Joyce Steven: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeJoyce Steven: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5157. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development):Well with the greatest respect to our dear friend opposite David Clark that speech made a word cloud seem coherent in its analysis of the New Zealand economy. I have never seen such a string of platitudes incoherently brought together in such a way to not achieve a single thing but that is Dr Clark.The fundamental challenge for the New Zealand economy is to grow faster than other parts of the world. Since this Government has been in office no matter what Mr Clark says this country has performed better than most developed countries in the world. Why is that? Because this Government and the agencies that support it are doing the job of encouraging businesses to grow invest have confidence and hire more people. There have been 74000 additional new jobs in the last year and actually a growth rate of 2.6 percent in the year to March—2.6 percent growth compared with 2.3 in Australia 2.4 in the UK 2.7 in the US 2.1 in Canada minus 0.1 percent in Japan and 1 percent in Germany.Fundamentally the Opposition members go on about diversification of the New Zealand economy. Well it is happening in front of their eyes and they hate it. They talk the New Zealand economy down. They cannot bring themselves to look at the information and communications technology industry which is growing flat out across New Zealand to the point where we are adding 2000 or 3000 new jobs a year. They cannot bring themselves to look at the wine industry which is growing dramatically. They cannot bring themselves to look at the kiwifruit industry which has recovered incredibly well. They cannot look at the apple industry which is also growing well. They cannot look at the beef industry.They cannot look at the high-tech manufacturing industry. The BNZ-BusinessNZ Performance of Manufacturing Index the indicator for growth in manufacturing was 55 last Friday. The services index today was 58. They cannot bring themselves to look at that. The tourism industry grew 9 percent in the last month. In June the coldest month of the year it grew 9 percent. The international education industry is growing dramatically and is now at $2.85 billion.Dr David Clark: No one believes you Steven.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The construction sector is also growing dramatically. The only person who does not believe us is Mr Clark sitting over there with his eyes firmly shut.So yes it is a challenging time for the dairy industry but the good news is that New Zealand has a strong and diverse economy as a result of the confidence that the businesses express because of such things as the management of the New Zealand economy by Bill English and the Business Growth Agenda which is the most comprehensive programme of work in the New Zealand economy in decades—350 different initiatives. Weirdly 3 years in the Opposition still has not read it but then that probably indicates the level of depth and analysis of its approach. The export sector the free-trade agreement with Korea the World Trade Organization’s Government procurement—that stuff is not going to make headlines but I tell you what it means a lot to manufacturers all over New Zealand.I talked about information and communications technology.On the tourism side there are such things as the national cycle trails which Opposition members have gone a bit quiet on because they know that regional New Zealand knows that it is working for them; things like the convention centre which they are opposed to and will still be opposed to but they will still turn up at the opening that sort of thing; and there is investment encouragement of investment encouragement of skills. We talked about the information and communications technology graduate skills today; the research and development tax losses that we have cashed out the research and development growth grant programme which is growing—that is in the innovation space. In the natural resources sector there is a lot of work going on there. There are the regional growth programmes which again they do not want to talk about.So if you forget all the industries that are doing well if you forget all the Government initiatives if you close your eyes to all the regional growth programmes and if you determinedly sit there and say that it is the worst economy in 25 years then Mr Clark may be able to convince himself that nothing has happened but he is wrong.