Tuesday 31st May, 2011

TRANSCRIPT: Labour Leader, Phil Goff interviewed on TV ONE’s Breakfast at 7:20am this morning

The full length video interview can also be seen on tvnz.co.nz at, http://tvnz.co.nz/Breakfast

PHIL GOFF interviewed by PETRA BAGUST

Petra: Now the latest One News Colmar Brunton poll paints a very bleak picture for the Labour Party. They're 18 points behind National and struggling to make ground with an election just around the corner. It looks like welfare reform will be a major issue for that election, but is an overhaul necessary? Labour Leader Phil Goff joins us now. Good morning Mr Goff.

Phil: Good morning Petra.

Petra: Can you possibly put a positive spin on those polls?

Phil: Well absolutely, right across the polls we're polling around 34% and that’s a solid base to build on. Another 5% and we can form a coalition government, so we've got work to do, no doubt about that, we're prepared to do that work, and on the issues that count to New Zealanders.

Petra: It is true the 34% is a solid base, it means that the supporters are there. You're polling as preferred Prime Minister is not solid.

Phil: Well look you know I've got work to do myself, I accept that, yeah that’s part of the challenge of the job. But the thing is at this election Labour will be out there talking about issues, and with a plan for action that shows that Labour is standing alongside middle and low income New Zealanders. They're the people that have been overlooked. People at the top have done well. Middle and low income New Zealanders haven’t done well. It's about the cost of living, it's about not selling our assets. It's actually about not breaking your promises as the government did on things like Kiwi Saver and GST.

Petra: It is interesting, because what you say, I mean I understand it, but there doesn’t seem to be motivation for change within the New Zealand public at the moment.

Phil: Yeah look I think that’s part of the first term in government syndrome. People always give the government the benefit of the doubt, but people are starting to ask questions now when I go to meetings. Where is the government's plan? What are they doing about unemployment? What are they doing about the cost of living? All that happened with GST is the cost of everything went up and my wages haven’t gone up matching that. Why are they selling the assets? You know why would you sell the power companies when they return to the New Zealand taxpayer $700 million a year?

Petra: Yeah but they’ve got an answer for that.

Phil: Not a very good answer though.

Petra: But it's just questions and answers at the moment. Because those sales haven’t gone through we haven’t been affected by them, so they're not being punished yet by the voters.

Phil: No but we have seen them in the past Petra. Take Contact Energy, privatised in 1999, $100 million a year flows out of New Zealand to foreign investors. Do we really want to do that with the other power companies as well? What's in it for New Zealand? You sell the assets, you lose the assets forever, you lose that dividend stream. It's crazy, and two to one New Zealanders believe that.

Petra: It sounds like fear mongering though because of course they're only talking about selling off just under half?

Phil: Yeah well that’s what they start with, but we know that they sold the whole lot off last time, and why would you sell half of an effectively performing asset? Why would you lose that money?

Petra: So you're saying a dog can't change its spots, that if they did it once they will do it again?

Phil: Oh absolutely, if you’ve got a Don Brash/John Key government that’s exactly what they'd be doing. That’s what Don Brash is pushing. That’s the advice the Treasury's giving the government, that’s what they'd do. There's only one way to keep those assets, Kiwi owned and community owned, and that’s a vote for Labour.

Petra: Okay a couple of other things. The welfare system it's been called broken, would you agree?

Phil: Well it's been broken in the last couple of years because the number on benefits have gone up by over 100,000 but you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand why that’s happened. You know when two and a half thousand people line up for 150 jobs at my local supermarket, I know it's not because you need to take a stock whip out to make people work. People generally want to work but the jobs aren’t there. So the first thing the government needs to plan for actually is to create jobs to create skills, and why not put the minimum wage up so it actually pays people to work. Because a whole lot of people that I talk to in the work force say, look we wanted to get into the work force again, but by the time we've paid for our petrol our work costs, we're scarcely better off than we were before when we were on the benefit.

Petra: I guess that’s just passing the buck to business owners though. If they can't afford to pay workers more, can they raise the wage?

Phil: Well you know it's a case of everybody who does a decent week's work are deserving to get a liveable wage, and you and I couldn’t raise a family on $13 an hour, and why do we expect other people to have to struggle in that way? These are the people that got the least tax cuts, these are the people that don’t have any perks with their job. They go out they do the job, they're often dirty jobs, and they're paid the minimum amount. But you know the message is very clear, put the minimum wage up and that’s a real incentive for people to get into the work force.

Petra: Phil Goff, plenty to talk about, and I look forward to catching up with you again next week. Thanks for joining us, Labour Leader, Phil Goff.

ENDS

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