Repealing the Tariff (Zero Duty) Amendment Act is a very important step in the right direction. That Act, forced through under urgency by National members — I always find it fascinating to hear them weep crocodile tears when they carried out exactly the same strategy to get their way — was the death warrant for many small clothing manufacturers up and down New Zealand. This bill is, I am afraid, too late for the likes of Greymouth Apparel, which National callously forced to the wall in 1998, the same year that it brought in the Act we are now repealing. National's tariffs reduction programme destroyed the dreams of the five Greymouth women who had started their own business out of the ashes of the former Lane Walker Rudkin clothing company in Greymouth that closed back in 1990. Tariff cuts strangled their business, because when they started in 1990 the tariff on clothing was 50 percent. When that company finally closed its doors in 1998, National had slashed those tariffs to 22.5 percent. That spelt the end of their business, and National knew it would.
National inflicted tariff cuts on small manufacturers of clothing right around this country. We know that it also did the same in the car industry, and in whiteware, carpets, tyres, footwear, and electrical machinery, despite the promises that National made before the 1990 election. I would like to quote a former National Minister of Commerce Philip Burdon, who at least had a reputation for being a genuine business person, a genuine manufacturer, and was someone who knew the reality of trying to run a business. He told manufacturers in their magazine: "The National Party is not making any further tariff reductions". You can hold us to account on those remarks." Well, we all know what National did after that.
But Labour is also serving penance with this bill, because, as John Luxton said, it was actually the last Labour Government that started tariff reductions. As I said before, it cut tariffs from 65 percent down to 50 percent on clothing, and similarly across a range of other products. But it was National that made the difference. It was National that put most of the thousands of people out of work in the period 1990 to 1999, for no good purpose. The theory that National is wedded to, and even some in Labour, who we will not talk about, is that somehow by closing supposedly inefficient businesses, productive assets will shift somewhere else to create new jobs. Well, those assets certainly did shift. They went off shore to where the labour is cheapest. Why pay people $7.50 an hour in New Zealand when one can pay $7.50 a day in Thailand? That is why Lane Walker Rudkin Industries will be shutting up shop in 3 years time when its current contracts end. That is why Lane Walker Rudkin closed its T-shirt factory in Reefton back in 1994. It could not compete with $2 T shirts coming in from sweat shops in China.
We not only lost jobs and businesses but also ended up importing the very items that Mr Luxton was talking about, the essential products that we used to make ourselves in this country. Beyond jobs, the biggest consequence has been the impact on our trade deficit, which has risen massively now to well over $3 billion, even when we take out a frigate.
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