English Bill: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeEnglish Bill: General Debate[Sitting date: 06 April 2016. Volume:712;Page:10241. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Prime Minister): I move That the House take note of miscellaneous business. We can get the opportunity to debate Kiwibank anyway because it is here. But has it not been interesting just listening to the preoccupations of the Labour Party? For a party that is meant to be concerned about jobs and incomes its overriding concern this week is to assist the tax authorities of Mexico and Malta and the Cayman Islands. We are seeing more outrage about whether or not Mexicans are using a financial structure in New Zealand than we are seeing about family violence about the fact that too many young people still cannot find their way directly into work or about any number of the other things that used to be the preoccupations of the Labour Party—used to be the preoccupations of the Labour Party.What happened to Labour? We saw Dr Cullen at the press conference today. What happened to the kind of energy and focus he used to bring to this House around issues that mattered to the Labour Party? What happened to the capacity to make people feel like the Labour Party really did care for the needs and the pressures of low and middle income New Zealand? He could do it with some real force and occasionally we listened—not very often because he was often wrong even though he was well intended. But at least he could do it. What has happened to that capacity?Hon Steven Joyce: It’s gone.Hon BILL ENGLISH: No it is Grant Robertson which does mean that it has gone—it does mean it has gone. A party that cannot seem to find itself getting motivated about the things that it used to care about has been reduced to directing what little passion it has at demanding that the New Zealand Government deal with tax avoidance problems in Mexico. That is where it has ended up. That is the Kiwi Dream—that is apparently what really does matter today! Well it is an interesting issue—Dr David Clark: Get a grip.Hon BILL ENGLISH: There are a handful of people in New Zealand who have got a grip on it—Hon Damien O’Connor: Get your head out of the sand.Hon BILL ENGLISH: —and probably not the member for the West Coast. He probably does not have a grip on it. And of course we will have to pay some attention to how that issue rolls on with these revelations in the international media. But in the meantime the Government is getting on with much more important things like keeping the New Zealand jobs machine chugging along.We are in an economy that is strong enough for us to know that the people who will lose their jobs at New Zealand Post which is a fading industry and the people who will lose their jobs at Fisher and Paykel because it cannot be globally competitive at manufacturing electrical products—we know that they will be able to get other jobs in this economy. And they will not need a massively expensive universal basic income to do it because they do not need to be told by the Government that they are so hopeless that we have to guarantee to pay them whether they are working or not.Grant Robertson: Which you do now so fair enough—good on you.Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well that is Labour’s big new innovative idea. Let us find the people who are working and pay them—that is the new idea. That is the innovation. The new Labour Party superannuation: everyone over 18 gets New Zealand superannuation.Meanwhile we are paying attention to keeping the jobs machine chugging along and working alongside those regional communities that are affected by the downturn in dairy prices for instance because their full resilience is going to be called on over the next 6 months or so. It is an important part of the New Zealand economy but the good news is that as we work alongside them more people are realising this economy is more diversified than everyone expected.