Adams Amy: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Adams Amy: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:656;Page:5499] 
AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) 
: 
 I am pleased to be able to take a call on Vote Finance in this year’s estimates debate. The reason is that there can be no more essential vote in the current economic conditions than Vote Finance. I think we all agree that this country and the world are facing the greatest economic slow-down since the 1930s. We have seen up to $50 trillion wiped off world balance sheets. Management through tough times is why New Zealand elected this Government because New Zealanders knew that National had the skills the people and the plan to deliver economic recovery. The reason that Labour members are on that side of the Chamber is that they patently have no plan. New Zealanders knew that; they knew that all Labour would do is spend money so they turned to a party with economic know-how and economic muscle. They have banked on us to deliver them a way out of the recession. 
Let me tell members what we did in Vote Finance to deliver that sort of recovery. The first thing this Government did was set three new priorities for Treasury. We made it clear to Treasury that we were interested in managing New Zealand’s path through the downturn making New Zealand Government expenditure and investment productive reflective and effective which quite frankly is something that has been missing from this House for the last 9 years. We were focused on improving the productivity of this economy because without productivity growth New Zealand will not recover from the slump it has been in for 9 years with anyone who is making a living and creating wealth getting kicked. Improving productivity is fundamental to our plans. We will be working very hard on that. 
We have laid out six key elements that will help do that and the first is productive infrastructure. We will not continue the infrastructure drought that this country has suffered under 9 years of Labour. There are bottlenecks all over this country in roading electricity health prisons and in schools. We are seeing a lack of fundamental infrastructure that stops businesses from getting ahead so we will address that. We will address our Public Service. If there is one thing that we hear from the people of New Zealand it is that they are sick of the Public Service getting in the way of business and not helping business. When we came into office our excellent Minister of Finance very quickly sat down with the chief executives and made it very clear to them that he wanted a line-by-line review not only of their expenditure but also of their productivity and what they would do to play their part in lifting growth in the private sector. Public services are a huge part of this economy. If they are not working well and if they are slow or ineffective it will slow down our economy and that is what we have seen continuously. We will see a better smarter Public Service delivered under this National Government. 
We will improve education standards so that we have highly skilled people driving our companies. We will build a world-class tax system to encourage investment in New Zealand. And importantly we will improve the regulatory environment for business. [ 
Interruption 
] The reason that members opposite do not want to listen is they have no clue how the regulatory environment affects business. They spent 9 years putting roadblocks in the path of business through more and more nanny State rules designed to do nothing more than clog the arteries of this country. Members opposite clogged the arteries of this country; this Government will focus on improving the regulatory framework. We have started with the Resource Management Act we are working on the Building Act and we are completing a full review of the Overseas Investment Act because we know that we have to have regulation that serves New Zealand and that does not hinder it. If Labour members had learnt that lesson then perhaps they would not be where they are. 
We will put money into innovation and business growth because innovation development and technology will help this country reach its potential—the potential that we aspire to that John Key stood up for and that New Zealand backed. We know that New Zealand is heading into its fourth quarter of recession but in fact it is much worse than that. Our tradable sector which has to be the backbone of our economy has been in recession for 5 years. What did Labour do about that? It did nothing. It relied on domestic consumption and on spending public money to keep the economy going. The backbone of this economy the productive sector was in free fall and what did the previous Labour Government do about it? Nothing. We now have a plan to do something about that. 
Let us address the issue of debt. One thing that this Government is not going to do is burden future generations of New Zealanders with a debt millstone around their necks that will cripple them for years to come.