I was delighted to come into the Chamber this afternoon and hear the Hon Darren Hughes talking about the Mt Albert by-election, because I am very proud to represent the ACT Party in the Mt Albert by-election. I am also very proud that I have a family connection to the Mt Albert electorate that goes back for over a century. My great-grandfather Hugh Boscawen was aide-de-camp to five Governors-General and he was a surveyor in the Department of Lands and Survey. He surveyed early Auckland, and Boscawen Street in Point Chevalier is named after my great-grandfather.
I believe that the greatest challenges that face the voters in Mt Albert, and, in fact, face all New Zealanders, are our declining living standards, our rising debt, and our declining productivity. Those are the challenges that face Mt Albert residents. Those are the challenges and biggest concerns for all New Zealanders. I came into this House to try to raise New Zealand’s living standards. The problems that we have are man-made; we have created them and we can fix them. The standard of our social services and the standard of the health system are a measure of our productivity and our wealth. Over the last 10 years we have had declining living standards. The Labour Government was elected into this Parliament with a promise to raise our living standards and lift our place on the OECD ladder. The exact reverse happened. Those levels have fallen. Over the last 13 years, since 1997 at the time of the Winston Peters – Jim Bolger Government we have experienced a massive growth in Government spending. In real terms Government spending has gone from $11,000 to $18,000 for every man, woman, and child. People might think that is normal but it is not normal. In the 10 previous years, from 1985 to 1995, total Government spending actually decreased.
I will be saying to the people of Mt Albert that we need to stop wasting Government money. There is so much waste, and the time has come when we can no longer afford to have “buy-elections”. We cannot afford politicians who go out and use taxpayers’ money to try to buy their way into Parliament. We saw that happen in the last 12 months when the previous Labour Government went out and purchased the railways. That business cost $680 million and will lose $150 million this year. That is a billion-dollar cost. Think of the cost—that is $500 for every man, woman, and child in the country. There will not be a change of Government, following this by-election. Following the election we will still have a National Government, and this by-election represents an opportunity for the people of Mt Albert to send the politicians in this Chamber a message. It is an opportunity to send a message that the time has come to stop wasting taxpayers’ money; the time has come to stop reversing our living standards.
How interesting to hear Darren Hughes talk about completing the north-western motorway. That is a link that desperately needs to be completed, but he did not tell the House that the 4.5 kilometre link between Onehunga and Mount Roskill cost $250 million and opens in 10 days’ time. The previous Government baited the people of Mt Albert with a pipedream. It said it would build them a tunnel and would spend 10 times that amount. So for a piece of motorway, the same length as the other, it said it would spend 10 times that amount—not $250 million but $3 billion. Not only that but it said it would put 1 kilometre of that tunnel under a creek—the Oakley Creek. That would cost $1 billion. If New Zealand were a rich Arab emirate we might be able to afford that cost, but in reality the decisions made in this House by politicians on both sides have added to our declining living standards. The time has come for that to stop.
It was interesting to hear Carol Beaumont’s comment that the best the National speakers could put up was criticism of the Labour front bench. I have to agree with Carol Beaumont, because at a time when living standards and productivity are falling and debt levels are rising, that sort of situation has to change. I think the Labour Opposition deserves more than it heard today. I believe that the electors of Mt Albert, and the people of New Zealand, deserve more. I am going to go out and campaign hard for the ACT Party in Mt Albert and I will be saying to the electors that they deserve better, that there is a real choice in this election campaign. I will tell them that I will be very proud to be the MP for Mt Albert and will work very hard to represent the people. I will bring some honesty to this campaign, because Helen Clark was MP for Mt Albert for 9 years, and if anyone could build a $3 billion tunnel it was that member, but she did not do it.
The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.