Announcer (4.05): Ladies and gentlemen, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, now and for the next three years, the Rt. Honourable David Lange. David Lange (4.45, haka noise in background): “Tonight, tonight I greet all New Zealanders. I greet all New Zealanders and I wish to talk to them about the critical issues, the serious issues that face New Zealand over the next three years, the critical issues that will face New Zealand on Sunday August the 16th. The day that the streamers have gone, the day the balloons have burst and the funny hats have gone away, the day that people can claw back from the emotionalism and the recklessness of our opponents’ campaign, and then settle down with serious people and the Labour government to work through the challenge of the next three years. And we on that day will sit down with a cabinet, absolutely unparalleled in recent New Zealand history, and we will work through, with you, the agenda for consolidating this Labour government, and I know we are going to make an attack on those issues, I know we will because I take great heart from that fact that New Zealanders have shown in the last three years an extraordinary realism. New Zealanders know that none of the issues is easy. New Zealanders stopped being taken for suckers in 1984. The challenges facing New Zealand and the Labour government are great, and they are very fundamental challenges. How do we improve our social services? How do we combat crime, how to get more jobs? These questions affect every one of us and the answers to them are difficult. It is not that there are no answers, there are, but they are hard answers. And I say that plainly because I believe that we, in New Zealand, from past and bitter experience, and who of you could forget that cynical manipulation of people’s concern, with those 410,000 Think Big jobs promised, as the Aramoana smelter wafted around the South Island for some time. That put the politics of the easy answer right behind us in New Zealand. We put it behind us three years ago and we’re allergic now to any political party that hides reality and promises anything to anyone. Now this Labour government knew when it took office that it was going to be tough. We said right at the start you couldn’t turn the economy of New Zealand around in three years, not right around in three years. We knew it would take longer, but above all we knew that New Zealanders didn’t want to be treated as idiots any longer. We knew that the cost of change would show up before the benefits did, but above all we knew that the people of New Zealand would never throw in the towel. That if they were faced with a challenge, which was explained, they would soldier through that change and they would carry on, they would persevere. There have been references in the last couple of days to those matches fought in Australia in the last fortnight. The thing about those matches was that no-one packed it in at half-time. They came back for the second half and they sealed their triumph because they had the guts to carry on and they knew what was necessary. And what has happened in this country, in the last three years, is that for the first time in 35 years, for the first time since the Korean War boom, we’ve paid our way. That is the challenge of this government. We paid our way. We are for the first time in 35 years actually paying back some foreign debt. And all of that has hurt. Reality does hurt. When you move away from the cotton wool cuckoo land of all those people who now sit on the front bench of the National Party, you have trouble, you have problems, and you daren’t shrink from it because if you do flinch, if in the great economic stare out we blink, lives are ruined as this country is blighted. And there has been a revolution in New Zealand, a revolution with a clear aim, and with reason, because New Zealand is not a country meant to be second best. What on earth possessed New Zealand to think that in trade it had to grovel for international advantage. New Zealand has the best product in the world, which it ought to be marketing on the top shelves of the world. What possessed New Zealand to think there was some kind of political rule which allowed the government to determine who would have the privileges. Who tied to its apron strings famers, and then exporters and then manufacturers, until the whole country was tied up in a web of artificial economic escape mechanisms. This country is resource rich, and the people know it, and they are not going to accept second deals from anyone. Well we left them behind. That confused and incoherent government went, we faced reality, New Zealand grew. Now I know a lot of people say we are changing too fast. I have to say to you that is asking for less reality and that is no answer. We grew out of that. We have never said, I have never said, and I never will say that change has been easy. It hasn’t been easy because it was so long delayed by a government in office for years, which was terrified of facing the changes. We in this government have been finding the answers to questions which were pigeon-holed for nine and more years. And we have to find a lot more answers yet, we have found answers to questions people have never thought of before. And there is a great deal to do these next five years. Let’s start with the revitalisation of the social services. You know those social services are going to be more important to us than ever. What value is there in a dynamic economy without equality of opportunity. There is none. There is no profit in a country if it actually runs rampant over the needs of its people. We are going to keep our dynamic economy and we will have social services which will lay the foundation of real equality of opportunity. And the problem with the social services now are that they’ve grown a little like topsy. All sorts of bits and pieces have been added onto them. Sometimes those bits have been put on because people felt hard-headed and soft-hearted, or because they felt soft-hearted and hard-headed. But all of them, all of them, all of those changes have lead to the point where there is one thing you can be sure of, if you put money in at one end the thing you can’t be sure of is how it comes out at the other one. And that is why this government has been so thorough in our review of the social services. You can’t demolish the structure and start again, there are people living in the house. We have had to have the change, while giving the assurance, and that is tough, and that is why there is a Royal Commission on social policy which is looking at the social services from the ground up. That is why this government is looking at every dollar spent on public health, to make sure that in future the maximum benefits go to the people who need the health care, but there is a bottom line in health, as in other parts of the social wage, and the bottom line in health is this: that there will never be a Labour government which has a system of healthcare which denies to any New Zealander the right of health care from the state to the standard which is anything less than money can buy. It is fundamental. It is absolutely basic to what it means to be a New Zealander and a Labour government that people have assurance of access to that care, irrespective of the size of their purse, and the quality of it has to be as good as any tycoon could buy. But what we are saying about health pales really in comparison to the challenge which education brings to the next government. You know, it is clear that we have been in a country that took education too lightly for to long. It used to be that you could leave school at 15 or 16, without any qualifications, and you didn’t have any skill and you’d be sure to get a job. Our schools actually used to encourage it. What was taught in the senior school aimed you for university and for the rest there was no spur to stay and learn. There was, in fact, every reason to leave and to get a job. Well New Zealand is not like that anymore, and it will never be like that again. And we are not facing a world where the young can securely expect a 40 hour a week job for 40 years of their life. They are entering a world where change will mean retraining, all the adjustments which you need to have in the course of a life given to work are going to come from further education and more education. And the simple fact is, there will be fewer and fewer jobs for people who aren’t skilled, and that is the real dilemma, that is the heart break which faces the young and parents now, or the older person who has come out of employment because the industry has changed, and whose talent and commitment to the job, with strong arms and a strong back, and who is then really provoked because he or she reads the newspaper and sees literally hundred of job advertisements, but the nark is that all of them require a skill. This country, for a third of century, had the chance to anticipate change and it blew it. And that is why we are placing such an extraordinary emphasis on that challenge. We are going to have to start right at the bottom, and the next Labour government will during its next term, complete that two-term pledge we had to in the junior school have one teacher to every 20 pupils. But I tell you, we make this commitment, no child with the ability to learn is going to be allowed to escape from our education system without knowing how to read, write and count. They’ve been doing it for years. They’ve been doing it for years, and they won’t be able to do it anymore, and don’t let anyone tell you it has suddenly happened. It happened years ago, as a lawyer the countless number of times I read probation reports to clients who literally couldn’t read. Now that, in a country like New Zealand, is a disgrace which this Labour government is going to address, and the changes taking place in what is taught, and how it is taught in our senior schools have meant a dramatic change too. It means those young people are going to get a complete secondary education. Some people have deliberately misunderstood them, some have misrepresented the changes, but the fact is that they reinforce the relevance of education for our young people and they urge all young people to strive for realistic goals in education. Then we have a tertiary system. It there is one thing the next Labour government is going to do, it is going to get the concept of fairness back into the access people have to tertiary education. The fact is, that in this country, it is the right of the daughter of a railway worker to sit in university with the son of a doctor. And we have to get that principle back. We should never have lost it, but we lost it. And if you look at our places of tertiary education today, the horse bolted some years ago and we had a government that was determined privilege should somehow divest onto the children and thereafter some sort of wealth self-perpetuating elite should spring up. We are going to change it. And we are going to have to spend to change it, and let us be blunt about it. We are going to have to invest more in education. And it means real more, not just more. Not just the more we get out of improving efficiency, not just the more you get out of stream-lining administration, but more money because education is covering our lives for a very much longer period than it ever did. And it actually means sense, it is not just important to us as individuals and important to us as a nation, but if you look at the wealthiest, best-performing nations in the world, you’ll see that they are the countries which spend most on education, and whose people spend the longest being educated. It is chicken and egg, they spend because they have the dough and they have got the dough because they spend on education. And New Zealand has to break right into that equation. Because if a good education isn’t available to all, then we are not only choking the development of individuals, fair access to education and good quality education is a hard economic necessity. Young people who finish school uneducated are a loss to themselves and they are a loss to New Zealand and we can’t afford that loss; they are our greatest resource. And it is very critical not just to throw money at any form of education, we’ll be just as demanding in our investment in education as we are in any other part of the public sector. We have to, in the vital area of continuing education and training, be very careful not simply to invest more or too much in the existing arrangements because they have got out of kilter, they are different standards, different authorities, different ways of providing and paying, many people who need training are missing out. But what I do pledge of this government is this, we, in the Labour government, are the inheritors of a party which has identified unashamedly as the education party. Our forebears saw that as the key to their descendants’ opportunities and to bring about the change in the whole quality of life of successive generations of New Zealanders. And that is absolutely fundamental to this government’s strategy over the next three years. We are going to put in those resources, we do have the enthusiasm, and above all as can be demonstrated by the comparison with opponents, we have the ability. And that investment is at every level of education. It means more good quality education, more good quality childcare, more, freely available, early childhood education. We are putting our resources into that. We are going to invest into our maths and science teachers and we’ll never forget that education bares directly on employment. Our economic development depends on knowledge. If we don’t have people with skills, we’ll be desperate just as there are people without skills who are desperate for employment now. If you think there are any easy answers, any magic wands to employment, think back to the days when you were promised 410,000 jobs and they paid to the farmer of New Zealand on the average 30,000 dollars a farm while New Zealand had the highest level of unemployment and people on special work that we have ever seen, and which record is still fortunately not beaten. Can I say to you that we have learned a lot in the last three years, we have learned of the pain, we have seen people taking the change. We have seen people struggle to cope with their repositioning in life and we have been determined that retraining will overtake redundancy, that people will see change as an opportunity and not as the end of the road. Because I stress to you that it is an absolutely basic element of any Labour government policy, any Labour government programme, that those who work have the right to demand of the state an assurance of support, assistance in times of change, and I tell you that this government has not stood back and watched people scrap while others are subsidised. This government has got stuck in and social impact programmes and change and seen people through the time of their crisis because there is no answer not to change. There is no easy answer, we have put our resources into turning this economy around and we are challenging employment, we are challenging education and we are at best succeeding, as no other government has ever done in challenging the problem of crime. Can I say to you that this government regards the right of New Zealanders to have an assurance of freedom of movement and freedom from fear as absolutely fundamental, and we tackle it from two approaches. The first is that we have had a huge legislative programme of change. We believe that violent people should be locked up. We believe that there shouldn’t be loopholes to let them loose in our society. We believe in community policing, not cowboy posses, but genuine community policing. Where neighbourhoods know their constables, we’ve tripled the number of community constables, we’ve rejuvenated the police force, we have seen changes in sentencing and we have also started to work from the other end of the scale where it all starts in education, in support for families. Its support for families because we know that there is a real answer. We know the answer doesn’t come from people who sloganeer. We know it doesn’t come from those people who chant slogans about it now, but did nothing while they were in office. And we know that the answer lies in bringing up in this country a generation of young people who can feel an assurance of their worth, who find security in their home and family, whose mums can be confident that they can go out and get education and get a job. And all of that is unspectacular. All of that is part of the ordinary grind of daily life as people bring up their families, teachers teach their children, doctors and nurses do their work in the community, as everyone gets out and catches the 7.00 bus, and the farmer milks the cow. There is nothing spectacular about that. But that is the basis on which a real society is built. You ask our opponents about what they have to offer you apart from a streamer, a balloon and a funny hat. That is the fact. And I tell you, I tell you that this country, this country knows what hard graft is about, this country didn’t produce KZ7 out of a crack or a magic wand. When New Zealand came face to face with economic reality, New Zealand responded, and this government lead them. And we have changed, we are selling new products, we are in the world, internationally competitive. We can foot it in sport, we can foot it in trade, and we can foot it in international affairs and I am telling you, that if you are along with us on August 15, we are going into a second terms and we are going to see a country which can be proud and independent and nuclear free. We are going to see a country, we’ll see a country whose people are tolerant, a country whose people are tolerant and can relish the differences between them. We, with Labour into the next term, will see a country that learns to show respect and affection, didn’t get scared to show love and caring. A country that was independent, and said to other countries of the world, we are not preaching, but this is how New Zealand sees our future, our world’s future. I see us creating a nation which was careful of its resources, which went through this land without plundering but used them responsibly, a country whose government and people said to its land, seascape, we’ll pass through without scaring it and we’ll hand it on. I see a country where people can afford to be gentle, where they are honoured for being gracious, where their contributions in even small ways can be seen part of a great upwelling of community involvement. I see a country which will look back on the wonders of inflation and wonder how it all got so out of hand. I see a country which will look back in judgement on those people who refused to change, and they will say to this Labour government good on you, we didn’t buckle, we got through half-time, and now we are going to the next leg, and on August the 15th you’ve got a choice. You’ve got a choice and a choice between this government and progress or some type of retreat, some retreat back into fear and prejudice and the lurchings of advertising agency slogans. On August the 15th you’ve got a choice, you can vote to have a nuclear free New Zealand, you can vote to preserve the children’s future and the heritage of education, and the whole richness of the New Zealand way of life, and that vote is not just your vote, you’ve got that choice, you be there on August the 15th for Labour, but above all, be there on August the 15th for New Zealand. Because that is the issue. 3 minutes of clapping. Announcer: “Ladies and gentlemen: The Prime Minister of New Zealand.”