Sunday 4 November, 2012
 
Q+A: Jessica Mutch interviews David Parker, Russell Norman and Andrew Williams.
 
Q+A, 9-10am Sundays on TV ONE.
 
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Q+A
 
JESSICA MUTCH INTERVIEWS DAVID PARKER,
RUSSELL NORMAN AND ANDREW WILLIAMS
 
GREG BOYED
A coalition of the centre-left - Labour, the Greens and NZ First - have joined forces because they say there’s a crisis in manufacturing, that 40,000 jobs have been lost over the past four years.
 
National insists there’s no crisis, that manufacturing jobs have gone up, and the three parties are pulling a stunt. They’ve already been dubbed the Coalition of Losers. But together could they end up winners at the next election?
 
Green co-leader Russell Norman, Labour’s David Parker and Andrew Williams from NZ First are with TVNZ’s deputy political editor Jessica Mutch.
 
JESSICA MUTCH
Good morning, and thank you all very much for joining us this morning. David Parker, we’ll start off with you. The government is saying, ‘Manufacturing crisis? What manufacturing crisis?’ What do you say to that?
 
DAVID PARKER, Labour’s Finance Spokesman
Well, they conflate primary produce manufacturing with other manufacturing. Look, when things go against you internationally and your exports drop, you still have as many litres of milk to produce and as many lambs born, so the primary manufacturing holds up. Where we’re seeing the jobs losses is in the other manufacturing, and that’s about 12% down, and we’re seeing other losses throughout the country as a consequence.
 
JESSICA       Russell Norman, aren’t we at risk here, though, of talking ourselves into a manufacturing crisis?
 
RUSSELL NORMAN, Green Party Leader
                        Well, when you look at the figures, we’ve lost 40,000 jobs over four years to June this year. That’s pretty serious, so we’re responding to the reality of the statistics, not to mention the reality that everyone sees on their television with businesses closing all over the show. Just this week there were new statistics released which showed the number of businesses in manufacturing declining. So that’s the reality of what’s happening. The government is in denial about that. We’re not; we’re looking at what we can do about it, and that’s why we’re having the enquiry. We want to listen to people, their ideas, what’s going on, and what the solutions might be like.
 
JESSICA       Isn’t it about confidence, though, as well, and aren’t you risking bringing down the confidence of the sector by talking like this?
 
RUSSELL     Well, I mean, if you look at the surveys that are done by organisations like the NZ Manufacturing and Exporters Association, I mean, they reflect confidence, but that’s a confidence that comes out of the market reality, not a confidence that comes out of what we might be doing. What we hope, though, is that we might be able to restore some confidence by showing that at least some of the political spectrum is very interested in the problems that manufacturing is facing and very interested in what the solutions might look like.
 
JESSICA       Andrew Williams, what are you hoping to get out of this enquiry?
 
ANDREW WILLIAMS, NZ First MP
Well, we want it to be very positive. We want to work with those like-minded people who want to see the nation succeed. We are down- 1300 companies are out of manufacturing now.  9% of GDP down in terms of manufacturing. That’s not a good outlook for NZ. This is a very very important sector, and we want to work with people who want to work with us, and we still also invite the government to come on board with this manufacturing enquiry. The government shouldn’t be ignoring this. They should say, ‘Let’s look at this seriously, and let’s look at how NZ could perform better in that important manufacturing sector.’
 
JESSICA       There’s been a lot of debate over these figures. The government says that businesses are always dropping away and that the manufacturing sector has actually grown by 2.5%. What do you say to that?
 
ANDREW      Look, in certain areas, like agriculture, certainly there is growth, but in many of the other areas, look at Fisher & Paykel and all these other iconic companies like Nuplex and others, you know, that are dropping away. Why are they dropping away? We want to find out. We want to look at solutions to this, see how we can keep jobs in New Zealand, see how we can keep the likes of the railway workshops in Dunedin are operating, see how we can ensure that there’s a New Zealand component in our manufacturing in conjuction with, you know, international corporations.
 
DAVID            Jessica, I thought Hugh Fletcher’s comments a couple of weeks ago were really interesting. He’s retiring from Fletcher Building, giving interviews at the time. He was saying that when he started business New Zealand’s biggest corporates were manufacturers. Because of the economic settings that we’ve had in NZ now for three decades under this sort of laissez faire economic model, we’ve seen that shrink. We’ve had 170,000 people go to Australia. We’ve got another 170,000 or so out of work in New Zealand. In large part that’s because our manufacturing sector has been shedding jobs.
 
JESSICA       Let’s have a look at some of these jobs, though. Here are some examples. Tegal, 300 more jobs. Xerox, 120 jobs. We’ve got the software company Orion Health, 100 jobs. Is this a crisis, with numbers like this?
 
RUSSELL     I mean, you know, obviously there are some people who are taking on workers, which is great, and if you look at the New Zealand economy, it’s diverse, so it’s not just about manufacturing. We are also very supportive of, for example, growth in the digital economy.
 
JESSICA       But this is what you’re focusing on, the manufacturing sector.
 
RUSSELL     That’s right, and that’s because manufacturing is such a huge employer. I mean, it’s 230,000. It’s down 40,000 to 190,000 over four years. It’s a huge part of the economy, but it’s a part of the economy that this government is neglecting. We think it’s very important to invest in it and to look at how we can make it stronger.
 
DAVID            Jessica, New Zealand cannot live on service jobs alone. We’ve got the second biggest external deficit in the world after Greece. We’re not in good company. We do not sell enough exports to meet the cost of our imports and our interest bill. Until we export more we never will.
 
JESSICA       The government’s maintaining, though, on the other side of things with this numbers game, that they’re saying that they’re standing steady with between 245,000 and 255,000 jobs. They’re saying it’s been very steady, that there isn’t a crisis.
 
DAVID            The deficit last year was $10 billion. The IMF says our external deficit will be the worst in the world next year. The worst in the developed world. How can that be right? And the government sits back and goes, ‘Oh look, because it’s going all right in the dairy sector we’re OK.’ That’s essentially their message. New Zealand has to be better than that. Otherwise we will continue to lose people to Australia and our incomes will continue to fall behind.
 
JESSICA       Let’s have a chat about some of these solutions - quantitative easing or printing money was one of the ideas that’s been put forward by the Greens. What do you make of that, Andrew Williams?
 
ANDREW      Well, we don’t support the Greens’ policy on quantitative easing. What we say is there needs to be a review of the Reserve Bank in totum to see how can we look at other ways of, you know, affecting the economy, particularly the NZ dollar, which is so strong. At the moment it is solely based on inflation, and the governor is so restricted on what he can do. We had a private members bill under the Right Honorable Winston Peters to try to address that. Again, the government dismissed it. And what we’re saying is that after 30 years the Reserve Bank has not been reviewed. It should be reviewed, because there are other ways that this economy can perform and that Treasury can perform in terms of the NZ dollar and taking over measures to assist exports. And what I was just about to say before was manufactured exports are the key thing in all this. It’s not just manufacturing. But our manufactured exports are down 12.4%. And that’s the big one. If we are not exporting, if we are not making money on the world markets, then New Zealand is going backwards.
 
JESSICA       Printing money - what do you think, David Parker?
 
DAVID            I disagree with Russell’s call on that, but I do agree with him that our currency’s overvalued, and I don’t think we should become diverted by the instrument. We should be focusing on whether one of the reasons that our exporters are failing and that we’re not earning enough from our exports to pay for our imports and interest is because our currency’s overvalued. The IMF says it is. We had a 30-year current account deficit saying it is. The Reserve Bank says it is. Even the government admits it is, but they all then just say, ‘Oh, there’s nothing we can do about it.’ What nonsense. It’s government’s responsibility to fix some of these problems, and one of the ways is through better economic settings for manufacturers, and that’s why we want to hear from manufacturers as to what they say governments can do to help them.
 
JESSICA       Russell Norman, do you see quantitative easing or printing money as one of the solutions to helping out the sector?
 
RUSSELL     Well, we put forward a proposal around, you know, reducing the overvalued NZ dollar. That included lowering the official cash rate, it included dealing with some of the potential problems in terms of the housing market through capital gains tax excluding family homes, and also about exploring quantitative easing, so we see it as a package. And when you look at the actions of central banks overseas, that’s exactly what they’re doing in order to put down the pressure on their dollar. If we don’t deal with the kind of external imbalances that David’s talking about, then it means- What does a current account deficit mean? We’re $10 billion. How do you pay for it? You either have to sell things, like land, or you have to borrow more money. That isn’t sustainable, so we’re very interested in looking at specific policies that deal with that, and this is one of the options.
 
JESSICA       When you put an idea like this out on the table that’s clearly not sitting well with some of your natural coalition partners, does it make it difficult to work on issues like this?
 
RUSSELL     I don’t think so. The reason- and that’s why, actually, we’d like the government to be part of this-
 
JESSICA       But you didn’t invite them to the forum.
 
RUSSELL     Well, we invited them to be part of it. Remember, I put up a motion to the Finance and Expenditure Committee to have an enquiry from the Finance and Expenditure Committee. The government voted it down. But we would very much welcome the government participating. And the process, I think, of mature political debate is you go, ‘OK, can we agree that there’s a problem? Can we now discuss what the solutions might look like?’ And we won’t necessarily agree on every solution, and that’s fine. That’s about mature, responsible politics. Instead, all the government does is throw ridicule and denial. It’s not really dealing with the reality. I mean, let’s remember in the last year, seven out of 10 households income declined in New Zealand. Only three out of 10 households had an increase in income, and that was the top three households.
 
JESSICA       We saw a very symbolic image before of last month’s meeting with the three leaders sitting on the stage and discussing this issue. David Parker, is this a blueprint of things to come potentially in the future with a coalition deal?
 
DAVID            Well, actually, future coalitions depend on how people vote at the next election, so I think we get a bit ahead of ourselves if we go too far down that line, but it is true that we get along well with the Greens and with NZ First on many issues. We do agree, all of us agree that we need to change these settings that have been status quo settings for the last 20 or 30 years on the New Zealand Bank Act. So we can agree on some very significant individual policies. When the Greens agree that we need some pro-growth tax reform in the form of a capital gains tax to encourage money into the manufacturing sector, the productive sector, rather than the speculative sector. Whether that ends up in a coalition after the next election really depends in part upon electors, well, in large part upon electors.
 
JESSICA       Andrew Williams, is this an example of being able to play nicely with Labour and the Greens?
 
ANDREW      Jessica, NZ First has always said we will work with people who have good policy and we will oppose when there is bad policy. We have supported many initiatives of this government in this term of government, and we’ve opposed many of them, such as the asset sales-
 
JESSICA       Do you trust the Greens, though?
 
ANDREW      We trust all our political colleagues as far as the discussions go. We have a good collegial approach to things. I think we, in many of these areas such as this manufacturing enquiry, perhaps we have to put politics aside a little bit and say, ‘What is in the best interests of the nation?’ And in this particular instance, what we’re saying is put party politics aside. Let’s have a proper enquiry into how-
 
JESSICA       Is it difficult to put party politics aside, though? I mean, let’s have a look at this. The Greens- NZ First has called the Greens a ‘bunch of fruit loops’. If you go back the other way, we’ve got Winston Peters being called a ‘snake oil merchant’, and the Greens saying Winston Peters can’t be trusted. Russell Norman, can you really realistically work with NZ First?
 
RUSSELL     So that was seven years ago, if memory serves me well. Seven years is a long time in politics.
 
JESSICA       Actually, it was 2011 that the Greens said Winston Peters can’t be trusted.
 
RUSSELL     Well, OK, but in terms of the snake oil salesman, that was, if I recall, our 2005 election campaign.
 
JESSICA       So have things changed, then?
 
RUSSELL     Well, I think that we can work together on the manufacturing enquiry. I mean, you know, I think that policy is what it’s about.
 
JESSICA       So you can trust them now?
 
RUSSELL     I think the key thing is that we can work with them. I trust Andrew Williams to sit here and say we’re going to work together constructively on this-
 
JESSICA       That’s not an answer, though, Dr Norman. Can you trust NZ First?
 
RUSSELL     And I trust that if NZ First signed a coalition deal then they would stick to it, and I think that’s a reasonable thing. But like David said, we’re not here to discuss coalition deals, because that depends on the election outcome.
 
DAVID            There’s an emerging economic consensus outside of the government that New Zealand has to change.
 
JESSICA       And are you three the group to change that?
 
DAVID            I think we’re part of it. In the end, it’s up to electors. They have to believe that New Zealand can be better than it is now and that some of the changes that have been promoted by Labour and the Greens and NZ First are needed.
 
RUSSELL     And it’s not just in New Zealand. That’s the other thing. There’s a global context to all of this. Whether it’s the International Monetary Fund or-, all around the world people are challenging the old neo-liberal consensus, if you like, and that’s being overturned because the idea that the market’s always right was totally disproven by the global financial crisis. So we’ve gotta put our minds to that as to how that applies to New Zealand.
 
DAVID            There are some things that business can’t do for themselves. Business cannot change the tax system. They can’t change the incentives around manufacturing compared with speculation. Only governments can do that, and I think that’s one of the things that can be made clear to us by some of the manufacturers. You know, we had Hugh Fletcher, as I said before, saying that the last 30 years has not worked for manufacturing in New Zealand, and I think we have to listen to voices like that.
 
JESSICA       I want to just stay more broadly. Andrew Williams, do you think the Greens are still ‘fruit loops’?
 
ANDREW      Certainly not. No, they come up with some good ideas. But we are an independent party, NZ First, with our own policies and our own programmes, and as I said before, we support good policy-
 
JESSICA       So you could still go with National, then?
 
ANDREW      We have supported some Green policies where we’ve thought they are good, but on the other hand, we’ve strongly opposed others where we thought they were off the mark.
 
JESSICA       So you could still go with National, then?
 
ANDREW      We will work with like-minded people who are working in the best interests of the country.
 
JESSICA       Can I just come to you, David Parker? Why did you decide to go out and do this, at the job summit have a media conference with all three people? You must have been mindful of the perception and the talk that would create around it.
 
DAVID            Because our leader, David Shearer, thought this was a serious issue that was important for the interests of New Zealand. 170,000 people gone to Australia. 160,000 people out of work. Manufacturing outside the primary sector in decline. Something needs to change. Now, David Shearer was willing to say, ‘I’m willing to sit on a stage with the Greens and with NZ First’ and stand up for what he believes in, because he’s a values-driven man. So he did the right thing.
 
RUSSELL     It’s about content. I mean, not everything in politics is about the game and about all the rest of it. Some of it is actually about content. There is a major problem. We’ve lost all of these jobs in manufacturing. We’ve got all of these people going to Australia. It is a big problem for New Zealand, and we’ve said, ‘Well, if the government doesn’t want to be part of it, does that mean we shouldn’t hold an enquiry?’ Well, we can hold our own enquiry. We think it’s important. It’s about content.
 
JESSICA       Last week Russell Norman said that he wanted to be Finance Minister. How does that sit with you, David Parker?
 
DAVID            Well, there’s more than one person that wants that job. Look, I think the Labour Party’s got fantastic economic policy that would take the country forward. We’ve got a record as responsible managers of the economy, and I want that job, so there’s competition for that spot.
 
JESSICA       Can you get over this whole idea of the ‘coalition of losers’?
 
DAVID            Oh, look, that’s a bit like, you know, Steven Joyce accuses everyone else of voodoo economics and being snake oil merchants, when all that we’re proposing is actually what most countries that are doing better than us are already doing.
 
RUSSELL     Let’s remember the government is the failure, all right? This is a government, four years in, we’ve got a right to judgement. They spent three years, they said, ‘Oh, it’s not our fault. It’s Labour’s fault when they were in government.’ Now they’ve now there four years. We now have a major problem in manufacturing. We have increasing unemployment. Another 65,000 people unemployed under this government. Another 7000 in the last year. This is a failed government.
 
DAVID            They said they’d rebalance the economy, and our external deficit is the worst in the world.
 
RUSSELL     It’s getting worse.

ENDS

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