  |
|||
 
|
  Note: All transcripts are copyright to Front Page Ltd but may be used PROVIDED attribution is made to TVONE and Agenda AGENDA Presented by RAWDON CHRISTIE RAWDON It just seems to get harder for Labour every week, now National have promised they’ll add to the October tax cuts with two more rounds of cuts next year if they become the government, and answering Labour's attacks they could only afford those cuts if they slashed government services like Education and Health the Nats now say they would borrow to pay for infrastructure like roads and Broadband. Meanwhile Labour's still around 15% behind in most polls and propped up in parliament by an increasingly beleaguered Winston Peters, who'd want to lead the party - well Helen Clark does and she's with Guyon now. GUYON ESPINER Well Prime Minister I guess more than anything else governments are usually judged on how they manage the economy, so let's start there. The economy shrunk .3% in the March quarter, we've got household budgets getting squeezed badly by rising food and oil prices, we've got inflation expected to peak at 4.7%, what have you got to offer which is new in terms of rescuing this economy? HELEN CLARK – Prime Minister Sure it's a slow year, it comes on top of of course the longest run of economic growth since the second world war when household incomes have grown quite significantly, unemployment's plunged, child poverty rates and other poverty rates have plunged, so we've come through a good run, but now we've gotta look ahead through a slow year and what are going to be the conditions that return New Zealand to growth, and there's no magic wand we have to keep our focus on a number of critical things, they are – our investment in education and skills where we've got big plans – the R&D investments going forward – that tax break in last year's budget I think has been incredibly important in supporting private sector R&D, but so has the fast forward fund going forward. We've got the big focus on exports the huge FTA deals that we're negotiating the build up of New Zealand trade and enterprise capacity offshore in China to support people, the sustainability agenda, the infrastructure agenda, the savings agenda. All these are the things that are going to build New Zealand's capacity for the medium and long term. GUYON Do you take responsibility for the economic conditions at the moment? HELEN Well we're beset by conditions not of our own making. GUYON But do you take credit for the previous growth? Let me take you back to 2006 when we had as you just mentioned this long continuous boom, you said that you had achieved the lowest unemployment in the developed world, you can't just take the credit for the good times and then pass off the bad times in terms of being some sort of international forces beyond your control. HELEN Well what I accept the credit for along with my government is the New Zealand economy now being more resilient in a slow year internationally than it was 10 years ago when this happened, and remember 10 years ago the National Party flew into a panic, cut the pension, sold the major state owned enterprise and wrecked what was left of the car industry. Now going forward of course we've maintained a programme of investment, we're able to deliver tax cuts in October and those have been brought forward from the 1 April next year, because we need people to have some more cash in their pockets this year. GUYON Will those tax cuts be good for the economy do you think? HELEN Well I think if you combine the tax cuts and Working for Families increases also brought forward from 1 April it will be timely and it's been able to be done in a way which still has the Reserve Bank looking to keep on lowering the official cash rate or interest rates through the year. GUYON Are we in recession? HELEN Well the figures will show whether or not their is technical recession and we all know what the definition of technical recession is, it's two consecutive slow quarters, but as I say our economy was growing about 3% in the year to December, so we've had a lot of good years, it's a slow year, of course it's a slow year off the back of the US mortgage crisis, the drought here, the fuel price spike, the food price spike, but we can see our way clear to continued economic growth and if we keep doing the right things about investing in our infrastructure, our people, our R&D, we'll get it right. GUYON Because just this weekend National has come out and said we will borrow to increase our investment in infrastructure, I mean New Zealand has not got a debt problem, you’ve got the books in a position where we're running debt at about 17% of GDP, you’ve got a target of about 20% which you're keeping well within, that’s miniscule by world standards, why not do what businesses do which is borrow for things which we invest in which might eventually make us richer? HELEN I cannot think of anything crazier right now when world financial markets are in turmoil than to have a party like the National Party go out to the people and say let's borrow more money. For goodness sake New Zealand is in a strong position in the middle of this international slowdown because our balance sheet is in good order, they want to wreck that. GUYON Where are the prizes for that Prime Minister, where are the prizes for having the neatest set of books in the developed world, there are no prizes for that, aren’t you just limiting our options by refusing to actually borrow to invest? HELEN Well the prizes actually are that we keep confidence in our economy, that we keep our unemployment low, that we continue our capacity to grow, we are in a much better position than many other economies because our books are strong and remember New Zealand runs a big current account deficit, it always has and one of the things which keeps the offshore markets off our back is the very strong government financial position, so this is not something to be gambled on and I think if you're looking at where New Zealand's going forward the judgment's going to be whether the people who've got the experience to lead New Zealand through good years and bad, because we've had some difficult years while we've been in government, is going to be judged to be a higher value than people who are just going to gamble away New Zealand's future. GUYON Well let's talk about that credibility in leadership and what people will be judging, I mean isn't the truth perhaps a little depressing for you in that no matter what you seem to offer now we've had nine years of Labour government, people are looking at you and thinking it's the same old face and we're bored with it, that’s what you're fighting isn't it? HELEN Well I've never known elections to be lost because people are bored and I give our people a lot more credit for commonsense than what you’ve just applied, I think people are very much interested in what the plans for the future are, they look at me, I'm a steady, direct, strong, responsible, credible person, I've run a government which exhibits those characteristics, we've run a strong economy, strong social policy, I think we've got New Zealanders pride in what we can achieve offshore up, we're well thought of as a country. Now pit that against basically with the exception of the Leader of the Opposition the same old faces from the 90s. if you're talking the Englishs, Ryall, Smiths, McCullys and so on, and I would place my record, my credibility, my judgement against theirs any day. GUYON So why aren’t people recognising that, you're anything between 15 to 20 points behind in the polls and especially if you look at the Herald yesterday men are deserting Labour, why is that? HELEN Look at the Herald any day and you'll see an approach which wants people to desert Labour I think, but look I'm out there on the ground every day of the week, I don’t believe the gap is anything like it's being represented, we will win if we can turn out our supporters as we did last time, the people who are never polled, they're the people who are getting on with it out there, bringing up their families, getting to work every day, you know getting on with life. GUYON But is that what Labour's representing, I mean your opponents say that you're mired in the debates of the 80s and 90s, you're spending your time buying back state assets and trying to set an agenda where you're saying that state assets are going to be the major issue when people are worried about the future, they're worried about their incomes, they're worried about their children living offshore. I mean are you addressing those issues for the future? HELEN Well this is nonsense isn't it because we've got the biggest plan out there for education and skills, we've got the biggest plan out there for investment in R&D science and research, we've got the biggest plan out there for infrastructure, we've got the biggest plan out there for sustainability, the biggest plan for savings, we are a very future oriented government, we certainly see Rail as part of that future by the way and I don’t think we would have had a railway system if it had been allowed to carry on as it was with ever bigger subsidies demanded by an Aussie company for running it, we wouldn’t have had a national designated airline today in New Zealand because our government was prepared to stump up and say yes this is important to us in our economy, we are very future oriented. GUYON Let's look at an issue which has been dominating politics for the last couple of weeks and that is the story of Winston Peters and the donations to his party. Now in response to questions on this Winston Peters has quoted Alice in Wonderland, we've seen him cancel a press conference because journalists weren't standing far enough beneath him, we've seen him counter Rodney Hide by raising innuendo about his love life. Is this is the sort of conduct that you would be happy with from a Labour Party Minister? HELEN Well of course I'm not Mr Peters' spokesperson and essentially these are rows between the media and Mr Peters… GUYON They are not, surely you recognise Prime Minister they're actually ordinary people asking questions on behalf of the New Zealand public who have a right to know. HELEN Yes but that is your row with Mr Peters, what I have to do is run a government, I've run minority governments for close to nine years where my party has never had the majority, I've run those governments because I've had relationships of trust and confidence in people. Now what I have to judge Mr Peters on is not his being New Zealand First Leader, I have to trust his judgment to be a good Minister of Foreign Affairs. Now he just delivered a pretty amazing result with a visit by the Secretary of State from the United States and a big summit in the South Pacific. As far as I'm concerned he's done a good job in the jobs I've given him. GUYON Can he be credible preaching transparency and democracy in the Pacific when he's not prepared to answer even a basic question about who funds his own party? HELEN I've made it clear that the issues around the publicity directed at Mr Peters recently fall into three categories, one is parliamentary privilege, that’s a matter for the Speaker, the second is the issue of the law, that’s a matter for other authorities, the third is the one you just refer to, that is the court of public opinion, that’s where all of us are judged, that’s where Mr Peters will be judged. GUYON And do you have an opinion on that? HELEN Well as far as I can see nothing unlawful has been so I do have an opinion on that. GUYON And that is that he's conducted himself with propriety? HELEN Well I don’t have any evidence to the contrary. You see I've been living in a goldfish bowl for 27 years as a Member of Parliament and a lot more before that in different positions in the New Zealand Labour Party, so I know that allegations can come at you thick and fast, but proof is quite another matter. GUYON Your opponents were suggesting that you'd delayed the confidence vote in parliament, can you rule out having a snap election over this issue? HELEN Of course, there is absolutely no ground for a snap election, nor has there been any delay whatsoever in a confidence vote in parliament. GUYON When is the election? HELEN Ha ha, good try. GUYON Well does anyone other than you benefit from not knowing when the election is going to be held, I mean why can't you – you’ve got business confidence a bit shaky, you’ve got people wanting to make their decisions about the future, why can't you tell us when the election will be? HELEN I don’t think any of that would be affected by me giving you a date today. GUYON Alright, I'll leave it there, back to you Rawdon. RAWDON Okay thanks Guyon. We'll now open this up to our panel and Virginia would you like to pick it up? VIRGINIA LARSON – North and South Prime Minister, focus on exports, obviously this is the most important thing that drives everything we can do in the country. What were you referring to in particular when you mentioned that? Was this the Free Trade Agreement or something specific in terms of boosting exports? HELEN Well two things there's a huge trade agenda, the China FTA is the biggest boldest thing New Zealand's ever done in trade policy, it will come into effect on 1 October and I believe it's to our advantage. Now significantly the fact that we were able to negotiate that got Japan and Korea more interested because in a time of world food shortage and a lot of issues over food quality coming out of countries like China and Koreans are very upset about the BSE with respect to US beef, they're starting to see that they shouldn’t just take for granted reliable quality food supply from New Zealand, they need to be thinking about FTAs with us to lock that in because if they persist with high tariffs in their trade with us and we've got low and eventually no tariffs with China then there's no premium for us trading into Japan and Korea. So that’s the big picture, we're actually pretty close I think touch wood to finalising the negotiations on the FTA with all of South East Asia which we're a partner with Australia in. We've got the study going with India on an FTA, so there's very big picture trade deals being put together here. Add to that the fact the United States has agreed to come into the financial services and investment part of the negotiations with Chile, Brunei, Singapore and New Zealand, that’s important, and then what I was referring to with respect to New Zealand Trade and Enterprise is it's opening up another five outposts in China to support our exporters getting into that market, and I'm hearing fantastic stories out of say Regional Chambers of Commerce who are taking delegations up to China and finding that the SMEs the small and medium size enterprises from their regions can trade profitably into niches in the Chinese cities. JOHN ROUGHAN – New Zealand Herald A quick question on Winston Peters. What makes you sure he's done nothing illegal? HELEN Well I've accepted his word John because I've found that when Winston Peters gives me his word he means it, but I also stand back with the experience, I've got at looking at politics and funding over a lot of years and I'm hard pressed to see unlawfulness. One of the reasons the government of course pursued the Electoral Finance Act was to try and shut down some of the bolt holes for funding, it remains to be seen whether that’s been properly done. JOHN But I can't remember a previous time when a donor has come forth and said yes I gave a donation to this party I thought, it hasn’t appeared in the books what's happened to it, HELEN Well that donor of course had a cheque written out to a trust and I suspect he's written many such cheques over the years because he's supported the political process which is a worthy thing by the way, but he wrote it to a trust. JOHN Do you think Bob Jones is confused? HELEN Oh look I think when you look at the various accounts of who said who to what there was a lot of party talk involved and you may get a lot of different recollections about what comes out of party talk. RAWDON You talk about how someone like Sir Bob Jones will write a lot of cheques out to a lot of trusts, how much does he give to the Labour Party? HELEN Well I couldn’t tell you because I have to be very careful as a leader to separate myself from how the party is funded. Now you know I go to fundraisers of course, I run debates in my own electorate, I do that sort of thing, but I have to keep myself apart from the fundraising of the corporate nature. JOHN One thing that worries me more than the Bob Jones' thing is Winston's association with the racing industry and the news that he has helped the racing industry quite a lot since he became Racing Minister in your government, including putting gaming funds – charity funds into stake money, what's your view of that? HELEN Well two things John, firstly a Minister of Racing would be expected to advocate for the industry, our previous minister did too but we didn’t make it a high priority to do the sorts of things that either the National Party or Winston had promised the racing industry and the result was that when our minister went to the pre 2005 cross party event of the racing industry he got hissed and booed and the National Party and New Zealand First spokespeople got cheered and lauded and the funds I'm sure flowed accordingly, not just to Mr Peters' party but also to the National Party. JOHN But how do you feel about your government being a party to gaming money going into racing stake money? VIRGINIA And the nine million dollar boost into racing in this past year and you know you’ve got the Department of Conservation scrabbling to make up five to eight million dollars to have its books balance and surely the DOC estate underpins our tourism industry much more strongly than the racing industry. HELEN And we've done a tremendous amount for Conservation if you look at the properties which have been brought into the estate, it's been absolutely phenomenal. But come back to Racing, it is a significant contributor to the New Zealand economy particularly in terms of jobs, we've got the world leading horse breeding industry which is bringing in quite nice export returns from the annual sales. It's also one of those rare industries where it combines making a lot of money with giving a lot of pleasure to people and it has been one of those traditional Kiwi pastimes. Look Mr Peters came in, he had a strong policy for Racing, he was obviously a confidence and supply partner, he was in a position to promote that policy which as far as I can see isn't too far different from what the National Party was promising Racing and probably would have been served up had Don Brash managed to win the last election. RAWDON Okay Prime Minister let's get off something quite as specific as racing and look at the big picture. At the end of the day you’ve got a few weeks, well a few months to turn this round and win an election, how are you gonna do this? HELEN Well I think it is about putting forward the best vision for the future of your country and we do have very very detailed policies and plans, we will have some more things to come out in the course of the campaign but I think people pretty well know the shape of where Labour's going, we've consistently emphasised we've got to improve our education and skills levels, that’s basic you can't be a smart economy if people haven’t got the skills and education to drive it forward. I think where we're getting to on the research and development science agenda is very very important, I've constantly linked sustainability with prosperity because I think to trade into first world markets in the future we have to be able to answer those ethical questions people are making about what we're producing, that’s why the Emissions Trading Scheme is important in all the other measures we're doing. I've mentioned the export orientation which is extremely important, the infrastructure investments, the savings agenda. These are the way that we have to work to make our economy so strong, so resilient that we ride over the pressure that come from offshore. RAWDON You talk about the ETS does that mean that with it being so important to you winning an election that you'll pass this before the election, can you? HELEN Well we will pass it as and when we can muster the majority for it and I would hope that would be before the election. If it isn't then it clearly will be an election issue because not to proceed with that legislation is to inflict on the New Zealand taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars of cost, and that is avoidable. RAWDON And the key here is the support of New Zealand First? HELEN Well the key is to muster 61 votes from across a range of parties. RAWDON Which has the support of Winston Peters? HELEN Well it may or may not, be we are discussing it with a range of parties. RAWDON Virginia you were commenting on the ETS just before the show weren't you? VIRGINIA There was something – I mean obviously this puts power prices up, you were talking about sort of vulnerable users, I mean it gets awfully complex but down at you know street level it's about what it's going to cost to people who are feeling a huge amount of strain with just day to day expenses at the moment. HELEN Sure and I came on this show quite some time ago, late last year and said that there would be measures to protect vulnerable consumers and that’s part of the discussion that’s going on between us and other parties at the moment. RAWDON Do we know how much compensation will be given to the vulnerable households under the proposed ETS? HELEN I'll be able to tell you that when I've mustered a majority for the bill. JOHN Looking at the election campaign you're up against a new face in John Key, at least most of the electorate, at least on the campaign, who is talking about something quite different heading into the future, talking about much more government leadership in investment as far as I can see it with these infrastructure bonds and public private partnerships and running deficits and all of this. How's Labour going to respond to that kind of direction, is it going to sort of say us too or are you going to criticise that? HELEN Well we've set the agenda on infrastructure John, I mean we inherited a woeful set of investments in infrastructure and we've got on and doubled the investment going into roading, there's big investment going to rail, the public transport investment is about 15 times what it was when I became Prime Minister, we've got on with Broadband investment. But here's the rub the National Party's looking the camera in the face saying we're not gonna borrow for tax cuts, just for infrastructure – yeah right. Look we have the infrastructure rebuild going at full tilt at the moment, it's not just roads and rail and public transport, it's the hospital infrastructure which is running at rebuild far in advance of what there ever was before, it's the schools rebuild. Now I'm a bit mystified really as to where he thinks he should be borrowing to do a whole lot more, there's something horribly Muldoonist about all this and I remember the election when I first came into parliament was about Think Big and we paid the bills for Think Big for a very long time in this country. I'm proud of the fact that under a Labour led government we've managed to get the Crown, the state of New Zealand into a net financial positive position, that shouldn’t be gambled away particularly in the middle of international market uncertainty, because to gamble it away will endanger the mortgage of every Kiwi, arguably keep interest rates up for longer when they're showing signs of coming down. I think it's reckless and I think it's gambling with the future. RAWDON Prime Minister thank you very much for joining us this morning. |
||