economy is growing sustainably when clearly it is not. We are getting poorer by the day under this Government.So what would help drive the economy? What should we be looking for in these financial statements? What about exports? Well we are not seeing it there. The Government sets a lofty target of increasing exports to 40 percent of GDP and—Hon David Parker: It promised.GRANT ROBERTSON: What was that?Hon David Parker: It was a promise.GRANT ROBERTSON: A promise—yes it was a promise. It was not just a target Mr Parker—you are right. It was a promise and where have we gone? We have gone backwards. Exports started out at 30 percent. They are now at below 30 percent—27 to 28 percent of GDP is the value of exports. That is not an economy that is going to go forward and create high-value high-paying jobs.The Government crows about tourism. Tourism is an important industry for New Zealand but it is not a route to prosperityon its own. It does not provide the high-value high-wage jobs that New Zealanders need in order to sustain our standard of living into the future and there is no evidence from this Government that it is investing in those high-value jobs or that it is getting alongside industry to say: “How can we move ourselves up the value chain?”.Why are we still continually reliant on raw commodities? The wave that we have to surf when the value of those commodities goes down is now hitting the regions of New Zealand. We have three or four regions in New Zealand that are in recession because this Government has sat back and allowed us to think that we were wealthy while we rode that commodity wave. We as a country are not. We are going backwards because we have not invested in those industries. We have not diversified the economy sufficiently so that New Zealanders can feel confident that there is a sustainable future.