Speech to Federated Farmers conference, 12 Noon Wednesday, 1 July 2009
 
I would like to thank you for the opportunity to talk to you as the Opposition spokesperson on agriculture. Can I also acknowledge the generous comments I have received from many farmers in recent months.
 
I have always been confident in the future of New Zealand’s agricultural industries. You have to be, because agriculture is intrinsic to our economy’s strength and our success. And it has been the backbone of our economy for most of our economic history because of our competitive advantage as a farming nation.
 
But while I am confident, I am realistic as well. There are a number of issues we need to deal with:

• Farm profitability is uncertain in stormy international economic conditions.
• There are broad risks in the financial strength of the agricultural sector.
• Global awareness about environmental impacts and animal welfare are forcing change in our markets, and changing the business environment - as well as affecting the raw materials farming depends on, like climate and water.

 
I’m glad you’re meeting here in Auckland, because it emphasises that the prosperity even of our largest city is dependent on the performance of our farmers. Agriculture is as relevant to Queen Street as it is to Hokitika, to Matamata, to Geraldine or to Carterton.
 
For that matter, the services that cities can provide can be crucial to our primary industries, too. In my home town, Christchurch, some of the most innovative scientists in New Zealand are rivaled only by their contemporaries in cities like Palmerston North and Hamilton in their research contribution to New Zealand.
 
There is always a risk that our economic backbone will be ignored in public debate about our economy.
 
At the start of this year, when the then new government opened its year in parliament with the Speech from the Throne, the word ‘agriculture’ didn’t even get a mention. It was the first time in at least a decade that our farmers were ignored. There is not much chance of developing the right policy for the agricultural sector, when farming isn’t even being contemplated by the government.
 
The policy environment in Wellington today, like every capital around the world right now, is occupied with the difficult global economic environment. Many developed countries are in recession. Some of them are in deep recession. We can take some comfort that demand for food holds up better in a recession than demand for the cars of General Motors or Chrysler.
 
But we can’t be too comfortable.

Reduced demand around the world is likely to result in reduced prices for our exports. Ultimately that means incomes will fall. And because the same reduced prices affect farmers everywhere, we can expect farmers in every country to redouble efforts to increase productivity and production, because this lowers costs per unit of output.

And since every farmer around the world is in the same situation, total production will increase, with prices falling and demand increasing only slowly.
 
On top of that, there is input price pressure. One of the critical elements in soil fertility is nitrogen. Industrial fertiliser is produced from gas or coal, and the price of fossil fuels are high. Persistent increases in the price of oil and gas would lead to higher fertilizer costs, so you get higher input costs and reduced demand.
 
Hand in hand with that picture, we can expect to see rising protectionism in many markets, particularly in agriculture. So that makes market access more difficult.
 
This is a tough recipe for farms.
 
There are only two ways to increase farm profitability: reducing the costs of inputs, or increasing the value of production from given inputs. A combination of both strategies is inevitable.
 
The underlying trend in the export prices for our commodity agricultural products is down, over the long term.  With some medium term exceptions, such as China’s expansion and climate events, prices for agricultural exports have been under long-term downward pressure. The strong expansion of China in recent years has helped to push up the prices of many raw materials - including some that farmers compete for, such as energy - while also increasing the price for agricultural products.
 
But relying on that to continue forever is not a prudent long-term strategy for New Zealand.
 
At the same time that we are confronting the difficult environment for farm prices, agricultural finance is under stress as well.
 
This is what I call a perfect storm: input price rises, threats to demand and now finance risks.
 
I’ve been looking at New Zealand’s accounts with the rest of the world. When you look at our merchandise trade - our exports against our imports, the deficit is large but manageable.  But we face a massive deficit in one crucial area - investment income.
 
We have been using the savings of people in other countries instead of our own earnings or our own savings to pay for our lifestyle. And the bill for that is starting to come in. The bill is coming in from banks.
 
How much do you think New Zealanders send overseas each year to the big Australian banks?
 
In the nineties we sent overseas about three billion dollars a year in profits and interest on loans extended to New Zealand banks. For the first half of this decade it was stable around about four billion dollars a year.
But something dramatic has happened. The banking system has begun repatriating enormous amounts of New Zealand money.
 
Last year, calendar 2008, the banks repatriated 11-point-7 billion dollars in profit and interest paid on loans.  That is, the New Zealand branches paid their overseas owners $11.7 billion in interest and profit.
 
The total has risen from $3.8 billion in 2000 to $11.7 billion last year.  That’s more than the entire GST revenue of New Zealand. It is more than the entire education budget. And in a single year it is far more than the entire proceeds of the asset sales programme that caused so much pain through the eighties and nineties.
 
Behind this enormous repatriation of New Zealanders’ money is a serious balance of payments deficit. It now stands at $16 billion - that’s about nine per cent of GDP.
 
In other words, our total overseas debt increased by sixteen billion dollars last year.  Debt like this is easy to run up and hard to pay back. It poses a risk for the agriculture sector specifically. Total bank lending to agriculture in April this year was $43.7 billion, or 13.8 per cent of the total lent to New Zealand.
 
Two thirds of that is lending to the dairy industry - at a time when one estimate says Fonterra could be forced to cut its payout from the current $4.55 if our dollar stays over sixty US cents. This would be very hard on some farming businesses that thought the last couple of years’ high prices would last longer.
 
Relief from interest rates would help. As Federated Farmers’ Lachlan McKenzie pointed out yesterday, every one per cent drop in interest you pay on that debt is worth $450 million. That’s a lot of money that comes straight off farmers’ bottom line.
 
How refreshing it is to hear the farming sector focussing on this issue.  In the nineties, some farming leaders used to applaud higher interest rates and the monetary policies that deliberately punished the productive sector.
 
Today, interest rates are too high at a time when banks should be reducing them.
In a recession, while banks around the world have been under pressure, the big banks here have been smirking.
 
In the current environment, a lot of farms are facing a squeeze and they will struggle to meet the payments on their debt.
 
This is serious, and it needs serious attention urgently. I’m not confident it will get it.
I’ll tell you what I would do if I were still the agriculture minister: I would immediately convene a taskforce of the best and brightest in the sector to develop a short-, medium-, and long-term strategy to the deal with the issue.
 
The huge remittances to banks are the result of the Australian banks funding our balance of payments deficit. They are taking an enormous clip of the ticket for doing it.
 
We need to rely more on our own savings, instead of spending the savings of others.
 
And we need some fresh thinking on the balance of payments problem too.

We need a broad-based focus to reduce our imports. We could make a start if we were able to reduce our dependence on imported oil.
 
If we could develop reasonably-priced biofuels and other forms of new energy, and reduce waste energy, we would score a huge opportunity for farming:

• Potentially a new source of revenue for farmers.
• Potential cost-savings.
• A contribution to a better climate and the natural resources our farms depend on.
• And a substantial reduction in our trading deficit with the rest of the world.

 
On top of all these advantages, it would help us to prosper in a world where consumers are becoming more demanding, and asking more searching questions about sustainability.
 
This is partly about how we manage our emissions - but it’s about a lot more than that as well.
 
If New Zealand is going to achieve a higher price for our production than our competitors, then quality and a perceived advantage as being more environmentally responsible will be part of our national brand.
 
As every responsible study shows, clean performance means we need to be responsible about our carbon emissions, too.
 
That’s why the Opposition is taking a constructive approach to working with the government on emissions trading. Only yesterday we voted with the government on a new climate change bill, in a spirit of working in the best interests of all our industry sectors.
 
Some conclusions are inescapable. As a general principle, polluters, one way or another, will have to bear the cost of their emissions.  There are developments on the table, such as Gordon Brown’s proposal yesterday for a global development fund to help poor countries replace their emissions with cleaner alternatives.
 
The world is also moving closer to a global carbon trading scheme. Once that happens, New Zealand taxpayers will not long pay to subsidise polluters, as we are now. Any government of New Zealand is going to have to deal with emissions if we are a prudent country. What won’t work is hoping that the problem goes away.
 
And I continue to believe environmental sustainability is a competitive advantage for New Zealand. When you see the ugly factory farms in many parts of the world, and you compare their practices to the clean and open countryside we farm in New Zealand, you can see we have a huge opportunity.
 
I know there are few New Zealanders as passionate about the land as our farmers.
And so as the world cares more about the good of our planet, this should be an enormous opportunity for us.
 
It will require care to seize the opportunity, though, because it is implicit in seizing the opportunity that we will live up to our promise.
 
We can’t just say we are cleaner and higher quality than our competitors. We have to BE it.
 
Consumers will not be impressed if we are seen to be dragged into better environmental performance kicking and screaming.
 
If you want to know what happens when change takes too long, ask the pork industry how its animal welfare standards are perceived by the public.
 
Now I support giving that sector time to change. I also hope that a review of the animal welfare code for pigs this year will impose higher standards. But none of us should be uncertain about the costs to the entire industry of the strategy it followed.
The public saw it as too slow to change, instead of adopting a strategy of having the highest quality.  The reputational damage has made the pork industry the subject of more letters to my office than anything else right now, including the smacking referendum.
 
If it can happen in that sector, it can happen in any other. We cannot be seen to be the source of dirty water or unsustainable users of resources.  We cannot be seen as polluters when our industry is based on healthy growth, on food and on good health.
 
So overall, we have an environmental challenge.  We have a challenge to the industry’s financial stability. We have a squeeze on its cost structure. We have a struggle in global markets.
 
The solutions will be discovered by science. Sustained, deep and ongoing investment in research and development in the industry is crucial - to identify cost-saving opportunities, and to identify new processes and new products that will extract more value.
 
As has been well rehearsed now - I put my stake in the ground for research and development in the primary industries sector.  The NZ Fast Forward Fund was a commitment of seven hundred million dollars, which would earn interest and private sector partnerships and grow to be worth two billion dollars over its lifetime.
It’s been replaced by a relatively puny seventy million dollar annual commitment - for just four years.
 
There is no guaranteed long term commitment. There is no chance to earn interest and fund very large projects from an annual appropriation when science has to compete with every other demand on taxpayers’ purses.
 
It would be unfortunate if the message that politicians drew from this episode is that there is no political problem with cutting r&d. I believe there is a huge divide over this issue between the different sides of politics. Our side says the way out of our problems is investment in r&d and people. Our side says the way out of our problems is investment in knowledge, training and skills.
 
This is an important debate, and it is crucial for farmers. But whatever choice government makes, it is now up to our agricultural industry to lead investment.
 
Investment in science and in research and development is the most significant commitment we can make across all of our agriculture, to determine our own future.
 
Investment in marketing, and in market-responsive structures. Investment in talent, in creativity and in the strong communities that attract people to rural lifestyles.
 
Our r&d, our talent, and the structures underpinning them give our agriculture a competitive advantage over competing countries with temperate climates. Our competitive advantage is our science and research. It is our people and our lifestyle.
 
Our competitive advantage in the future will be in our superior products. In costs driven down by innovation, not exploitation. In processes focused on delivering a better product to consumers. In environmental sustainability driven by science, not wishes.
 
And the agriculture sector is going to have to lead investment to keep us at the forefront in all these areas, because innovation is not going to come from anywhere else.
 
It won’t happen on its own.
 
And it isn’t happening fast enough in other parts of the economy. When you look through our economy to where the wealth has been created, there are some pretty compelling facts to confront. One is that our corporate sector has spent most of the last twenty years - overall - destroying shareholder wealth.
 
When you compare stock market results to the performance of farms and agri-business, you get a clear picture of where the strength of our economy resides. I understand the stock exchange chief executive was invited along to Treasury recently to lecture State Owned Enterprises about behaving more like the corporate sector.
If they were to behave like our corporate sector, they would destroy value.
 
They would grow productivity more slowly than comparable overseas businesses.
They would focus not on doing a better job, but on sending more of New Zealanders’ cash to overseas owners.
 
The stock markets agenda is to lobby for more privatisation of our SOEs, rather than focusing on growing more successful New Zealand corporates that deliver returns to shareholders by doing well in global markets.
 
I would have more New Zealand corporates behave more like our most successful agri-businesses. Then they would grow productivity faster than the average of the New Zealand economy. They would focus on expanding their international connections. They would grow the scale and and expertise they need to be world class businesses. They would build on genuine, science-led innovation and send the returns back to creative and entrepreneurial businesspeople in the many communities around New Zealand that are at the heart of our agriculture.
 
As I started out saying - there is a lot to be confident about in our agriculture. But I am a realist too.
 
Realistic that we need to deal with the massive debt problem, and the too-high interest rates we are paying to Australian banks. $11.7 billion a year in profits and interest payments? That’s where earnings from agriculture are going.
 
Realistic that we need to invest in r&d and creativity to come out of tough global conditions stronger.
 
Realistic that we need to turn environmental challenges into an opportunity.
 
And realistic that we can do all of this.
 
But it will take a fierce commitment of energy and co-operation across the sector.

I saw a comment from Don Nicholson that New Zealand's best exporters are found out there, in the fields and paddocks of New Zealand under rain, sun or snow working every single day, to bring wealth to New Zealand. I agree with that, and it’s up to the rest of us to match that commitment and to add our work to their success.

Tags: Agriculture, Economy, Banks, Interest rates, Biofuels, Oil, Environment, Research & Development, Climate change

This is a budget that has all the competence that you would expect from the people responsible for Melissa Lee’s Mt Albert by-election campaign.

The good news: Inflation is no longer a problem. We have finally got the low inflation economy the National Party always said would deliver us its dream economy. How’s that working out now?

National has produced a lacklustre budget that Bill Birch would have been proud of.

In troubled times, when the economy is rocking on the waves of global economic storms, the government has responded weakly.

Not with a vision for the future.

Not with bold steps that will lead New Zealand on a developmental path.

But with a weak, uncertain, sitting on their hands response.

Governments around the world are investing in the future.

This one has slashed the future.

This one is the Broken Promise budget.

The total value of primary sector science investment falls from $2 billion in NZ Fast Forward under the last government to as little as $1.2 billion now.

It is cutting nearly as much out of science and research in the primary sector as it is investing in infrastructure.

Government spending on science and research, on a like for like basis, falls from around a billion government dollars in the NZ Fast Forward Fund, to $610 million in National’s replacement.

With matching private sector funding, the total investment in primary sector research and development falls by $800 million, or about 0.4 per cent of GDP.

In addition, the government has not replaced a cent of the cancelled research and development tax credit.

This is huge cut in science and research.

It is a disaster for the future of New Zealand’s economy.

It is a disaster for the future of our most important economic sector.

Other developed countries are preparing themselves to come out of this recession stronger.

New Zealand is preparing by switching from science and research to poltergeists and UFOs.

The government promised the primary sector it would spend more on science and research.

That is what David Carter repeatedly promised.

He promised it as recently as this year.

Farmers  and our agri businesses will be looking it up.

And they will find not increases, but cuts.

It has broken that promise as surely as if it has broken its promise on personal taxes.

I want to turn to some other features of this disappointing budget.

I want to draw the House’s attention to the table on Page 55 of the fiscal strategy report.

In there the government points to its expected increases in nominal average wages over the next four years.

If you deduct those from the CPI – the cost of living index - there will be no increases in real wages for four years.

No increase in real wages for four years!

This is the curious branch of economics that says the way to make New Zealand better off is to make everyone worse off.

Not since the eighties have we had an economy that didn’t increase real wages for four consecutive years.

It’s hardly conducive to keeping working New Zealanders here.

If they were leaving before, wait until John Key’s policies result in no increase in real wages for four years.

I have to give the National party credit for one thing.

There was a time in the past when National would have said the way to fix that would be to spend up on tax cuts.

At least Bill English and John key have now accepted that tax cuts do not stimulate the economy.

But that is not what they said when they wanted to get elected.

They promised New Zealanders tax cuts.

They now say they can’t afford them. Fair enough. But that’s not what they said when they wanted a vote.

Back then they said their promises took into account the worsening economic climate.

Back then they said
“National has structured its economic package to take account of the changing international climate.”

They weren’t telling the truth when they made the promises that got them elected.

They said: “Our tax cut programme will not require any additional borrowing”.

They weren’t telling the truth when they made the promises that got them elected.

The only way that promise could have been true is if his tax policy wouldn’t require borrowing because it was never going to go ahead anyway - and John Key knew that even before the election

Last year John Key said his tax policy was  "appropriate for the current conditions" and would require "no additional borrowing.”

There is no excuse for this.

John Key was here in the eighties and he was here in the nineties when governments got elected and immediately tossed out the promises they got elected on.

I was in here in 1991.

I remember the Bolger government got away with the 1991 budget to begin with.

People gave them the benefit of the doubt that the economy had been wrecked by Roger Douglas and needed hard measures.

But over time it was a disaster.

This one will be too.

Those tax cuts needed to be cancelled.

But they should never have been promised in the first place.

John Key owes New Zealand an apology for getting himself elected on a promise that could never have been kept.

Did he know before the election that the international economic situation was deteriorating, or did he only find out when the Treasury told him?

Neither possible answer reflects well on his fitness to lead a country through a crisis.

I want to turn in the time left to the cuts to the Super Fund.

This is very sneaky politics.

Cutting the Super Fund now reduces the ability of any government in the future to provide for super at anything like existing rates or retirement age.

So what Bill English is doing is pushing out by ten years the hard decisions about the huge tax increases or cuts to super that will be needed to make super affordable.

He has calculated he won’t be finance minister in  ten years.

He is right about that!

After this budget he won’t be finance minister in three years.

But he has delivered an enormous burden to future taxpayers.

The affordability of superannuation in the future must decline because we are no longer putting aside something now to pay for some of it in the future.

It was going to pay for around fifteen percent of the future cost.

Now it will pay for less than seven per cent.

That means the age of eligibility for superannuation will be increased to around 67; or else there will be huge tax increases required to pay for it.

That is the doozy the government has announced today.

This is not a budget that prepares New Zealand for the challenges of the future.

There is not a word in here about preparing New Zealand for the effects of climate change.

The Green party will be disappointed that the sum put aside for home insulation has been slashed from a billion dollars to $244 million.

Then we look over at the infrastructure spend, and we can see that the government is shifting $258 million of spending from rail to roads.

So this is what the Greens have got for their cooperation deal with the National party.

They have actually lost money!

They have lost $14 million!

Then what about the Maori party?

Who do they think is going to be hardest hit by this recession?

The National party is not doing anything for new jobs, and the Maori Party is voting for that!

At least Pita Sharples can wave at the unemployed as he drives by in his new car.

Tags: Budget, Economy, Agriculture, Research & Development, Jobs, Superannuation

Speech, at Mantells in Mt Eden, Auckland
19 May 2009

I think most people know by now that I am strongly anti-drugs. I am, therefore, an unlikely champion of free needle exchanges for intravenous users.  I don’t like drug abuse, I don’t like the impact it has on people and on entire communities. I have crusaded against cannabis and P, and strongly pushed for more restrictions on the availability of the drug that causes the most harm in New Zealand - which actually happens to be alcohol.

I’m anti-drugs not because I’m judgmental, but because of the harm drugs do. I wish we could end the misuse of drugs. I’m against making drugs more freely available.

So why would I have supported a free needle exchange programme?  Why would I support and expand a needle exchange programme that provides free needles for intravenous drug users?

The answer is exactly the same reason that I’m anti-drugs: Because I want to minimise the harm caused by drugs.

Back in 2002, I was appointed as the Associate Minister of Health and the minister responsible for drug policy. I received an independent review of the needle and syringe exchange programme. It reported that the programme saves lives. It said the programme saved - back then, seven years ago - $35 million in treatment costs since it had been established.

The report said plainly that the needle exchange programme reduces the harm caused by drug use. It told me the programme back then had helped to prevent twenty deaths from AIDS and more than two thousand cases of Hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS.

When you get a report like that in government, you sit up and take notice.
It makes a pleasant change from all the doom and gloom about things that don’t work.

Here was clear evidence of a programme that worked. The needle exchange programme was started up to reduce transmission of HIV and Hepatitis C between people who inject drugs. This would reduce the rate of infection for the entire community. And the evidence that it worked was conclusive.

But the report also came with very strong recommendations. One was a recommendation to remove a legal anomaly around the possession of needles and syringes.

As a result of that 2002 report I took a Bill into Parliament changing the Misuse of Drugs Act in 2004. The Bill did a few things - like bringing in much tougher rules controlling methamphetamines.

And it also implemented that strong recommendation about changing the law regarding possession of needles. The amendment I brought in at the time was a technical one that reversed the onus of proof on a person found with needles in their possession.  It was meant to make the needle exchange programme work better.

Everyone here knows there was a lot of concern in the community about the needle exchange programme. And I remember a speech was given on the Bill by one MP at the time, saying he was worried about it. He thought a user should have to prove to a court their needles came from an approved source.

And while he was giving his speech an Opposition MP interjected and said this: “Absolutely. This provision is political correctness by a liberal Government.”

The National MP who made that statement in parliament is now the Minister of Health - Tony Ryall. He now has responsibility for the needle exchange programme.

You can look up his comment yourself if you want to - it’s right there in Hansard on 15 September 2004. “Liberal political correctness,” he called it.

I am going to give the benefit of the doubt to the now Minister and assume he was sneering about political correctness as a reflex action, rather than because he is genuinely misguided. But there you have some insight into the battle you have to face if you want to do the right thing to minimise the harm caused by drug use.

And on this day when we celebrate 21 years of a successful programme, you can be sure that we need to be vigilant in defence of good ideas.

Just because an idea is good, and just because it works, doesn’t mean we can take for granted that it will be supported.

We later went on and introduced the one-for-one programme that made needles available freely. I made (and succeeded with) a budget bid for $4 million dollars to fund the programme and I did it as part of the coalition agreement that the  Progressive Party had with Labour at the time. 

There were people who sneered at that as liberal political correctness. I can tell you from personal experience that there aren’t many votes in being wise or liberal about drug abuse. But it was then - and it is now - the right thing to do anyway.

Many others have spoken tonight about the success of the needle exchange programme. I am proud to have contributed to it. I am proud to have played a part in saving many lives.
I am pleased we have saved many millions of dollars in treatment costs that our heath system would have incurred. And most of all I would like to congratulate the people here tonight who have done their bit over the years to make this programme a success.

The results have been very worthwhile. I wish you all the best in continuing to do your good work, and in keeping the programme going.

And I would like to conclude by saying I wish we didn’t need this programme. I wish we didn’t have drug use causing the harm it does, wrecking the lives of many people, and wrecking many communities. But it does happen. It will keep happening.

And if we care about vulnerable victims then our responsibility is to reduce the harm to them as much as we can. The needle exchange programme does just that and I endorse it for that reason.

Tags: Drug and alcohol abuse

Speech in the House

I join with other party leaders in expressing my deepest condolences to the family of Len Snee.

I too wish a speedy and full recovery to the injured as they lie in their hospitals.

I send my best wishes to their families who must be desperately worried as they pray and wait at the bedsides of the fallen.

Maybe the most sombre thing we do in here is send men and women into danger on our behalf.

We send them out knowing that sometimes, on our darkest days, they won’t come back.

When we send them out, we send them to defend New Zealanders.

They are there for us.

They go out as our bravest, and when they fall, some of us all falls with them.

Every police officer knows goes about their duty on every apparently normal day, with danger and unpredictability lurking.

They take on that danger on our behalf.

We can never repay sufficiently our debt to them, and we can not begin to repay the debt we owe to those who give their lives for us.

Most of us have learned a lot about Len Snee in the last few days.

We learned about his professionalism as an officer. We learned about his popularity in his community.

So I pay tribute to him personally and I hope his family, as they grieve, can find some small condolence in the respect and admiration his country is expressing.

I hope New Zealanders will show respect by declining to seek political mileage from this death while this wound is still so raw.

It is very easy to exploit the strong emotions we all feel over a tragedy like this. It is easy, but it’s wrong.

I want to congratulate the prime minister, and say I agree with his reaction when he said he was not going to be stampeded into a call for arming the police in their day to day operations.

That was the right response.

There will be lessons to be learned from this tragedy, and we will all have to reflect carefully on them. But the time for making political points isn’t here yet.

I am sure the family of the murdered officer are not yet ready to have him used for point-scoring about guns, nor for political mileage about drugs nor crime, nor about policing, nor mental health, nor any of the other issues that will inevitably give us pause.

This is a time to give thanks to the men and women whom we ask to protect us, to share the grief of Len Snee’s family and friends, and to express our strength as a community that comes together and makes our bonds stronger when we are confronted with tragedy.

Tags: Crime, Law & Order

I would like to express my support for the Finsec petition, and for the retention of New Zealand jobs. Banks in New Zealand have been making enormous profits by mistreating customers and exploiting staff.

In the current global financial situation - the overseas owned banks in New Zealand are some of the most profitable in the world. But they are still firing staff.

It’s time for them to give something back. It’ time for them to support New Zealand as good corporate citizens. The taxpayer is giving the banks a crucial government guarantee. The government is right to do so. The banks need the guarantee to keep functioning.

In a crisis, New Zealanders should be prepared to help each other out. And we should be prepared to use the power of government to make our economy stronger.

But there is a quid pro quo. It is perfectly reasonable to ask that in exchange for getting support from New Zealanders, the banks should, in return, support New Zealand in general and their own staff in particular.

Tags: Banks

Remarks at the summit on the future of New Zealand’s overseas development aid

Loaves and Fishes cafe, Wellington.
10.25AM Friday, 27 March 2009.
 
 
Progressives have a special interest in this issue.
 
My colleague Matt Robson, the Progressives deputy leader, was the aid minister responsible for setting up NZ Aid.
 
I want to talk to you about why poverty should be the focus of our aid and development efforts.
 
And I particularly want to address the suggestion that we should switch our focus from poverty to economic development.
 
I used to be minister of economic development. So I have some insight into what is involved in an economic development programme.
 
Economic development is not something you can impose from the top.
 
You don’t go into a region, or into an entire country, and say: ‘this is how you are going to develop your economy.’
 
It doesn’t work. It never works. 
 
I’ve listened to comments saying we should make our aid efforts benefit New Zealand companies.
 
This is profoundly wrong.
 
We don’t give aid to benefit New Zealand companies. We do it because we are good global citizens.
 
New Zealanders have always been good international citizens, prepared to shoulder our burden in the world. More New Zealanders have died in overseas wars as a proportion of our population than nearly any other country because we are always prepared to do more than our bit.
 
Trying to sell more of our exports to the poorest countries is not much of an economic strategy.
 
We are not going to develop export markets for New Zealand by focusing on how much we can sell to the poorest people in the world.
 
We should certainly be open to trade with the least developed countries of the world.
 
But trade reform alone, while necessary, is not sufficient.
 
The last government allowed tariff free access to products from least developed countries as far back as 2002.
 
I was bitterly attacked from the left for that. The Greens and a number of trade union leaders were strongly against it.
 
But the truth is - the proportion of imports from least developed countries hasn’t changed since then.
 
We haven’t been swamped by imports as critics claimed we would.
It also hasn’t been the pathway to prosperity for the poor countries, as some advocates claimed it would be.
 
You have to do much more.
 
We have to focus on much more than economic development or even aid itself.
 
If you focus only on economic development then in a country like the Solomons you would try to aid more value from the trees being extracted there. But there is much more to do than that.
 
We are talking about countries where a total billion people live in conditions we associate with the fourteenth century deprivation.
 
Bringing them out of poverty requires a focus on good government, on transparency and ending corruption.
 
More money is stolen from Africa every year by corrupt governments than the world gives the entire continent in aid. It gets stolen and put in western banks.
 
If we simply stopped Western banks from being used to hold the stolen proceeds of looting in Africa by corrupt political leaders, it would have the same effect as the overnight doubling of aid budgets.
 
A focus on economic development doesn’t even look at this issue - a focus on poverty does,
 
A focus on poverty requires a focus on post-conflict recovery.
 
Not much is going to be done about poverty in a country ruined by civil war, where any money that comes in gets spent on strengthening the military, where communities are at constant risk of attack and where the spoils of victory are distributed to one side or the other.
 
Focusing on these issues is crucial - but you cannot do a good job of that if you focus on economic development alone.
 
In the last year, trillions of dollars of wealth has been destroyed all over the world as financial markets collapse.
 
Governments everywhere acknowledge this economic crisis and they are scrambling to make an urgent and drastic response.
 
Why aren’t the billion people living in poverty an urgent global crisis too?
 
We could have fixed their problem forever for a fraction of the amount lost in the global financial crisis.
 
The entire annual aid budget of the world is less than the amount lost by some of those failed merchant banks and gigantic corporations alone.
 
We have the means to end global poverty.
 
What we lack is not the means, but the will.
 
NZAid embodies our will to reduce global poverty.
 
Smashing NZAid, setting the clock back to the past, is a hugely backward step and it interferes with our ability to fight poverty.
 
It is a mistake, the National government should not go down that road and we should not allow them to do so.

Tags: Aid, International Relations, Poverty

Launch of Wool to Weta
Transforming New Zealand’s Culture & Economy
 
6.00PM Tuesday, 10 March 2009
 
 
I would like to start out by congratulating Professor Callaghan on this book and on promoting the topic of economic development.

This week I saw a comment from Paul. He was responding to a reporter who asked him whether he would want to be called Sir Paul. The question raises some issues similar to those in this book:

The way we honour success and the way we create it are on the move.

We used to be a country that styled itself as a colony of Britain. We sold almost all of our commodity products to one country. Most of our exports came from a single product: Wool.

We are changing.

We are becoming a modern vibrant country proud of our own creativity and talent.

Today, wool exports no longer comprise half our export eanrings.

Today, wool’s proportion of everything we earn overseas has fallen to just two per cent.

And though there are some in New Zealand who are clinging to the vestiges of our ancient british past, we are becoming a different a culture too.

We are more integrated with the rest of the world.

We are creating value more by ideas than by bulk.

But this is a process of transformational change.

Change seems always to come with a couple of steps forward and one or two back.

So I want to suggest to you, that just as the decision about whether to be Professor Callaghan or Sir Paul is a choice we have to make...we also have economic choices to make.

One such choice is whether we want to make more progress toward a more science-based economy, more use of ideas and a more modern way of celebrating success.

I congratulate Professor Callaghan for putting these issues on the table.

This book makes a contribution to our awareness and understanding of what’s at stake.

It is no small coincidence that Paul is the Alan MacDiarmid professor of Physical Sciences at Victoria.

I knew Alan MacDiarmid. His brother, Rod, was a political colleague of mine for many years, and he introduced us when Alan came back to New Zealand for a visit.

Alan MacDiarmid was a passionate and persuasive advocate for the ideas behind this book.

He believed in the power of science to transform our economy.

He believed in the power of ideas, knowledge and research to improve the lives and wellbeing of New Zealanders.

And he understood that it takes a policy commitment to bring science and business together.

It doesn’t ‘just happen’ on its own.

If it did, it would have happened by now.

But it has happened yet - at least, it hasn’t happened enough.

If you open this book and turn to the introduction, there are charts that put in stark perspective the performance of the New Zealand economy relative to other countries in our modern history:

They show we began a decline in the seventies.

We entered a precipitous decline through the late seventies, and all of the eighties, and much of the nineties.

We have never really closed the gap, even though for the last decade we stopped falling behind.

And this is not because we are lazy. It’s not because we don’t work hard.

We work as many hours as any country.

I find one thing very striking about these graphs: They are the same ones I have been using in speeches and presentations for a decade.

And the central point is the same - that we don’t have enough businesses in New Zealand that are making very large returns per employee.

In most developed countries, companies that can make net revenue of a million dollars per employee are common. In New Zealand those figures are virtually unknown.

We don’t have enough high value, high skill, high return companies because we don’t have enough science and innovation lifting the productivity of our economy.

Not enough of our economy is based on ideas and on research.

It’s easy for us to fall into the trap of thinking that this means there is a problem with our existing industries.

I don’t share that view.

Our agriculture, for example, is probably the most scientifically advanced of all our industries.

Many New Zealanders wrongly believe our competitive advantage in agriculture is our climate. But there are many countries with a temperate climate like ours.

Our agricultural excellence lies in our decades upon decades of investment in science.

Over the years we have spent billions - probably tens of billions of dollars - on agricultural science.

This has led to products that are of immensely high value.
I have been to a business where they extract a medical supplement from milk and sell small vials of the extract for thousands of dollars each.

The value is in the science. In the Knowledge. In the Understanding.

Compare the value of that vial to the value of the same weight of dairy produce from New Zealand a few decades ago.

One of the lessons from this example is that our economy can change far more rapidly than we sometimes realise. Another lesson is that science is behind many of the changes.

The decline in the dominance of wool among our export industries is one example.

At the turn of the century, economists pointed out that the United States exported the same weight of goods in 2000 as it had exported in 1900.

The value, however, had increased thousands of times.

The difference in value was created by science and ideas.

I’ve asked Paul Callaghan why he thinks we aren’t better at using science in our economy. I’ve put the same question to dozens of business people whom I have met around New Zealand.

No one says it’s because we aren’t smart enough - Kiwis are enormously creative and talented.

I often tell the story of visiting Singapore and meeting the economic development minister there. He said to me, ‘you are lucky in New Zealand because you have so much creative talent. When we want that creativity, we have to import it for you.’

We are remote and isolated in New Zealand and that has meant we have the freedom to try things out. Necessity has driven a lot of innovation.

Lord Rutherford said, ‘in New Zealand, we don’t have much money so we have to think.’

So its not lack of talent.

If we want more innovation and science in our industry then we need the leadership and co-ordination that will create it.

Everywhere you go around New Zealand and put the ideas in this book to businesspeople, and to scientists, they will agree with you.

They will say, ‘yes we need more of this.’

But we don’t see more of it.

The vision of more innovation and a vision for the leadership to create more innovative companies is not universally shared.

It is a choice.

Uncomfortable as it is for many people - especially in business - Support for science has become a fault line between differing political philosophies.

There was a very public example of this divide between pro- and anti-science politics only this morning in the United States.

President Obama this morning signed a law allowing stem cell research to proceed in the US. At his press conference he repudiated the previous President’s opposition to stem cell research in the US, saying the distinction between science and morality in this case was false.

Politicians should never get into the position of being anti-science.

We have to harness science, harness research and harness ideas if we are going to improve our living standards and those of our children and future generations.

Supporting more innovation in our businesses is a matter of making some hard choices.

In the last three months in this country, those choices have been made and they have been made against science.

A two billion public-private partnership in scientific research called New Zealand Fast Forward has been cancelled.

That wiped out the largest single investment in science ever made in this country.

A tax credit for research and development worth a billion dollars over three years was canceled.

That was the largest business tax increase in our history.

All this took place without much of a squeak - specifically from the business community itself.

So, as I said at the outset, the forward progress of the New Zealand economy inevitably involves taking steps backwards as well as forwards.

People are entitled to make choices.

And it is up to those of us with a passion and commitment to the power of ideas, to advocate for our vision of a more dynamic and vibrant economy.

I will give you one example that inspires me, and that is relevant to the concerns we all share about the drain from New Zealand of our best and brightest.

It was at the launch of New Zealand Fast Forward here in Wellington about a year ago, when we invited some graduate students from Massey University.

One of the science postgrads who spoke that day was off to the UK to take up a scholarship, and he made an announcement that no one present knew he was going to make: he said the launch of that fund and its potential to finance brilliant, game-changing science in New Zealand had made him change his mind.

He said that when he finished his course in the UK he no longer believed his only chance for a science career would be overseas; He would come back to New Zealand to give it a go. The long term investment we made gave him confidence about a future here, he said.

There will always be brilliant young New Zealanders who go overseas to develop their skills. Alan MacDiarmid was one; Lord Rutherford was another.

Our problem is that we haven’t been able to offer enough of a choice back here. We haven’t been able to use enough of our connections to the world, and of the trails blazed by our best.

And we haven’t brought enough of their innovation into the boardroom, and into the soul of innovative, large scale companies based here.

This book we are launching today has many examples of the brilliance we have available to us.

It has many insights into how we can do better.

It is crucial for us to have this conversation, and I congratulate Paul and the people he spoke to on playing their part in this conversation.

I wish you all the very best in continuing this conversation and in making a real difference to the transformation of New Zealand’s industry.

Tags: Agriculture, Economy

Speech: Sale and Supply of Liquor and Liquor Enforcement Bill
 
I support this Bill.

But I am under no illusions that it needs to go much further if we are to reduce seriously the harm caused by alcohol.
 
Alcohol causes between one and a half and two and a half billion dollars worth of economic and social harm every year.
 
It is by far the most damaging drug in this country.
 
It is the most damaging not because it is the most intrinsically dangerous drug - far from it.
 
It is the most damaging because it is the most available drug.
 
And in the recent years when alcohol was made much more available, predictably the harm caused by alcohol has risen as well.
 
In recent years we have lowered the drinking age - and more young people are being harmed much more often.
 
We have allowed more widespread alcohol advertising.
 
We have allowed the sale of liquor in more places for longer hours.
 
The resulting harm is there to be seen by anyone who cares to look - in the carnage on streets and in an alcohol-fuelled crime wave.
 
Nothing makes it more obvious that this government has its priorities wrong  than its casual attitude to alcohol.
 
If the government truly wanted to reduce crime, it would make alcohol less available.
 
If the government truly wanted to reduce the health bill and make New Zealand more productive, it would reduce the availability of alcohol.
 
The government is so cynical that it comes in here and pronounces grimly about the toll alcohol causes.
 
But government members are the first to sneer about nanny state when someone tries to fix the problems.
 
They claim to be anti-crime, but they also sneer and call anyone who tries to reduce crime the ‘fun police.’
 
So let’s look at what they mean by fun.
 
In 1999, 500 people were killed on our roads.
 
By 2007, total road deaths declined to 410.
 
But the number of road deaths among 15-29 year olds did not fall anywhere near as much.
 
Last year, if the toll among 15-29 year olds had fallen by the same amount as the general population, there would have been twenty fewer deaths of young New Zealanders.
 
Twenty.
 
Twenty people. Twenty young lives.
 
So why would the toll not have fallen among young people the way it fell among the rest of the population?
 
It’s because the drinking age was lowered.
 
In the years prior to 1999 the number of dead drivers who had a blood alcohol level above the legal limit had been tracking down.
 
Since 1999, when the purchase age was lowered, the number of dead drivers has stopped tracking down.
 
Because we reduced the age, more young people are being killed and injured.
 
In 2000 there were 4,079 fifteen to 29 year old car and van drivers involved in injury crashes.
 
In 2007, there were 6,538 - an increase of sixty percent.
 
The number of injuries among young people is far greater than the number among the general population.
 
The research in New Zealand and around the world is clear: There is a direct link between the availability of alcohol and the level of harm caused by alcohol.
 
Alcohol is an enormous factor in crime.
 
Between half and three quarters of all police work is associated in some way with alcohol abuse.
 
Two out of three people the police deal with as offenders have been using alcohol prior to the offence being committed.
 
So I support the measuresin this Bill to reduce access to alcohol.
 
And I condemn the people who call it nanny state, or who call anyone voting for this the ‘fun police.’
 
I condemn anyone who says that a vote for mild restrictions on this dangerous drug is for prohibition.
 
Sensible control is not prohibition, and pretending they are the same is irresponsible and distorted.
 
Restricting availability makes a huge difference.
 
Five or six years ago some members who are now in government bitterly attacked me because I took steps to increase the excise rate charged on alcoholic drinks in the range 14-23% alcohol by volume.
 
These were drinks euphemistically known as ‘light spirits.’
 
They were strong drinks that kids were buying and getting smashed on. It was a huge factor in binge drinking.
 
What did the National Party say then?
 
Oh boy. I was the fun police. I was the nanny state. It wouldn’t work, they said.
 
But what happened?
 
One of the principal manufacturers immediately reduced the alcoholic content of his product from 23% to 13.9%.
 
There was a decline in the quantities of ‘light alcohol’ drinks released for sale of around 80 percent.
 
Overall alcohol consumption went down by half a million litres after the excise duty was increased.
 
What that shows is that we can make a difference.
 
I support the objectives of this Bill.
 
I support reducing the availability of alcohol for young people and I support more restrictions on alcohol advertising and availability in the community.
 
If the government wants to keep the wild promises it has made to seriously reduce crime in New Zealand it had better come back into this House with more measures.
 
I am not confident it will.
 
But I support the start being made here.

Tags: Drug and alcohol abuse

Jim Anderton’s Speech to Parliament on the Sentencing and Parole Bill.

I have always believed that one of the most important things we can do in this House is to bear witness to the truth - to stand up and tell the truth about what we know to be true, despite the consequences.
 
What I know about this Bill, is that it is bound to play well as a popular measure, but that it is a fraud.
It will not deliver on the promises that have been made for it.
 
I believe the ministers responsible for this Bill know it will not deliver the results they have promised.
 
I believe they are pushing it through knowing it will not end violent crime, as they promised; knowing it will not make a significant difference as they promised.
 
The government has promised this Bill will ensure "there will be no more Williams Bells.”
 
That was the statement Rodney Hide made in his press release. Here is word for word what he said: “Under this Bill there will be no more William Bells.”
 
That statement is fraudulent. There will be more violent men who kill after this Bill has been passed. There will be lots more.
 
The promise the minister made in his press release will come back to haunt him and he will regret it.
 
The evidence this Bill won’t work is spelt out in the Explanatory Note to the Bill.
 
The Bill says any impact on prison numbers from this Bill “will not be felt for at least 10 years.” I didn’t read that in the Ministers’ press release.  I didn’t read in the minister’s statement that ten years after this Bill is passed, not one single extra person will be locked up.
 
I read that they were going to “get tough” with violent criminals. That’s what John Key promised.
 
He didn’t say that getting tough meant waiting ten years before one single person was locked up.
 
I did read John Key saying “New Zealanders are sick of waiting for promises on law and order to be delivered." 
 
Well they’ll be waiting a long time for this one to be delivered.
 
I read John Key saying the last government took nine years to deliver - so he’s going one better and waiting ten!
 
After 20 years, the Bill says, an extra 70 prison beds will be needed.
 
So let’s add that up - the government says this Bill will end violent crime.
 
And it says it will end violent crime by locking up a total of seventy people between ten and twenty years from now. That’s about seven people a year.
 
That’s what National thinks is the extent of the violent crime problem in this country - seven violent crimes a year. It’s a nonsense.
 
This government has vastly oversold its ability to make a difference.
 
I remember in 1990 National got elected by saying it was going to end violent crime back then, too.
 
I remember John Banks saying he was going to get tough and put an end to murder and violence and pillage.
 
And one month later this country witnessed the tragedy of Aramoana. That was the worst mass killing in our history.
 
It turned out then that violent crime is a lot more complex than the cheap headlines National wants to get.
 
It will turn out the same this time. I know that. National knows that.
 
This country has a serious problem with violent crime.
 
I saw research this week that showed only 43% of New Zealanders feel completely satisfied about their own security and safety in their own home.
 
And therefore we owe it to New Zealanders to do something real about about violence.
 
But this Bill does nothing to reduce violence. 
 
You don’t get locked up until the violent crime has already been committed.
 
This government is soft on crime because it won’t do anything to stop the crimes being committed in the first place.
 
The members opposite say they will reduce crime by locking up the most serious violent offenders.
 
But you don’t lock them up until they have already committed a serious violent offence.
 
It doesn’t lock them up before they commit it.
 
So what this Bill is really about is not reducing crime at all. It is about revenge. It is about denouncing criminals.
 
Now I actually agree there is a place for denuncuation in criminal sentencing.That’s why when my colleague Matt Robson was corrections minister he started building more prisons than any corrections minister in history.
 
So I support putting violent offenders away and my party helped to put the prisons in place to do it.
 
But you ought to be frank about what you are doing.
 
If the object of a Bill is to denounce crime, then say that - don’t come in here pretending that the Bill is going to reduce violent crime. This Bill isn’t, you know it isn’t, and that makes the very basis of this Bill a fraud, and it insults this House.
 
It insults the intelligence of members.
 
The object of this Bill is to pretend the government is getting tough.
 
If I’m generous I would say the object of this Bill might be to punish offenders more.
 
But I do not believe the object of this Bill is to reduce offending.
 
I actually put out a widely ignored and very detailed plan for reducing crime before the last election.
 
We went through every measure that expert research and expert policy shows makes a long term difference over time.
 
It starts with reducing at risk behaviour, it continues to getting tough with young hoons on their way to a life of crime. And it includes addressing the major risk factors in prisons, like alcohol and illiteracy.
 
Because when over 90 per cent of criminals have an alcohol or drug problem, then you aren’t going to rehabilitate them and turn them away from a life of crime unless you fix those.
 
And for all of those proven and efficient policies, the best estimate of the difference it would make was this - in the long run, it would reduce crime by about 17 per cent. That is about the most you can promise.
 
It is a long way short of what the government has promised for this Bill. They promised an end to violent crime - and now they are accountable.
 
We have heard a lot of songs about accountability from the government.
 
Now they are accountable for their promise to make a significant reduction in violent crime.
 
They are accountable for their promise their will be no more William Bells. God help them if there is one more after this.
 
So if it won’t make much difference to crime, what difference will this Bill make?
 
We happen to know the answer, because other countries have tried the three strikes and you are out approach.
 
It always results in huge anomalies. It always results in greater injustices. When you take away sentencing discretion, you get bad sentencing.
 
Let me give you one example: Imagine a woman who living with a violent thug with a record, and getting the bash.
 
What are the chances that she will now be even less likely to leave? What are the chances she will be much less likely to report a man when she knows it would mean that he would be locked up for life.
 
Those are decisions victims make all the time - and the truth is this Bill will ensure some women in exactly that position suffer grievously because of the horrifying dilemmas it will create. What is compassionate about that?
 
We owe it to New Zealanders to get tough on crime.  This bill does not.
 
This Bill pretends to get tough.
 
This Bill will lead to perverse results.
 
This Bill will not deliver National’s promise to significantly reduce crime.
 
And I cannot support its vile cynicism.

Tags: Crime, Law & Order

Jim Anderton's speech to Parliament on the Gangs and Organised Crime Bill
 

If I could sum up this Bill with one sentence, it would be that the government has wildly raised expectations about dealing to violent crime in New Zealand.
 
The Opposition will support this Bill, but it is not the silver bullet National promised. 
 
It will not significantly reduce violent crime in New Zealand as National has promised.
 
It will not make the huge dent in crime that National promised New Zealanders. The previous government was already promoting this legislation and we would have passed something similar - but we would not pretend as National does that this is all you need to do.
 
I have no trouble declaring that the major factors in crime should be on the wrong end of tough law.
 
Gangs are a cause of crime, so we should be tough with them.
 
And we should be tough on all the causes.
 
There is one factor linked to crime that this government won’t even talk about.
 
There is one factor linked to sixty per cent of all people arrested. 
 
What is that factor? Can the government members tell us? Can the government even say the word that is common to the majority of all crime in New Zealand?
 
It isn’t gangs and it isn’t P.
 
Both of those are serious threats and need to be dealt with. And if you are serious about them, you should logically be much more serious about a much more common cause of crime.
 
What is that common factor? It’s alcohol.
 
Sixty percent of everyone arrested is under the influence of alcohol at the time they commit the offence for which they are arrested.
 
Sixty percent. No other factor comes close.
 
So, because this government won’t even mention that alcohol is involved in most crime, it won’t do anything about sixty percent of all offending.
 
If you pass this Bill before you have dealt with the low hanging fruit, before you have dealt with the biggest factor in crime of all - then you are not serious about crime. You are joking and your raised expectations will ultimately disappoint and be held up to ridicule.
 
The National Government made a big issue out of crime in Opposition.
 
I am not going to quickly forget their pledges to seriously reduce the rate of violent crime.
 
They promised they would get elected and put an immediate end to the kind of violent crime that terrorised shop keepers in South Auckland.
 
Remember those shopkeepers? Remember the Indian community terrorised by attacks in those neighbourhoods?
 
How much neighbourhood crime is linked to the sudden proliferation of liquor outlets? How much is linked to the low drinking age that lets teenagers buy as much alcohol as they want on nearly every corner?
 
Will this Bill tackle that? No. Alcohol abuse is not even mentioned in it.
 
The government made the promises. The Government promised to significantly reduce violent crime.
 
Having raised expectations, this government is now accountable if it doesn’t deliver.
 
The government should not be culpable for violent crime. But the Government made it that way.
 
The government promised the New Zealand public it could make a difference.
 
Here is item number four on National’s Blueprint for change in August last year:
 
“National knows New Zealanders are sick of worrying about the surging levels of violent crime in this country. We are not going to put up with it.  So National will launch a full-frontal attack on gangs and the "P" trade they support.”
 
Ok, so they are passing the law they said they would. Good on them - but now the acid is on Simon Power. The acid is on John Key: This is National’s full frontal attack on gangs and the P trade, and if it doesn’t deal effectively to the surging levels of crime National knows New Zealanders are sick of - then National is accountable.
 
Mr Key said it over and over again. He said it on stages, and he said it in tv debates - he said the major problem is gangs, because gangs make P, and P is the major cause of crime. So he said, when this government took office, it would pass this Bill, and violent crime would be significantly reduced.
 
I hope he’s right.
 
I hope this Bill really does make a huge difference, and that is why I’m voting for it, and it’s why the Opposition is voting for it.
 
We absolutely want this Bill to be successful.
 
But actually, I am not naive enough to make the promise Mr Key made, and National candidates made up and down the country - that they would significantly reduce crime.
 
Here is what Mr Key said in his speech on 29 January last year:
 
“Violent youth crime is at an all-time high.  Robbery is up. Grievous assaults are up.  Aggravated robbery is up. Young criminals are graduating from petty crime to more serious crime; unexploded time-bombs on a fast-track to Paremoremo.”
 
So is this Bill going to make a major difference to that?
 
I hope so. But don’t hold your breath. Mr Key wildly overpromised and now National is under-delivering.
 
Can I ask the government members here in the chamber - will violent crime be significantly reduced as of the date of the passing of this Bill?
 
Will that be virtually the end of it in the headlines?
 
Are they confident now they have fixed crime? 
 
Or do they still want to tell New Zealanders they will significantly reduce violent crime as they promised. I wish they would. I wish this Bill had that effect. 
 
But every violent crime from now on shows the failure of the key promise of this government - that they could stamp out violent crime by targetting gangs -- raised expectations far beyond what they can deliver and thus failed the communities they have promised to protect.

Tags: Crime, Law & Order

Mr Speaker, I would like to begin by congratulating the government on their achievement in winning the general election and the confidence and trust of many New Zealanders.
 
The responsibility the public has handed them is enormous.
 
And though I strongly oppose some of the plans they have made for New Zealand, as a loyal New Zealander the Government has my very best wishes for success in their stewardship of our economy and our country.
 
I hope their promises will come true.
 
They promised to make significant reductions in crime.
 
They promised New Zealanders would stop leaving to live a while in other countries.
 
They promised our wages would equal or pass the wages of Australians.
 
They promised they could radically cut taxes on ordinary working families and increase spending on all our social services at the same time.
 
They promised the government wouldn’t overtax New Zealanders with fiscal surpluses, nor project deficits into the future; but it would instead berth the fiscal supertanker precisely on a low tax, high-spending button every single budget.
 
The Prime Minister travelled to very disadvantaged streets and promised we would no longer have pockets of deprivation in our cities where some kids are left behind in poverty.
 
He promised all our children would be able to read and write because the testing they introduce to the education system will make all the difference in the world.
 
He promised us world class infrastructure, the fastest broadband in the world, and an end to disputes over water allocation, instant resource management decisions and new motorways where today there are only broken dirt tracks.
 
The prime minister spent the election campaign travelling to every marginal seat and making solemn pledges of unbudgeted Think Big spend ups totalling hundreds of millions of dollars. And all those towns and cities are now patiently expecting him to deliver.
 
So I say to the government - good luck with all that!
 
There is not a single item on that list that I wouldn’t wish them to succeed in delivering.
 
As promises go, they are slightly more ambitious than I would have made. I would have recommended that promising absolutely everything to absolutely everybody risked disappointing someone sooner or later.
 
However, I will be the first to congratulate the government if it pulls off a significant portion of its stunningly immodest programme.
 
It will start its term this week with a swag of legislation.
 
It won’t send those new laws to select committee, as democracy and good government would require.
 
This is a government that campaigned in opposition against what it said was the end of democracy.
 
In Opposition it promised a fresh new standard of good government.

And its very first act in government is to throw out democratic standards like select committee hearings on its proposals.
 
The government is entitled, of course, to put in place the policy it has a mandate for.
But it makes a mistake if it thinks every bill it drafts will be perfect at the outset.
 
So it starts out with the defining combination of mediocrity - weakness and arrogance.
 
Too weak to hold public hearings on its laws.
 
Too insecure in the strength of its ideas to truly believe that they will hold up under scrutiny.
 
Too arrogant to admit its ideas could be improved.
 
Too mediocre to deliver on the promises it has made to New Zealand.
 
Already in the short month since the election we have seen one example of a weak arrogant government in action: its reaction to the potential ACC budget.
 
I have listened to ministers bumble through this issue with growing amazement that anyone could enter government so little prepared for its challenges.
 
Confronted with a change in the actuarial calculation facing ACC, ministers panicked.
 
This is an inexperienced government. It has yet to understand that officials will come to them every month, perhaps every week, demanding more money for something they say faces a crisis.
 
This week it is ACC.
 
Next week it will be the hospital system. Will they panic again when DHBs report their annual deficits?
 
Let me make some predictions: Some defence and IT projects will suddenly develop cost over runs worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
 
Some SOEs will reduce their profit projections from rosy to deficits. They will demand huge capital injections to remain viable.
 
A new biosecurity scare will need tens of millions of dollars to eradicate or control.
 
Every other week, another mundane crisis will come before Cabinet.
 
Ministers need to be strong enough to deal with them.
 
But what did we get in the ACC episode? Did we get strength? Did we get sophistication? Did we get the wisdom that says - yes, ACC actuarial calculations go up and down?
 
No. We got the arrogance that is already beginning to look like the colour of this government. We got a massive over-reaction. Even a ministerial inquiry.
The prime minister has set a low bar for ministerial inquiries and we will be having a lot of them at this rate.
 
They need to toughen up.
 
They need to toughen up because they can’t have the free lunch their policy promised.
 
They will have to make some hard choices.
 
In 1999, the last government was elected with Crown net debt over 20 per cent of GDP.
 
By last year, that net debt had gone.
 
We had positive net financial assets.
 
Now this National government wants to blow it all again.
 
Treasury won’t report its current set of forecasts for Crown debt until after the government’s new laws have been passed under urgency.
 
In other words, they will spend the money before they know whether they even have it.
 
This is what National always does in government - it takes from the future for its short term advantage today.
 
National’s rushed increases in overseas borrowing are not to strengthen our economy.
 
They aren’t to fund more research and development; National is cutting that.
 
It’s not increasing borrowing to invest in higher education standards.
 
It’s not increasing borrowing to promote exports as a proportion of GDP.
 
It’s not increasing overseas borrowing to strengthen our regions or to create more jobs.
 
No, the increased borrowing is to fund additional personal tax cuts.
 
Those cuts are more generous to the most affluent, rather than to the people who are most vulnerable in a global economic downturn.
 
Someone in the future will have to pay for National’s irresponsibility.
 
When you borrow from overseas to splurge on tax cuts for people who need them least - someone has to pay for it.
 
Someone in the future will have to pay more tax. Someone in the future will have their services cut.
 
And the problem is being compounded because National is reducing the ability of kiwis to create their own nest eggs.
 
The party that used to say it was all about personal responsibility is slashing Kiwisaver to pieces.
 
At the very time when we most need to strengthen New Zealand for the future, the National government is doing the opposite.
 
It is a mediocre government with mediocre ideas about how to meet the challenges New Zealand faces.
 
How mediocre?
 
The very first bill they announced today is the Tax bill.
 
And the centre piece of that bill is the largest ever increase in tax on business in New Zealand.
 
The very first thing this government does is to increase tax on innovation.
 
The very first thing it does is to say we have too much innovation in New Zealand.
 
Of all the criticisms I have ever heard of the New Zealand economy, National’s claim we have too much innovation, and too much research and development is the silliest.
 
But from this day forward, National will always be the party of higher tax on business.
 
It will always be the party that imposed the highest ever increase in the total business tax burden.
 
And it will reap the consequences in poorer long term economic performance.
 
Let me make a prediction: Under this government, unemployment will rise. Economic growth will be slower than over the average of the last nine years. The wage gap with Australia will grow.
 
That is what a weak government with no vision will accomplish?
 
Let me spell out some more visionary ideas for how New Zealand might prosper in the coming years and months, as the rainfall of global economic crisis both threatens us, and presents us with an unprecedented opportunity.
 
First, they should increase, not reduce, New Zealanders’ ability to own more assets here and around the world.
 
And the way to do that is to push for more saving and investment.
 
The best way to protect the vulnerable in these troubled economic times globally is to direct tax cuts most heavily to those who are most vulnerable - not to those who are most able to protect themselves.
 
But what does this government plan to do?
 
It plans to give the bulk of tax cuts to the highest income earners. It plans to give least to those who need it most.
 
And as the government invests and looks to stimulate the economy through the global downturn, it could ensure that it invests in measures that make the most difference to those who need help the most.
 
Instead of capping state housing, it could invest in more housing.
 
As we read in the news this morning of thousands of predicted job losses in the construction industry, there has seldom been a more opportune time to build more state houses, to employ those builders and construction workers and to make home ownership more affordable for New Zealand families.
 
A visionary government would look at how it can improve the wellbeing of New Zealanders, instead of how it can get away with stripping as many services as possible.
 
I recommend to the new government that it looks at ways to make dental care more affordable and accessible for New Zealanders. I will be bringing some more ideas about how to do that into this parliament, as I promised I would do during the election campaign.
 
And I will also bring forward some more ideas on reducing crime.
 
Sixty percent of New Zealanders who are arrested are affected by alcohol at the time of the offending for which they are arrested. Two out of three arrests are alcohol related.
 
And the evidence shows very strongly that the problem has got much worse since alcohol laws were relaxed and alcohol became much more widely available.
 
If you want a common element in the crime spree in South Auckland this year, it’s hard to go past the easy availability of alcohol.
 
Alcohol is available on street corners everywhere, at all hours, promoted heavily in all media and sold in ever-increasing quantities to teenagers.
 
But there wasn’t a word about that in the speech from the throne.
 
Instead, the government blames P. It blames sentencing. Well P is a problem, but ask any expert, ask any police officer - what causes the most social and human damage in New Zealand, day in and day out - and the answer is alcohol abuse.
 
And that is not because alcohol is intrinsically the most dangerous drug, but because it is the most widely available drug.
 
So I will be bringing proposals to this House to make alcohol less available and I challenge the government to act on them. Because if you are in favour of the unlimited availability of alcohol, you are pro-crime.
 
And finally I want to say that if there is one area where we have much more to do, it is poverty, both here in New Zealand and globally.
 
I heard the pledges of the government in the speech from the Throne to end the cycle of disadvantage. That is a worthy ambition and I support it. But I listened hard for how they are going to do it, and the cupboard of ideas is as bare as the food cupboards of some of our most impoverished homes.
 
I have watched around the world with fascination at the speed with which governments have been able to act to bail out huge companies and banks when they have been in desperate need.
 
They have shown that with goodwill, action is possible to help in an emergency. That governments can act to help when help is needed.
And it leaves a question for all of us in this parliament - if we can do that for big companies and big banks in times of crisis, why can’t we do it for people in crisis?
 
Why can’t we do it for the hundreds of millions of people who don’t have enough to eat, who don’t have clean water, who can’t hope for basic medicine? Why can’t we bail them out?
 
New Zealand should be a voice for them internationally, and a voice for the compelling new ideas that are emerging internationally to solve these global problems.
 
At a time when global crisis threatens to deepen global poverty and darken even further the skies over the lives of the world’s least privileged, we should be saying that if the world can offer crisis help to the strong, then we must also offer emergency bailout for the weakest and poorest.
 
I call on our government to work constructively across party lines to see how New Zealand can use our almost unique position in the world as an efficient food producer to make a difference.
 
And I pledge my support for any efforts they make to do so.

Tags: Economy