Productivity earns praise from Key

Turning up the heat . . . Prime Minister John Key, flanked by National’s Dunedin candidates Michael Woodhouse and Joanne Hayes, talks to Escea Ltd senior welder Joe Daniels (left) and company chief executive Nigel Bamford during a visit to the the company’s factory in Green Island yesterday. Photo Linda Robertson

Accompanied by National candidates Michael Woodhouse (Dunedin North) and Joanne Hayes (Dunedin South), Mr Key admitted it would be tough for the party to prise an electorate win from the traditional Labour strongholds in Dunedin.

"Our primary focus here is the party vote ... Dunedin has long been held by Labour, but if we can build our party vote here, then hopefully we are in for a good result on Saturday," he said.

Mr Key and his entourage visited Escea Ltd yesterday, a company which manufactures luxury fireplaces and exports its products to international markets from its Green Island base.

National believed in people having jobs and being successful, and Escea was an example of this, he told employees.

"It's all about jobs, isn't it," Mr Key told one worker on the factory floor.

The company had "embraced research and development, embraced higher productivity and lean manufacturing" and was exporting internationally to a large niche market, he said.

Asked whether Government policies had contributed to 44 redundancies at Hillside and the loss of 28 jobs at a Milton wool mill this week, Mr Key said job losses happened as a result of some industries shrinking.

"In any one given year, even irrelevant of a global financial crisis, there are about a quarter of a million jobs created in the economy and a similar number are lost. If we're doing better, then on balance we're creating more jobs than we're losing at any one time.

"We've got a company like this one here that's successful and growing, You will for a variety of reasons get companies which are shrinking," Mr Key said.

He had chosen not to visit the workers at Hillside workshops, because it was not possible to "go to every organisation", and he reiterated the Government's independent stance about the KiwiRail-managed rail engineering division.

"We can't direct KiwiRail. They are in the middle of a massive turnaround plan after a huge injection of capital."

New Zealanders would benefit from trading with fast-growing parts of the world, such as developing Asia markets - something those involved with the agricultural sector in the surrounding areas of Dunedin would agree with, he claimed.

"Go out and ask the farmers, they'll tell you that if they weren't able to sell their products on the international market, life would be a whole lot different for them."