Communications and IT Achieving a Step Change:
Better Broadband for New Zealand
Wellington

I'd like to thank the Wellington Chamber of Commerce for providing this opportunity to speak to you today.

In about six months, New Zealand voters will get a chance to have their say about the future of this country.

I want Kiwis to choose National as the leaders of that future because I believe we can offer them much more than they are currently getting.

The sad fact is that right now we're slipping behind the rest of the world. New Zealanders' wages just aren't keeping up with the cost of living in a new century.

We're number 22 in the developed world for incomes per person – and falling. We can't seriously compare our standard of living with the UK and Australia any more. We're better compared with the Czech Republic.

That means our families typically struggle more than families in other developed countries. They worry more about the grocery bill, they find it harder to save for a holiday, and they find it harder to make the mortgage payment each fortnight.

More than 78,000 New Zealanders are leaving every year to get a better deal somewhere else in the world. Statistics released this week show that the number of people leaving for Australia rose 19% in the past year, meaning we lost a further 43,419 Kiwis to Australia in the year to March.

Labour has had almost a decade to turn this around. But all too often they've lost sight of the real race. While other countries have been getting wealthier than us, Labour has made a large number of poor-quality short-term spending decisions that have done nothing to close the widening gap in average incomes between us and the rest of the world.

More recently, Labour has been distracted by issues like how parents should discipline their children and what sort of food should be served in school tuck shops. Or, worse still, dreaming up electioneering rorts, which have nothing to do with securing New Zealand's future, and are only about the Labour Party's future.

Michael Cullen said last week that this year's election was "a contest about power in New Zealand". I have news for him. It's not. It's a contest about who can address the important economic issues in front of New Zealand and create a more prosperous future for New Zealanders.

We need a government that is resolutely focused on strengthening our economy and delivering better wages and living conditions to New Zealanders.

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