Parliamentary Debate

ADDRESS IN REPLY

Hon. JOHN LUXTON (Minister of Housing): I pay my respects to the retiring Governor-General and Lady Reeves, who have been an inspiration to all New Zealanders in their duty to the country on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen in the past 5 years. I extend my best wishes to Dame Cath Tizard, New Zealand's next Governor-General. I congratulate you, Mr Speaker. I know that you will be very worthy of the position and the trust that has been placed in you. I congratulate my colleague, Mr Deputy Speaker, and thank him for the very important work that he has done in formulating housing policy, which I now have the responsibility to implement on behalf of the Government. Finally, I congratulate the Deputy Chairman of Committees on his new post. I am sure that he will carry out his duties with the distinction that is very much his manner in such a position.

I welcome the 32 new Government members and the 8 new Opposition members, and offer them my best wishes for their time in the House. As with most jobs, one gets as much out of the job of being a member of Parliament as one puts into it. I congratulate the mover and the seconder of the address in reply. The member for West Coast is a very gracious lady who made a very gracious speech, and the member for Hamilton East started to give the House some home truths on the education sector. Members should see what has happened to the Opposition; there is only one Opposition member left in the House.

Mr Braybrooke: I raise a point of order, Mr Acting Speaker. It is a convention of the House that one does not say who is or is not in the Chamber. That is a well-known convention, and I should have thought that the member would know of it.

Hon. JOHN LUXTON: Speaking to the point of order, Mr Acting Speaker, I point out that there is also a convention in the House that Opposition members are in the Chamber to listen to the address in reply debate, and not to walk out en masse, as they have just done.

Mr Braybrooke: I am terribly sorry if it is just too much for members to listen to the honourable member. Of course, he has only just enough Government members in the House.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Robert Anderson): The member who is on his feet should not refer to the number of members in the House, whether they be Government members or Opposition members.

Hon. JOHN LUXTON: Finally, I pay a vote of thanks to my wife, Merryl, and to my family, Nicola, Sarah, and Richard, who have given me tremendous support in the past 3 years. Families are too often forgotten by the parliamentary system. As Franklin D. Roosevelt once said: ``Any Government, like any family, can for a year spend more than it earns, but you and I know that a continuation of that habit means the poor-house.''. His statement still holds true. The focus for the Government for the future is on efficiency and effectiveness, and not on borrowing and continued hand-outs. That is in line with a shift in thinking all over the world. To move with the times one must revise constantly and be more pro-active in responding to change.

Members should consider the world of politics. The events in Europe and the Soviet Union have been staggering in political terms. Even 2 years ago no one could have predicted the changes occurring so rapidly. The political shift, and, in particular, the basis for economic power in the world tends more and more to be in favour of countries that have advanced information, professional, and technical services. American sociologist Daniel Bell has pointed out that raw materials and heavy industry are no less critical as indicators of power than those related to manufacturing services in the information industries.

In my maiden speech to the House I made reference to the importance of New Zealand's natural resources, and that is where New Zealand has potential, but the nation's ability to generate wealth from its natural resources alone is limited, and the country needs to find new avenues to add value and new approaches to its economic and social problems.

Michael Porter, a Harvard economist who was recently in New Zealand, made the following comment about New Zealand: ``It is likely that future growth will be due in a large part to specialist service firms emerging and selling their expertise internationally.''. To add value to the base of New Zealand's resource-based industries and to move in a different direction, change must be allowed to occur. Change is essential to the well-being of a country. Change is occurring worldwide. No longer do countries work completely alone in achieving economic, political, and social objectives.

There is a growing interdependence among nations, regardless of the GATT outcome. I surely hope that reason prevails and that a significant reduction in protectionism occurs sooner rather than later. There can no longer be a role for protectionist policies. Such policies bring about economic decline, and the New Zealand economy is a glowing example of what protectionist policies have done in the past. There can no longer be such a role. In reality, global interdependence is increasingly rapid, particularly in financial and trade areas. In the 1970s and the 1980s international relations were focused on hard power---military might---but that time has passed. Interdependence is changing the nature of world politics.

New elements, and four worldwide trends in particular, that contribute to a diffusion of power away from the great powers of the world need to be highlighted. I have already mentioned the first of those, economic interdependence. Markets are now talked about in global terms, not local terms; declining costs of transportation and communication have contributed to the development of transnational corporations; economic activity is now transferred across borders more as a rule than an exception; and world trade itself has grown much more rapidly than world production. Financial markets, too, have not escaped that change. International monetary flows are said to be 25 times greater than the average world trade in goods. That means that the ability of national monetary authorities to place controls on monetary movement, monetary supplies, and exchange rates has been vastly reduced.

The second trend covers the increased communication capabilities of developing nations through the process of modernisation and urbanisation. Rapid advances in communication, technology, and transportion have been revolutionary. We are in an age of technology in which change is occurring so fast that products and systems are obsolete as soon as they hit the market.

The third trend represents the strengthening of weak States. Military technology off the shelf today increases enormously the capabilities of a backward State, hence the position in Iraq, and hence the position in which the United Nations is responding internationally and saying that there has to be a military solution to that situation. One cannot understand the comments that came from the Opposition benches today when Opposition members started to suggest that the Government had been improper in going out and playing New Zealand's fair role as a member of the United Nations. Government members are not a bunch of ``peaceniks'', as is the group on the other side. Government members are responsible citizens in the world economy and we are proud of it.

The fourth trend simply diminishes the power of the traditional powers to control their environment because of the change in the nature of the issues in world politics. Many issues are no longer those of the individual versus the State, but are global. Those issues can be matters such as ozone depletion, global warning, health epidemics, illicit drug trade, and the control of terrorism. International pressure is forcing change. That is what is happening in the world today, and that is what is changing the whole scene. We as a country have to change in response to the change in the world around us. The political development of co-operative power is a new movement in political circles.

Then there is the market-place. The market does work. It must be remembered that independent providers are nearer to public demand than public authorities can ever be. Their perpetual search for profitability stimulates them to discover and produce what the consumer wants. In that sense the market sector is more genuinely democratic than the public sector. It involves the decisions of many more individuals at much more frequent intervals. The public sector cannot hope to keep up with the changes in the private sector, but it sure has to move more rapidly than it has in the past.

In New Zealand since the 1930s it has been felt that the State could deliver more effectively than private enterprise. Those days are dead---witness the death of capitalism, and the present position of the Labour Party in New Zealand. We are moving into an age of information. International politics is changing to a point when power is moving to those who are information-rich, not to those who are capital-rich. There are still the old class struggles in the industrial scene that are completely removed and different from the changes in the world today.

That leads me to where New Zealand is in terms of trends and political power. New Zealand has tremendous potential, but it requires hard work and perseverence. The economy is in poor shape and growth is non-existent. The social roles of Government have become tied down in bureaucracy, and commercial roles need a freer hand. To be able to compete internationally New Zealanders will have to change some of their thinking internally.

Too many laws are made in the House. Governments have tended to make laws on the basis of solving problems that affect 1 to 2 percent of the population, but the end result is legislation that ends up disadvantaging a much greater proportion of the population, thereby creating a headache for everyone concerned that would not have happened if the original law had not been put in place. That also needs to be changed in the future.

The respected statesman, Benjamin Disraeli, also said: ``In a progressive country change is constant.''. However, I feel that people are always afraid of the unfamiliar. More so, they are afraid and uncertain about the future rather than the prospect of change. New Zealanders for too many years have cruised along with a ``She'll be right'' attitude, to the detriment of this great country.

As a new Minister I think that too much Government time has been spent in trying to manage Crown departments and agencies. A change in direction is needed in the way the country is run. After a short period of 4 weeks I can see that there are great prospects to make considerable changes, and I want to highlight the position that occurs in the Housing Corporation of which I am Minister. There is a template and an example in how that system works. It is a start of something that there should be more of---that is, having a commercial board set in place to guide a chief executive to set the administrative details in order to give efficient delivery of the services of the State. The Minister should be removed from that process and have a responsibility for policy formulation with his colleagues in caucus, but that is not what happens in the big spending departments of Government. I suggest that in our major spending departments that matter should be considered. I am horrified, as a new Minister, at the amount of minor trivia that crosses my desk because a law states that a Minister must sign it out. The system needs to be changed. We need to consider responsive systems to go into the twenty-first century---not systems that have grown like Topsy in the past 50 years of socialist government in New Zealand. New Zealand has to change. It has to move with the times.

In housing, as a country and as a State, central and local government own more than 90,000 houses---40 percent of the rental market.

H. V. Ross Robertson: What's wrong with that?

Hon. JOHN LUXTON: As a French architect once said: ``A house is a machine for living in.''. Does the State own people's cars, as well? Another impression about public housing is contained in the immortal line in the ``little boxes'' song: ``And they're all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same''. However, I must compliment the Housing Corporation on its recent developments in moving away from the traditional image of State housing. I have been impressed by the variety, the care, and the positioning of State houses.

I pay a small compliment to the member for New Lynn for the small role he has played in that, but I will not compliment him on the changes his Government made in trying to turn back the clock. In the past 6 months, under the Labour Government, the corporation was not able to be a commercial deliverer of housing for New Zealanders. It was not allowed to operate in the commercial sector; it had to be under the Labour Government's wing and to be a social provider of Government services. There is no need to go in that direction.

The National Government's policy clearly states that it will move the corporation back to being a corporate entity to deliver its services as effectively and efficiently as possible. The Government needs to be consistent. In the past few years different criteria have been set for different people in society. People in genuine need have been treated completely differently. Most people in need of housing were given an accommodation benefit. Two-thirds of those assisted by the State in housing receive a benefit to work in the general market. One-third of those people, if they are lucky---and the luck depends on the locality rather than the need---are helped by the State at a different level. A Government must be consistent in the way in which it spends the taxpayers' money. It must be consistent in the delivery of services to New Zealanders. The present system is inconsistent, unfair, and inequitable, and, given that Labour Party members spoke so often about equity, housing was one sector in which there was no equity for the people who really needed it.

If one considers energy one finds, as William Blake said: ``Energy is eternal delight.''. I support my colleague the competent member for New Plymouth in his comments about the need to explore new resources. About 50 percent of New Zealand's primary energy comes from indigenous fuels, which will run out in 15 years. The Labour Government changed the tax legislation to prevent further exploration when only 15 years' supply was left. It abolished that provision and introduced inconsistent tax legislation. It said that most industries---that is, farming and manufacturing---could write off their production costs in the year that they were incurred. Therefore the cost of growing a crop of wheat could be written off in one year and the income would be earned in the following year, but that did not apply to forestry and mining. Once again, the Labour Government was completely inconsistent. A Government has to be consistent in its actions.

Finally, I shall briefly mention the third portfolio for which I have a responsibility, and that is an associate role in education. Education is the key to New Zealand's future. It needs to change and to respond to the market-place. Young people need to have the skills to enable them to compete in the world market I spoke about earlier, not just in the internal market, and not just to be able to cope with leisure. People need to be able to achieve the skills that will get them somewhere in the big wide world today. Education also has to respond to change.

There is no free lunch in our society. The former Government undertook profligate spending, off-Budget. In education alone it promised $246 million to the education sector without coming to the House. There was no appropriation. There was also the $620 million for the Bank of New Zealand and $320 million for work on the Clyde Dam---for which the need has not been proved---and so on and so forth. Social welfare spending is some hundreds of millions of dollars over budget, and health spending is also a hundred million dollars over budget.

The country has had to put up with an irresponsible Government over the past 6 years. It is time for a change and for a more rational approach to Government. It is time that the country started to deal with the changes in the world about us. We need a Government that is consistent in the way it works through the issues of the day. That has not happened in recent times. There is no free lunch. We are not the wealthy country that we were in the past. We need care. We need to motivate. We need to work hard, and we need to change.