David Cunliffe
Economic Development Spokesperson

1 March 2012

Joyce: National missed all growth targets

Steven Joyce today admitted the National Government has never met one single economic growth target it has set since becoming the Government four years ago, Labour’s Economic Development spokesperson David Cunliffe says.

“The Minister’s humiliating admission was affirmed by Speaker Lockwood Smith following sustained questioning in the House.

“Steven Joyce has confirmed what ordinary Kiwis have already realised. For four years the Prime Minister has smiled and waved and pretended National had a plan, so hard-working New Zealanders would swallow his bitter medicine of asset sales, job cuts, and service cuts,” David Cunliffe said.

“Now we know the emperor has no clothes because we heard it from the Economic Development Minister’s own mouth. The National Government have not met one single economic growth target they have set for themselves.

“They are total economic failures,” David Cunliffe said.

Mr Joyce’s concession followed immediately on from an apology he was forced to give for misleading the House yesterday, after he understated the forecast growth in the current account deficit by billions of dollars.

“New Zealanders cannot trust Steven Joyce and National to manage our economy.

“Mr Joyce’s latest plan for an economic miracle is to allow hundreds of new pokie machines in an Auckland casino, and to subsidise a media company he himself used to own.

“Neither intervention bears any relation to the official strategies of MED or NZTE, the entities which he supposedly oversees,” David Cunliffe said.

ENDS

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