McClay Todd: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
McClay Todd: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 12 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8422. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to stand to speak in this debate and I want to commend the last speaker the Minister of Finance Bill English and to thank him for the great job he has done on behalf of New Zealanders over the last 4 years. You see there is a member opposite who has just stood up who was a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. Actually as far as most Labour members are concerned he was a quite hard-working and reasonable member of that committee—he has since moved on to the Commerce Committee—and he is occasionally heard to say in this House “the worst of this and the worst of that for 50 years”. Well I have done a quite bit of research and when Bill English became our Minister of Finance we inherited some of the worst economic conditions in 50 years. [ 
Interruption 
] That is right. There we go. So on the Opposition side of the Chamber not only are they Hobbit-haters they are global financial crisis deniers as well. When we came into Government the global financial crisis hit and the Government books went in the opposite direction. And what happened to members opposite? Well they said there was no global financial crisis nothing was wrong New Zealanders had made a mistake and they would wake up soon and then 3 years later we had another election— 
Hon Annette King 
: All the Labour Party’s fault the global financial crisis! Labour caused the global financial crisis of course. What a pathetic argument! 
TODD McCLAY 
: That is right Mrs King you are still on that side of the Chamber after that last election—exactly. So let us have a look at what Treasury is saying about the job that has been done by this Government over the last 4 years in extremely difficult circumstances for New Zealand and New Zealanders—and we must recognise that—and let us then compare that with what is happening in other parts of the world which the Labour Opposition seems to want to be so much like. 
Well the Treasury forecast in December that GDP would grow 2.3 percent for 2012-13 and 3 percent for 2013-14. So many other countries of the world would like that to happen. Indeed if we look around the world at the countries that have between 0 percent and 1 percent interest rate at the moment which are responsible for over 60 percent of the world’s production many of them are still in recession and their unemployment rate is so much higher than ours. Members opposite have spoken about unemployment at great length in this House and almost everywhere in the country. But let us compare what is happening in New Zealand with other countries. The unemployment rate in New Zealand at the last survey stands at 6.9 percent down from 7.1 percent last year and we all accept that that is a high number. But let us compare it with Europe because we hear so much about the policies of parts of Europe and that New Zealand should emulate them and be a lot more like them. Well in the 17 eurozone countries the 17 countries that have the euro— 
Hon Member 
: Do they count their statistics in the same way? 
TODD McCLAY 
: It is a good question but members opposite count statistics however they want to just so that they can go up to the House and confuse New Zealanders. But 11.9 percent is the average unemployment rate. Of the 27 countries in the European Union their average unemployment rate is 10.8 percent. In the USA—we heard earlier from New Zealand First about what is or is not happening around manufacturing in the USA—7.7 percent is its unemployment rate which is the same as the United Kingdom. And in the two countries in the rest of the world that the Opposition wants us to be so much like—at least one would come to that conclusion when we hear the policies that it would be putting in place for this country if it was on the Government benches—Greece has 27 percent and Spain has an unemployment rate of 26 percent. 
 I again say to our Prime Minister John Key and to our Minister of Finance Bill English thank goodness New Zealanders decided that they trusted the judgment of these two men that they saw through very difficult difficult times that New Zealand was going in the right direction and that certainly they wanted good economic management at the same time. 
So what does the Opposition say about this? Well really it is to oppose. I accept that when you are in Opposition at the front of the title it says “oppose” but everything this Government has come up with to help the New Zealand economy to give New Zealanders a better chance to grow business and industry and to create jobs the Opposition has opposed. The first would be to build a convention centre in Auckland. It is against that every step of the way. Jobs will be created. People will travel from all around the world to come here but the Opposition does not want it at all. It opposed the changes that were made to allow the  
Hobbit 
 movies to be made in this country. It did not want the movies to be made here. I am very proud they are made here by hard-working New Zealanders. I am very proud this Government was able to put in place a regime that was fair and that brought to this country those movies and the billions of dollars that flow over time because of that. The Opposition opposed our changes to the Resource Management Act.