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  Note: All transcripts are copyright to Front Page Ltd but may be used PROVIDED attribution is made to TVONE and Agenda
AGENDA
PHIL GOFF – Leader, Labour RAWDON Specifically though as far as policy goes what one major area are you gonna be focusing on? PHIL Oh look I think economics is going to be at the top of everybody's list, we're facing difficult conditions internationally, how do you get the New Zealand economy to perform at the top level where economy is the driver of living standards, of social services, we'll be focused on that, we'll also be working through the social agenda, how we make New Zealand a decent society, a fair society, that’s always been a priority in a Labour Opposition in government. RAWDON Now looking at the economy because that’s obviously where the new government will be focused in a big way certainly over the next 24 months, Michael Cullen's policies haven't worked have they I mean you're out of government, if they'd worked you'd still be there so what is needed now from the Labour Party? PHIL Well let's get a few things right first because that’s not correct. The National Party never ran against Labour's economic policies, social policies, foreign policy, or environmental policy, they said we're a new group of faces, that implicitly says that the National Party thought or they polled actually and the public told them that what Labour had done by and large over nine years was to bring in some good things that they didn’t want changed. We made our mistakes we need to look at those mistakes we need to listen to our electorate, but in economic policy things like KiwiSaver, the best performing savings scheme in New Zealand's history, 827,000 people joining up, that clearly was a huge step forward, Working for Families, but now we need to look at a new environment, how are we going to keep the economy going so that we don’t suffer the sort of job losses that are potentially there, and I think we have to thank Michael Cullen for not overspending for surpluses that weren't going to last, for actually paying off the New Zealand government debt, 37% down to 17%. Building up things like KiwiSaver and the Cullen Superannuation Fund. RAWDON But I mean the National Party in Opposition they were wise not to turn their back on something like KiwiSaver, they said this is one area… PHIL That’s one area where they have, they're gonna slash it in half. RAWDON Okay but in principle they agree with this that they're going to redistribute some of that, but what about something like the OECD. Helen Clark promised that we would return to the top of the OECD, that promise has not been kept. PHIL No what Helen Clark and Michael Cullen did succeed in doing was getting better than average growth rates in New Zealand than the average of the OECD over most of that period of time, so they did reasonably well but we've gotta do better that’s clear, and what we'll be looking at in Opposition are ways in which we can get the economy moving forward, again if I had to differentiate with National the first thing I'd have to if I was giving advice to them, which I will be, two things that are bad in their policy is to slash KiwiSaver when this country needs to save more and to slash research and development tax credits, that’s not the way in which you move forward to get an innovative creative economy that can deliver for New Zealand in the 21st century. RAWDON You're already talking about not slashing saving, being prudent, yet we're seeing from the new government a framework where there is going to be increased spending to an extent, that they see that as the way forward, that is the vision which they want to take forward. Is that not what's going to work for John Key, is that not where you need to try and take a new vision on? PHIL Well I think what we've worked on in the last nine years in preparation for when times turn bad is to set up the new government with the advantage that they can try Keynesian economics, spend more when the economy is on the down, because we saved when the economy was on the way up, in that sense our legacy for National is to give them a good start in dealing with the challenging times ahead. RAWDON So they're doing the right thing by focusing on productivity by spending to promote growth? PHIL Well they're promising to do some of the right things and in those we'll support them, they're also promising to do some of the wrong things and if I can give you an example of that, last week we had the withdrawal of 125 million dollars worth of investment in forestry, the loss of scores of potential jobs right across the country in forestry, because of the uncertainty created over the Emissions Trading Scheme, that’s to a good start from the point of view of a country that needs investment, needs jobs. RAWDON Will you continue as Leader of the Opposition to encourage the prudent more conservative economic approach which has been taken? PHIL Well what we're going to do obviously – you always have to challenge the values or the policies that you’ve held and we'll examine some of the things and say what could have we done better, what can we do moving forward in to the second decade of the 21st century, but we're not gonna go overboard, we're not going to suddenly adopt a radical economic agenda that we haven't carried out in the various times that we've had in office. RAWDON What are you going to do for the productive sector though, what specifically are you going to do? PHIL I think things are very clear there, you need to encourage investment, you partly get that investment through savings and you don’t get savings if you slash the benefits of the best ever savings scheme. You need investment in human capital which means an ongoing improvement in education giving people the skills they need, not only academic skills but trade skills. You need to build up your infrastructure and of course Labour did that. RAWDON That encourages spending, you have to spend to build up your infrastructure. PHIL That’s right then you have to look at where the best value for money is in that infrastructure, that it is competitive in terms of your tendering, that it is creating jobs and it is contributing to your economic future. RAWDON Obviously you'll also be looking at where you lost the vote in the last few weeks. Now traditionally Labour provincial seats, National Party won these in the election, how much do you think that has to do with the fact that those areas have become more productive, that they do now have more industry and they saw the National Party philosophy and direction more favourable to them? PHIL Well we certainly lost the vote in the provinces, we're holding on to one maybe two provincial areas and clearly that will be one focus for Labour moving out, rebuilding the confidence of people in those provincial towns for a Labour led government in the future. We'll be looking at what happened in the Maori vote, only a turnout of barely over 50%, a lot of people stayed at home they sat on their hands. We need to address that. RAWDON The support Labour Party has given Maori traditionally didn’t work, why? PHIL Well I think it wasn’t simply Maori, it was right across the country, you know political history in New Zealand, when you’ve had three terms in government people are of the mindset it's time for a change that slogan is a recurrent factor in New Zealand politics. When I did my street corner meetings people would say look you’ve done a pretty good job but we think it's time to give the other guys a go, and if we don’t like what they do we'll throw them out after three years, so it was that sort of – a combination of the innate sense of New Zealand fairness, give the other guys a go, and it's the accumulated grievances that build up over the period of time you have in government. RAWDON Maori hasn’t sat down since the election and said now we'll give the other guys a go, they’ve said wow we're gonna embrace the fact that we think this new government has listened to us. A few weeks ago Whatarangi Winiata said on Agenda that he was looking for a man enhancing relationship which he obviously felt had not been developed with the Labour Party and he seems to have found that now. PHIL Rawdon you're making a mistake of confusing Maori people and the Maori Party, they are two separate entities. Within the Maori people Labour …. RAWDON The Maori Party would argue that they represent the Maori people. PHIL They can't argue that totally convincingly when Labour got 50% of the Maori vote on the party vote level and they got 30% and National got 9%. We need to go back to Maoridom, we have strong ties with Maoridom, we have four Maori MPs within the Labour caucus ranks, we will be reconnecting with people in that area as we will right across the electorate. That’s an important lesson of being in Opposition. RAWDON Are you saying that whilst in government you were delivering to the Maori people but not the Maori Party and therefore the two don’t meet? PHIL Well the fact that 50% of people voted for Labour on the Maori role for the party vote showed that people did think they were being delivered to. RAWDON It was only 50% though. PHIL Yeah but look at a few things, I mean the statutory minimum wage it went up by 63 cents over nine years in National, it went up from $7 to $12 under Labour, who was the beneficiary of that, income related housing rents, who was the beneficiary of that, all of these things that the National Party opposed bitterly at the time but said they will now support, we'll be certainly working hard in Opposition to protect the advances that were made because despite the nice face of the National Party during the election campaign, with the ACT Party on its right wing, with its instincts as a right wing party I think we will need to protect those things. RAWDON But remember with the Maori Party on their left wing Brian Fallow described it last week as the two stabilisers on National's bicycle. So how do you get that Maori vote back? PHIL Oh I think that we go back to the electorate, we listen to what the concerns were, we listen to what people are saying about what they need for the future what their priorities are, I think we have to change some of the image of the Labour Party which after a period of time in office the image may well have been well they're not listening to us, and image is reality in politics, we have to take on board what people are telling us. RAWDON Okay let's look at the image, I said in the intro that there were no new faces on the front bench. PHIL You're quite wrong, let me correct you, there are five new faces on the front bench that weren't there before. RAWDON Who? They're not necessarily people on the front bench being new to the parliament, but they're not new faces are they. PHIL Of course they're not going to be, well the one new face that’s there relatively new face is Daren Hughes, you’ve got people like Charles Cheval, you’ve got Rowana Mackey. When you go into Opposition and you look at your front bench you look at the people who have performed well as cabinet ministers, I've put on the front bench the people who have performed well that have got a proven track record of confidence, I also have the huge advantage of 13, 14 if you count William Sio – 14 new members of parliament all of whom are able talented and new but they need time to bet in, they will have the next 12 to 24 months to demonstrate their ability, their competence, their determination and when we look at the line up that will go into the next election those that have performed best out of that group will clearly be at the forefront of the Labour Party. RAWDON Were you tempted to be a bit more bolder like John Key has been with his front bench? PHIL Well he hasn’t been that bold… RAWDON He's put a first term MP in there which is pretty bold. PHIL As we did of course in 1999, and there are advantages and disadvantages in that, but I'm not criticising his decision to do that, I think that the general response to the Labour line up was that you had a good combination of experience and a good combination of that experience with new blood, and that new blood will be the people that come forward to form the foundation of the sixth Labour government. RAWDON You say you won't criticise John Key for that but you were pretty hesitant about applauding any sort of kudos with him putting Paula Bennett in, that’s been quite a controversial appointment, it's been well received, you were cautious. PHIL Yes of course I was cautious as I think one of the comments was from the panel beforehand, you are cautious when an MP with only three years experience is given one of the biggest portfolios, I wish Paula well, she has a background that may give her empathy for the job that she does, I have not criticised that appointment, I have said that it will be hard for her and the cynical would say well the razor gang on the economic side of the caucus would put a fresh new MP without the experience to protect an area that they intend to cut. RAWDON Okay we'll see about that. Let's talk about John Key who's been criticised by Labour and others as a risk taker but he seems to be taking calculated risks and they seem to be paying off, and do you think that you need to adopt a slightly riskier approach to try and sell a new vision for the party? PHIL Well Labour goes into the next election with a new leadership and will have a new line up and there'll be a set of new policies, it will also go into the next election campaign as an opposition party that I believe will have worked very effectively to hold the government to account, that is a key role of the Opposition. We have the experience to do that, to make sure that promises are kept, or where they're not kept they're exposed as being broken, to put up alternative policies to what the government is doing, but we're not going in with the attitude that we're going to be totally negative, we'll try to be a constructive Opposition. We do have a serious economic situation, where we believe that the government is doing the right thing we'll work alongside them to cooperate with them, where we believe that they're doing the wrong thing then we'll be strenuous in our opposition and the tax plan will be one area, you know the people under $45,000 a year, the people who are the most vulnerable in our community are the ones that actually particularly if they're KiwiSaver members will be in a net worse position than they were before what National has proposed in its tax cuts. We will be out there defending those people, defending their interests and defending the more vulnerable in our society. RAWDON Okay I get the feeling that you’ve got KiwiSaver firmly between your teeth at the moment. RAWDON Now it's the turn of the panel to have a few questions. BEVAN RAPSON – Metro PHIL I think there are a number of factors that led to that result and one of the interesting points is that some of the Labour vote really stayed at home rather than went out and voted for another party, but we need to address that, the first factor and the predominant one I think was the time for the change, this government has had plenty of time now it's time for some new faces. Secondly I think the law and order issues were quite important and that’s notwithstanding actually the fact that the last Labour government had some of the toughest legislation on law and order that the country has seen, increased the Police Force by two and a half thousand etc. A third factor I think was actually, these were people that were hit earlier in the year when people were thinking about what they were going to do, high petrol prices, high food prices, they were coming down at the time of the election but they still impacted on people's living standards. A fourth factor I think was the nanny state perception, whether it was about showers or light bulbs or Section 59 of the Crimes Act, and you know New Zealanders do like their government to be interventionist but they also like to think that things that are properly decisions that they should make in their home are made in their home, and I think the perception hurt us, whether or not the reality was different, for example in smacking, didn’t matter, I mean the Police don’t record any extra prosecutions and they won't, but the perception was there that Labour was going against what many people thought. BEVAN So if the perception hurt you how are you going to change that perception about Labour? PHIL Well I'm not going to invent policy on the run right now, obviously that’s something I work through as you do in a democratic organisation like the Labour Party with my caucus, with the party, but clearly we need to address the perception that Labour isn't about bossing people around, though perceptions themselves change Bevan. As you'll recall when we brought out the No Smoking in Public Places, the National Party in the last election 2005 said they were going to reverse it, you go out and talk to people now, 85% of people say we don’t want smoking in restaurants or in pubs, we want to be able to breathe clean air, so perceptions change over time. KATHRYN RYAN – Radio New Zealand PHIL You made a good point to me before that this is policy that the National Party has said that they're going to keep to so we applaud that. I think that we will be looking at a range of new things, can I go back to the law and order issue because that was a genuine concern, that people had been tough on people who committed criminal actions, four new prisons etc, but there's also a real feeling out there we've gotta deal with the things that lead to the causes of crime, we did a lot in that area, I don’t think we did enough. We look at the Nia Glassie case, New Zealanders have been focused on that for three weeks and you say how is it that a family can be that dysfunctional to have behaved in that appalling way, how is it that neighbours didn’t report it, how is it that the system didn’t stop that happening and if you look at the Sunday Herald today you’ve got a whole page of faces of children in this country we're terribly proud of that were killed by their families, that’s an area where I think we as a country need to look at much more carefully and put a lot more resources in, not just building more and more prisons, but how you stop that crime in the first instance. RAWDON Has the Labour Party let down the Nia Glassies in the last nine years? PHIL I think that the country as a whole has done that, the government shares responsibility in that, but so too do families, the people that actually perpetrated that awful crime and the community. RAWDON But you’ve talked about as a party how a lot of the momentum which has been made by the last government will be seen, the benefits will be seen further down the track, but you know after nine years we still had a three year old girl in this situation. PHIL Sure, I think it's very important in Opposition not to look for silver bullet solutions, we've had a few of those put up during the election campaign, the government has raised expectations and they will be expected to deliver and we'll be keeping them on their toes about that. I think if I go back to Kathryn's question because I haven't really fully answered that, we're not going to do instant answers to longstanding and complex problems, we're gonna put the work in it might be a year it might be 18 months out before we even start talking about what our alternative programme for New Zealand is. KATHRYN But talk about specifics in this sense. Bevan raised Auckland, when you look at the provinces, when you look at the electorate seats they're all blue from one end of the country to the other, you’ve lost touch with ordinary people's ordinary lives, and what are you going to do to get that back? PHIL Well the starting point is very clearly that you have to reconnect with your electorate, MPs that have electorate seats will be going back to their electorates, I got very good support in my electorate, I got a big majority on the electorate vote but I got a small majority on the party vote, so I need in my own patch to go back and talk through again with those people who switched their votes or who stayed at home, all 43 members of our caucus will be doing that, will be looking – we're not pre-empting what the electorate really wants to tell us, we want to go back we want to listen to what they're saying, we want to hear what their major concerns are, the development of our policy is around addressing the concerns that ordinary New Zealanders have, that’s essential. BEVAN Policy's going to be obviously critical and obviously you can't make it up on the hoof now, your political strategy is also going to be pretty interesting, you were talking about the Maori support and making the distinction between Maoridom and the Maori Party and your relations with the Maori Party in Opposition have got off to a rather shaky start you'd have to say with Tariana Turia taking exception to your comment. PHIL As she would. BEVAN Yeah that’s right, so is the Maori Party the enemy? PHIL No I'm not looking at any party as an enemy we're prepared to work with any party in parliament provided the policies and actions that have been proposed we believe are for the good of New Zealanders. BEVAN But they don’t want you to get traction back amongst Maoridom. PHIL Of course they don’t and I perhaps made the mistake of stating the obvious that last time there was a party that had a clean sweep of the Maori seats and took Labour out within three years there was another clean sweep and Labour came back, and I was saying look you know you’ve gotta make your own decision as the Maori Party will and have, but be aware of the fact that the people that you are going into coalition with their track record last time this was done was not a great track record so I was stating the fact, I wasn’t being patronising, I don’t patronise people, I don’t believe in it, but I think it's quite clear – let me give you an example in Corrections, Pita Sharples whose views on Corrections are probably closer to Labours than they are to – well certainly closer than they are to ACT's or National, by being an Associate Minister of Corrections he can't publicly criticise the agenda that might be put in place in that area. Now that will be part of the price of what he hopes will also be an advantage of being part of the government to influence their thinking. KATHRYN They’ve stolen your clothes haven't they Mr Goff, National, not only have they stolen your policies which limits how much you're going to be able to criticise their agenda, but they have got the Maori Party into a governing arrangement and shouldn’t that have been your prerogative, haven't they actually beaten you on your own turf? PHIL All I have to say in answer to that is actions speak louder than words, we will give them a fair go to do the things that they’ve said they’ll do, we have seen the very pleasant face of National that says we're not gonna hurt people, we're gonna look after the most disadvantaged etc, if they do that of course we'll support them, if they implement all of our policies and keep our policies we're not gonna criticise what we put in place, but it is a leap in faith to actually expect that that will be what happens in more difficult economic times. BEVAN Isn't the economic crisis and the recession going to make it very difficult in Opposition to not be seen as white anting or undermining the country when you make your criticism? PHIL No I think we've learnt many of the mistakes that were made in the past where Opposition parties and leaders criticised their country abroad in a way that was deemed to be unhelpful to New Zealand, I've said that I'll work with John Key, Tim Grocer, Murray McCully on international issue where as Kathryn has said the National Party has done a total flip flop, well I think they were always in support of our Trade policy to be fair to them, they’ve now adopted our Defence policy and our Foreign Policy, now that’s good. Labour has moved the consensus around the policies that Labour brought in, so we'll be supportive when things are good for New Zealand. I'm a New Zealander first and foremost but I won't be supportive and I'll be harshly critical where I see governments doing things that are hurting New Zealanders and particularly hurting the people that we have traditionally represented that they have not. RAWDON Phil Goff thanks very much for coming in this morning, we really appreciate it, we'll see you in the New Year no doubt I hope. |
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