9. Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) Link to this
to the Minister of Finance
Does he stand by his statement: “we came into office with a very sound plan to lift New Zealand’s economic performance”?
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance) Link to this
Yes, I certainly do. If there was anything we underestimated, it was the size of the mess left by the previous Government. We probably were not quite aware of just how much damage 9 years of economic mismanagement had done to the productive capacity of this economy.
Hon David Cunliffe Link to this
Does his “very sound plan” include putting 50,000 more people out of work, cutting real wages by $9 a week at the median, leaving most Kiwis worse off after the tax switch, and now trumpeting that he is “controlling inflation” because households have nothing left to spend?
The plan includes getting this economy restructured to fix the damage done by the previous Government, which was exacerbated by a worldwide recession, so that we can get through while protecting people from the sharp edges of the recession, and raising our long-term economic performance. I am pleased to say that the Government’s plan is on track, with extensive infrastructure investment, extensive review of the regulatory settings, lifting the productivity of the public sector, increasing support for business and innovation, and reforming the tax system.
Hon David Cunliffe Link to this
Does taking the sharp edges off recession include putting up power, rent, and food prices by 1.1 percent in a quarter, then introducing GST increases to push inflation up over 5 percent, and leaving working families worse off, with wages going down and prices going up?
I know it does not suit the member’s leadership campaign, but in fact real wages are rising. Wages are going up faster than prices.
Hon Trevor Mallard Link to this
I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Coming from someone who got 20 percent in the polls, that is a bit rough.
Mr SPEAKERI say to both sides of the House that questions today have been mostly out of order, and maybe I should have ruled them all out. That would have saved an awful lot of time-wasting. Answers have been absolutely unnecessarily gratuitous at times, especially the first answer to the primary question. I did not stop the Minister, but I was very close to stopping him. The primary question was dead simple. It asked whether the Minister stood by a statement. We did not need all the gratuitous comments that came in the answer. How could I stop, then, the Hon David Cunliffe when he put a whole lot of unnecessary statements in his following question? We can see how question time just goes from bad to worse. Maybe I will have to start getting tougher, stopping gratuitous answers when they are unnecessary, and ruling out questions that are totally out of order. I would rather not interfere in that way, but today has been totally unsatisfactory. But then points of order should not be raised in that manner either, I say to the honourable member. I think we have heard enough of that.
Dr Russel NormanI raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Greens very much appreciate your attempts to keep order in the House. When you say “both sides of the House”, I just make the point that the ACT Party, the Māori Party, and the Greens have done our best to maintain order in the House, because we want to hear the questions and the answers.
I rebuke myself, because the honourable member is quite right. I have not had problems at all with the Green Party, the Māori Party, or the ACT Party today. I must say it is National and Labour that have been very noisy today. What troubles me is the quality of the questions and the answers. I do not mind the House being, at times, robust, but to me the quality of questions and answers has deteriorated significantly, and I am contemplating doing something about that, because I cannot stop Ministers giving highly political answers when questions are highly political, and when they contain mostly political statement. But where there are straight questions, as there were today, I regret that I should have stopped some Ministers in their tracks before I did, because some of the answers were unnecessarily gratuitous.
Hon David Cunliffe Link to this
How can he maintain that his tax switch leaves the vast bulk of New Zealanders better off, when those figures show that they have already faced a 2.4 percent increase in the price of food, a 4.4 percent increase in local rates, and a 2.8 percent increase in power prices, with the prospect of further Government-imposed price increases yet to come?
Because it is correct. On 1 October people on national superannuation, on benefits, and on Working for Families all had their rates adjusted to compensate for the increase in GST. Those in the workforce have had tax reductions, income tax cuts that are larger than the increase in GST, and those are matters of fact, not speculation.
Simon BridgesWhat steps has the Government taken to pull the economy out of the recession that started in early 2008, and put it on the road to recovery?
In the first place, this National Government has supported the economy through recession by running fiscal deficits, and this year the cash deficit will be $13 billion. That is money we are borrowing overseas to pump into infrastructure projects that support jobs, and to maintain and improve public services that were run down under the previous Labour Government. We have also reformed the tax system with across-the-board personal tax cuts, we have taken steps to lower the future debt track, we have reprioritised $4 billion of low-quality spending from back office and bureaucracy into front-line services such as education, health, and law and order, plus a whole range of other initiatives, which would take me too long to outline.
What alternative approaches has he seen that would threaten the economic recovery and leave New Zealanders worse off?
I have heard of one approach that was out of step with economic policy right across the developed world, and that is the New Zealand Opposition promising borrow and spend. Everywhere else in the world they are doing the opposite.
The Minister might tell me why I should not ask him to leave the Chamber right now. I was on my feet and the Minister made no attempt to resume his seat. [ Interruption] The Minister has indicated that he did not see me. Ministers answering questions should actually address the Speaker, and then they would see the Speaker when the Speaker gets to his feet. It would be unfair today, because of the shambles that question time has been, to pick on one Minister, but I warn Ministers that I will not tolerate this further. I will not tolerate patsy questions being used to attack the Opposition. [ Interruption] If the member in the backbenches does not want to leave the Chamber, then they had better be very careful. Today has just been a total waste of time in terms of question time. In my view, it has been very unsatisfactory. I want members to reflect on it, because I am certainly not going to tolerate it as Speaker. I intend to make sure that this does not happen again.
I make it very clear to Ministers that I will sit a Minister down immediately if they attack the questioner or the questioner’s party on a straight primary question. Where supplementary questions contain political comment, there is obviously licence to inject political comment in the answer. I will not stop Ministers doing that, because I want the discipline then to be on the questioner to ask decent questions in order to hold Ministers to account, instead of making stupid political statements. But I mean what I say, and I do not want to see today repeated.