Muddling through question time

• Eddie
• 13 years ago
• Categories: debt / deficit, Economy, jobs, unemployment
• Tags: muddling through

Hon Phil Goff: When he also said yesterday: “Unemployment is starting to fall—not too bad.” had he read the latest National Employment Indicator for July, which shows that nearly 5,000 jobs were lost in New Zealand in that month alone?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No. Can I tell the member, because I will assume he does not know this and that is why he is giving the wrong information, that the National Economic Indicator is not a full indicator of all jobs in the economy.

Hon Phil Goff: Oh, it never is.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No. So—

Hon Annette King: Always changing the goalposts.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Actually, we are not changing. The consistent position we have always taken, and which the member took when he was in Government, is the household labour force survey.

Hmm, is this the same John Key who rejected the household labour force survey when it showed unemployment rising? It seems no statistics are valid if they reveal the real world doesn’t match Key’s wannabe fantasy.

Hon Phil Goff: Why does the Prime Minister not just acknowledge that in the real world people are struggling to find jobs? When we read today that when a New World supermarket was opened in Kaiapoi, 870 people applied for 45 full-time and 45 part-time jobs, does that not show the Prime Minister that people are struggling to find work under his economic mismanagement?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Of course people are looking for jobs. The good news, as the Minister just demonstrated, is that an increasing number of jobs are coming online.

The best question though was Jim Anderton: “Has the Prime Minister received, as Prime Minister, any reports of billboards appearing around New Zealand claiming that he, as Prime Minister, is “Building a brighter future”; and will he be replacing that slogan with the words “We may just muddle through”?”

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) to the Minister of Finance: By what percentage did GDP per capita fall between the June 2008 year and the June 2011 year?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance) : If the member will bear with me on just a bit of detail, I have interpreted this question to mean a real production-based measure of GDP, which is the one most commonly quoted. On this basis, the 2011 year was 3.6 percent below that of 2008

Man, Bill English really didn’t like that list of negative economic stats under his watch.

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Meanwhile, Imperatorfish reveals National’s new economic strategy –

National’s Election Strategy: The Power Of Prayer

Opponents of National have criticised the party for failing the address the problems of sluggish economic growth, rising unemployment and a volatile dollar.

But Mr English today answered his critics with a bold series of initiatives to get the country moving again.

The cornerstone of the new growth policy is an initiative called Pray For Our Salvation.

The initiative involves downsizing a number of government departments, including Treasury and the Ministry of Economic Development.

They will be replaced by a range of community organisations, whose activities will involve economic forecasting and planning.

Mr English addressed concerns that devolving these activities to community groups would lead to inconsistencies in how forecasting and planning were undertaken.

“We recognise the need to balance the desire for local autonomy with the maintenance of minimum standards,” said Mr English.

“We will allow organisation to have considerable independence in how they run their own affairs. But they will also be expected to follow certain minimum guidelines that we will prescribe for them.”