John Armstrong: Reality lags behind rhetoric on job creation front

In current circumstances, the job of MP is looking to be one of the safer ones around.

The parliamentary chamber is one part of the public service where National's cost-cutting axe cannot fall.

Barring a snap election or some major lapse in behaviour, an MP is in zero danger of being made redundant for the next two and a half years at least. For many, it can be a job for life.

Forget the nine-day fortnight. Parliament operates on a six-day fortnight - and then only if the House is sitting two weeks in a row.

MPs work a heck of a lot harder than that, of course.

But there was a brief moment yesterday when those inside the parliamentary chamber looked to be slightly out of touch with the harsher reality outside as they contemplated the major question of the day - whether to allow a blank sheet of paper to be officially tabled.

The slightly surreal episode began when Green MP Keith Locke sought leave to table the document - if it could be called that - following questions to Transport Minister Stephen Joyce about last week's roading announcements.

Locke argued the piece of paper listed all the new public transport projects that National intended to proceed with - none in other words.

Speaker Lockwood Smith seemed somewhat bewildered. "I guess I have to ask the House whether there is any objection to a blank sheet of paper being tabled." Curiously, there wasn't.

One of Parliament's messengers dutifully took the blank sheet from Locke and placed it on the Table of the House.

Labour leader Phil Goff was figuratively waving his own blank sheet of paper earlier in question time - the list of companies that have signed up for the Government's nine-day fortnight scheme.

He contrasted the Government's "promise" at last month's Job Summit that the scheme would help 100,000 people keep their jobs with the Prime Minister not knowing on Sunday how many businesses had signed up to it, if any.

John Key replied that the number had been an estimate, not a promise.

"I take it as a sign of success that New Zealand companies are able to keep manufacturing for five days a week; Mr Goff takes success as being put out to retirement - something that may well happen to him quickly."

It was a smartly worked rejoinder, highlighting Goff's dilemma. Logically, the fewer on the scheme the better from an employee's point of view.

Labour can hardly be seen to be advocating large numbers of people being forced to choose between cutting their hours of work and losing their job as the measure of the scheme's success.

The Leader of the Opposition did better slating Key's promise to build a North Cape to the Bluff cycleway to create 4000 jobs at a cost of $50 million as "utterly unachievable".

Key suggested that Goff buy himself a bike, "because he may well get to see a lot of New Zealand".

It was not clear whether this was because there would soon be a lot of cycleway to cycle or because Goff would have a lot of spare time on his hands once he was rolled as Labour leader.

Goff had made his point, however: that so far, Government policy-wise, the reality has yet to match the rhetoric of the Jobs Summit.