Financial Review Debate

, on behalf of the Minister of Finance: I move, That the Appropriation (2001/02 Financial Review) Bill be now read a second time. The debate on this bill, which does a number of things, including sanctioning, confirming, and validating financial matters relating to the financial year ended 30 June 2002, is the perfect opportunity for Parliament to thank this Government and congratulate it on the very, very good, positive work it has done in the year 2001-02. When members hear of the fabulous work done during that time, and they vote on the bill at the end, I expect the vote will be unanimous—so impressed will members be with the good, solid work done.

Members will know that this Government has built a strong foundation for growth. There is absolutely no question about that. They will know that this Government has provided stable government with strong leadership, and that the aim has been to build solid levels of growth and fund good public services and infrastructure sustainability. These are the things that have been achieved. We also have—

💬 John Carter: What do they get?

I will tell the member in just a minute. We have a positive programme that is moving the country forward, and we are implementing smart, active policies to encourage and facilitate growth and development.

💬 John Carter: When?

That was during 2001-02. It has got better since then, but we are not going to talk about that. We are going to talk specifically about this bill. I will point out just a couple of the highlights.

💬 John Carter: Highlights?

Yes, a couple of the highlights. There are far too many to acknowledge, because we would need virtually all day and all night, but here are a couple of them. In this period we have had a growing economy. At the end of September we had 3.9 percent growth, and it is this end-on-end sustainable growth that will provide the background for improved services in New Zealand.

There is improved access to primary health-care, under the leadership of my colleague the Hon Annette King. There are more real jobs in New Zealand than there have been for decades. Almost 15,500 fewer people are on the unemployment benefit than a year ago. There are almost 120,000 more jobs than when we took over from that useless, hopeless, lazy National Government in 1999. There is a fairer deal for victims, with the Victims’ Rights Act passed in October 2002 under the leadership of the hardworking Hon Phil Goff.

We have cut the cost of tertiary education. We have funded 700 extra teachers, and we have expanded opportunities for people to learn in the workplace. By the end of the year we intend to have 6,000 young people in Modern Apprenticeships, an increase of 100 percent since the middle of last year, inheriting from a National Government that destroyed the apprenticeship system in New Zealand. There is no question about that. The National Government absolutely destroyed it.

We compare that achievement to the National Party, which is in total and utter disarray. It is repeating failed ideas of the past. It has no leadership and no vision, and not a clue about what it stands for. I found on the Internet that the Opposition spokesperson on finance, Don Brash, was going to provide the National Party’s road map for the future. His address was called “Where to from here?”, but having read it I am still none the wiser. I have no idea “where to from here” for the National Party. This particular speech has sunk without a trace. Why? Because it gives tired old ideas from tired old last century.

He started his speech by saying that in the past National’s values were New Zealand’s values. Well, that was true, possibly, in the past, but not any more; not this century. That is why the National Party is on that side of the Chamber, and we are on this side. Those values do not represent New Zealand any more. He talked about a number of issues, and defined about six or seven of them. The first one, he said, was the importance of getting the right direction. But when we read this entire speech, it is last century thinking. It is old-fashioned and it is tired. This Government has the leadership programme. It delivered in 2001-02. I expect every member who stands in the House to speak in this debate to congratulate and thank this Government for the fabulous work it has done in the year 2001-02.

It is disappointing that the Government has decided not to take the Appropriation (2001/02 Financial Review) Bill very seriously this afternoon. It is disappointing that the former Minister of Commerce should be taking the call for the Government. Many people will remember that Mr Swain was the Minister of Commerce in the previous Labour-Alliance coalition Government, but was removed because of his inability to get any legislation passed, or progress made in that portfolio.

The National Party in Opposition is strongly opposed to this bill. Its members are strongly opposed to any mechanism that votes money for that Labour Government to spend. We believe that the Labour Government is the most rapacious tax-gatherer in the history of New Zealand. It does not deserve one extra dollar from the taxpayers of New Zealand, and this Opposition is not going to endorse the spendthrift policies of the Labour Party in Government.

In the year under review huge amounts of money were taxed off hardworking New Zealand families, when it was completely unnecessary. A recent OECD study confirmed that New Zealand, out of all the Western countries, has the second-highest tax burden on working families. We do not believe that burden should be increased any further whatsoever.

This Government is failing in its responsibility to New Zealand families, not only to the hardworking families who are going out there and making it by themselves, but also to the 350,000 beneficiaries in New Zealand. Mr Swain can talk about all the economic progress this nation has made in the last 3 years—and we know it is because of the policies that were put in place under the previous National-led Governments—but he cannot explain why the number of domestic purpose beneficiaries is going up, why the sickness beneficiary numbers are going up, and why the invalid benefit numbers are going up.

💬 Pita Paraone: Perhaps that is the problem.

There are 350,000 of them. As Mr Paraone says, that is the problem, and this Government is doing nothing about it. If we look to the productive sector to fix the economy and drive the extra resources we are looking for, Business New Zealand tells us that this Government has added $44,000 in additional compliance cost to an average business employing 20 people. That is money that comes out of the owner’s pocket, off the bottom line, and is spent on compliance cost, and we are against that.

These documents show a number of appalling circumstances in the year under review. We know that in the year under review, despite repeated denials, this Government had done a deal on the sale of Air New Zealand to Qantas. Right up to the election we heard that there was no deal before Cabinet, and that the Government did not know what the Qantas and Air New Zealand people were talking about. But a few weeks after the election, when the papers were released, it became absolutely clear that this Government knew about the deal to sell 25 percent of Air New Zealand to Qantas. It tacitly supported it, and covered it up. While Government members were on the campaign trail, telling New Zealanders they knew nothing about a sale of Air New Zealand to Qantas, the Government had the papers prepared by Treasury telling it what was going on. The Government said one thing before the election, when no one could get the papers, and when they were released there was just a slew of excuses.

We are also appalled at the stewardship of this Government. In the year under review hospitals were $250 million in deficit. I remind Mr Donnelly who is paying attention to this debate that in the year under review this Government, which is led by a woman Prime Minister and has a woman Minister of Health, sent women with breast cancer to Australia for treatment. Women in my electorate were told that they would have to have their breasts removed, because the Government was not putting enough money into the health system and was not spending it wisely. While the Government was spending tens of millions of dollars on additional health bureaucrats, women in my electorate were having their breasts removed, because they could not get the radiation or cancer treatment they should have been entitled to in a First World country. All we got from a Government with a woman Prime Minister and a woman Minister of Health was a $250 million Budget blowout. Tens of millions of dollars were wasted on consultants and other bureaucrats, but no care—

💬 Hon Brian Donnelly: You guys had a woman Prime Minister too, you know.

Yes, we did have a woman Prime Minister, and our cancer treatment waiting lists were way down on this Government’s. No woman from my electorate was told that she would have to have her breast removed because she could not afford to wait on the cancer treatment list. It is a common mistake for Labour Party members to try to say that there are no problems under their party.

Here is another one. Every member of the Law and Order Committee panned the Government on the Budget blowout on the regional prison in North Auckland. Every single party represented on that committee criticised the Government’s handling of that project. Mr Paraone will vouch that the price tag for that prison was $40 million, but today it is $132 million, and climbing. Another paper will be going to Cabinet asking for more money for the prison at Ngawha. The cost of the prison has risen from $40 million to $132 million, and those people are asking Parliament to fund them more money and give them the authority to spend money like water and in a way that is completely wasted. This National Party is opposed to that.

I tell this House that it is with pride that the National Party recently released a document written by the Dr Don Brash about prosperity for New Zealand’s future. This document sets a path forward and a vision for the New Zealand economy that we do not see from the Labour - United Future Government. The United Future Government’s economic policy is essentially “Bank all the gains from the National-led Governments, spend it, and hope it all turns out right.” In fact, this Government has no plan for the future of the New Zealand economy. Things have been going very, very well in the New Zealand rural sector for the last 2 or 3 years. All the farmers and orchardists have been paying a lot of extra tax. One would have thought that when things are going really well would be the time to plan for when things start to slow down, so that when the belts are tightened we have a leaner, stronger, economy that can weather those storms. But we have seen none of those policies from the Labour Party. That is why Don Brash, in his forthright and direct document Prosperity For All New Zealanders, has set out a plan, endorsed by our leader Bill English, that clearly sets out the priority areas for the New Zealand economy in the future.

Bill English has been travelling the country talking about that document, and he reports that there is a strong and growing desire, particularly from the business community and from families, for the prescription that the National Party in Opposition is talking about. The National Party in Opposition is talking about growth in the economy. It is talking about one standard of citizenship for New Zealand. It is talking about redesigning the welfare State so that we do not leave those 350,000 New Zealanders withering on the vine. It is also talking about education and more opportunity for institutions to compete for the attention of parents.

What we are also talking about is accountability. In question time today we heard Mr Goff skirting any accountability for his lack of decision making and for his inability in the period under review even to pick up the phone to find out what was happening with Barry Allan Ryder. If Mr Goff had known, maybe if he had made some effort, those three boys would not have been affected in the way that they were. That is what Mr Goff said about the previous Government. [Interruption]

💬 Rodney Hide: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. The outburst from Jill Pettis on the speaker was absolutely unacceptable.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you, Mr Hide. Order!

I am used to the common interjections.

💬 Rodney Hide: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: I have dealt with that point of order.

💬 Rodney Hide: So it is OK to accuse the speaker of those things.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: No. I have dealt with that member, and called for order. Would the member please be seated.

What is clear is that this Government does not deserve the support of this House; nor does Mr Goff. He is the guy who made his reputation, saying that Ministers should do something about Barry Allan Ryder because they knew about him. But when he knew, he did absolutely nothing. He is just as responsible for what happened in Christchurch.

I want to refer to a couple of the comments made by previous speakers. The Hon Paul Swain claims that the House should be congratulating the Government for its positive, good work during the 2001-02 year, which is the period of this review. I remind the Hon Paul Swain that during the period of this review, New Zealand experienced the turmoil of the most bitter and destructive industrial action that has ever been seen in education in the history of this country. The ongoing legacy of that bitter dispute is still around today. The issues that have been raised are part of the infrastructural tensions that exist in our educational system today, and they have certainly not been resolved.

I also refer to a point made by the Hon Tony Ryall, who said the National Party is to go back to a policy of choice for parents—it will abolish zoning. It is worthwhile pointing out that it was the previous National Government that reintroduced school zoning in 1998. Zoning had been got rid of in 1993, and it had been recognised that it was an absolute shambles. But legislation introduced by the previous National Government, supported by ACT, put back school zoning in 1998. We really have to start questioning where the National Party is coming from if that is the best that it can come up with in terms of its educational policy.

No party in this House would deny the importance of education. Therefore, I will be focusing upon education in my speech. Possibly—and certainly in the view of New Zealand First—the Education vote is amongst the most important expenditure in any Budget. There is one party that, whilst it believes in education, certainly does not believe that State expenditure should be used for it. But I need to remind that party that even Adam Smith, the father of the philosophy espoused by that party, believed that we need to have State funding in education because individuals would not value education enough to meet the needs of the State itself.

I now go on to some of the other elements that I believe commenced during the period of time that is under review. We are now seeing some of the aftermath of those elements. It is not a question of the degree of funding of education. The National and Labour parties will throw that at each other but, in fact, the amount of funding during this review period was approximately the same as under the previous Government. Labour has introduced a wonderful spin on its policy—for example, including the bulk-funding money, which was already there. That money has been put into the operational funding, which, by the way, is bulk funded anyhow. Labour just took bulk funding from one thing and bulk funded it in another way, and then claimed it had put a whole lot more money into education. It basically robbed Peter to pay Paul.

At the beginning of this review period, the Minister of Education was the darling of the educational fraternity. The members of that fraternity all thought he was wonderful. At this particular point in time, with the possible exception of Merv Wellington he is the Minister of Education who is most detested by the educational fraternity in my time in the House, and we have to ask why that has come about. I say it has come about as a result of not approaching the infrastructural tensions that exist within our education system, and of just reacting and responding to union demands, instead of having a vision of how we can move forward in a constructive fashion into the 21st century.

The first thing, which I have already referred to, is the secondary teachers claim. The secondary teachers claim was about breaking pay parity. The best way to do that was to introduce a whole pile of arguments around qualifications. What has happened, as a result of the Alternative Disputes Resolution Panel’s decision to put people on certain qualifications on to an additional step, is that a whole pile of other angst, pressures, and tensions has been created around the sector. People are extremely disappointed. They feel that they are not receiving fair treatment, and that a social contract made with them by a previous Government has been broken. The whole profession is feeling under attack and unloved, because the critical issues have not been approached. Those issues have not been looked at.

I will give members an example of that. I went to a secondary school the other day. There were six teachers working in the technology department, of whom two had degrees and the other four had advanced diplomas in the areas of technology that they were teaching—the highest qualifications that they were able to get in those areas. One of those degrees was in economics, although that person was not teaching economics. The other degree was a Bachelor of Teaching, which had to do with pedagogy, etc. Only one of those six people receives the G3+ salary step: the one with the degree in economics. In other words, we are paying people purely and simply on the basis of having a degree, regardless of the connectedness of that to the job that they are doing.

We have now put pay parity in for kindergarten teachers, and all the incentives are there for kindergarten teachers to go off and get degrees. They can get degrees in anything—theology or anything they like—and then they will be paid plenty. The degree may have nothing at all to do with the job those teachers are doing, but that is what we will be paying them for. Until we resolve that particular issue, we will be pouring a huge amount of money down the gurgler, we will have a whole lot of people who feel extremely unhappy within the system—and one certainly cannot run a good education system if the prime deliverers of that system are feeling unhappy about things—and that will not benefit education, as such. Until the Minister is prepared to front up to the particular issue of connecting the actual qualifications and the learning that people have with the pay scale in a way that reflects the needs of the system, we will be pouring literally hundreds of millions of dollars down the gurgler every year.

It is ironic that one of the bright points in education that has occurred under this Government has been the Tertiary Education Commission. It has been a long time in coming, and there was certainly a problem in the system, in that the previous National Government’s policies in the 1990s had increased participation rates but had not created a connectedness between what people were doing and what society and the economy needed. So the Government put together the Tertiary Education Commission. That is probably the most important education reform to have come about in the last 10 years. I make a plea to all parties to give that body time. The Tertiary Education Commission has a hugely important and complex task to do in bringing all tertiary education under one umbrella. It has a very large amount of money at its disposal—we are talking about around $1 billion—and if we play political football with the commission from day one, it will not be able to get on with its task. We should give the commission a bit of time and then, if it is not starting to work, it will be appropriate for the Opposition parties to get stuck in. But I do ask that the parties give the commission a little breathing space.

The early childhood situation is in a precarious state at the moment, and that is because of something that may have seemed to be a very good idea: pay parity for kindergarten teachers. But we need to recognise that only one-third of early childhood education is delivered by kindergarten teachers. What we have done is to overlay a secondary staffing structure and pay structure, and, in putting that on to kindergartens, we now have all the incentives completely wrong. The incentives are, in fact, for people to get degrees, and not necessarily to study or to develop skills in the particular field that they need. But that structure will also cause difficulty for those who are providing the other two-thirds of early childhood education that does not involve kindergartens. Where will those other forms of early childhood education get their teachers from? The teachers will all be drafted into kindergartens, with what I consider to be very poor staffing ratios.

I want to mention one other element in this period of review, and that is the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). What this Government has done, in terms of putting up fees in the way that it has, is absolutely scandalous behaviour on the part of a Labour Government. It locks out the very people that former Labour Governments and the Labour Party have, in the past, purported to represent. In this case we are saying to people that they can have their qualification if their parents can afford to pay for it. The cost has gone up sixfold since the year 2000, and there is no justification for that. The reason it has gone up is that the money has not been put in through the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to enable it to afford to administer the qualification. The NCEA could be the best qualification in the world, and it could certainly open up opportunities for young people who have been locked out of the system because of the qualifications systems that were in place before. Instead, along came this Government with a Minister of Education—who is also an Associate Minister of Finance—who says the Government has to make sure that it keeps control of things, and it has put up the fees.

In this debate we will hear a lot of whinging, whining, carping, snivelling, and grizzling from the Opposition. I cannot believe that the Opposition members are going to be so negative, when all around them there is so much good news to be celebrated.

💬 Hon Brian Donnelly: Tell us about the NCEA fees. Is that good news?

Brian Donnelly is normally a very positive person, until he comes to the House to speak against the Government in a debate, when he suddenly becomes the epitome of negativity. He is normally a person with a very positive outlook. Brian Donnelly should be celebrating this Government. The only thing that Brian Donnelly should be grizzling about is the fact that he is not a member of this Government. That should be the only sadness in his life.

If Brian Donnelly looks at the situation in Northland, where he comes from—he goes there occasionally—what can he see in the far north and in Northland? He can see growth of 3.9 percent in regional economic activity for the year ended December 2002. Brian Donnelly could tell everybody in this House that unemployment levels in Northland have dropped dramatically. At the time when he was a member of the previous Government—and I think he was a good member, who did his honest best and tried very hard—the unemployment levels in Northland were going up, there was depression around New Zealand, and the rising cost of State house rents was driving the unemployed and beneficiaries into poverty. Brian Donnelly did not do anything about that.

Brian Donnelly wants New Zealand to be a place where people have hope and opportunity, and where there is progress. He should celebrate this Government, instead of grizzling about some of the things we have not got right—and I will acknowledge that there are a few of those. But on the whole—

💬 Rodney Hide: List them.

I have only two hands. I would have to take my shoes off to get to about 15, in order to list the failures. But we should also look at our successes.

Maybe Mr Rodney Hide will get up and tell the House that he knows the difference between being in Parliament and out of Parliament. It would be very interesting to hear his position on that. Mr Hide comes from Auckland. He is also a member who should celebrate the success of this Government. Mr Hide will be able to tell people that in the regional economic activity for Auckland last year, at the end of December 2002, there was a growth rate of 4.6 percent. Mr Hide should say that that is a fantastic result. He should say that 4.6 percent growth in the largest city in New Zealand is a fantastic result, and he should congratulate the Government on its excellent stewardship of the economy.

Mr Hide will also know, and he will agree with Mr Donnelly and me, that unemployment is one of the great scourges of this country. When this Government took office, unemployment was touching 10 percent in the area I come from, and on average around the country it was about 8.5 percent. What is unemployment today? It is 4.9 percent. I think that both the ACT members and the New Zealand First members should get up and do what they did earlier this day, and recommend motions congratulating the Government on its outstanding achievements.

💬 Hon Brian Donnelly: Ha, ha!

Mr Donnelly does not think he will do that. I suppose he is simply keeping faith with his purpose in life here as a member of the Opposition, which is to oppose. However, if he wants to put some more integrity into politics, he should say that a job well done deserves to be credited. This Government has done a fantastic job. We have brought unemployment down to a 15-year low; it has not been as low as that in 15 years. That has been the result of a mixture of things. I do not think the Government can take all the credit for it, but it can take credit for providing good, stable, sensible leadership. People know the direction of this Government because it is clearly articulated, and we are doing things in areas where those things should have been done a long time ago.

A previous speaker, Tony Ryall, also spoke in a very negative fashion. He did not tell us where the National Party’s prescription went wrong in the 9 long, hard, suffering years that it was in power. What did the previous National Government do when unemployment rose? [Interruption] What does Lindsay Tisch say? He just barks and interjects like an empty vessel.

💬 Clayton Cosgrove: He squeaks.

He squeaks, but there is no real sense coming from him, at all. Mr Tisch also should be saying that it is fantastic progress for this country that we now have 15,500 fewer people on the unemployment benefit than we had a year ago. In 1 year there are 15,500 more people off the unemployment benefit than before. We have done a lot of things that represent great progress for this country. I think that the Opposition should look positively at this Government and say that it has done a good job.

Instead, what do we have from the Opposition parties? We have the clanger of all time—the leap back into the past by the intellectual leader of the National Party, Don Brash. Don Brash says that the unemployed should line up on a daily basis outside the central post office, to be paid a daily allowance for being unemployed. The thing that Don Brash forgot, or overlooked, was that Richard Prebble sold off all the post offices. They are gone; there is no such thing as a central post office any more. But that is the sort of intellectual rigour we have from the National Party.

The second thing that Don Brash forgot to mention was that if one is to solve the problem of unemployment, simply having a stick to beat people with will not achieve that. People are unemployed for a reason, and very often the reason is that they do not have the skills necessary to get the available jobs. Having people line up outside the central post office on a daily basis will not give them the skills necessary to be successful applicants for the vacant positions. That very important fact has escaped Don Brash—the intellectual leader of the National Party—but it has not escaped this Government. We have invested a substantial amount of money into developing case management for each individual unemployed person, in order to look at the needs of that person. We are looking at where the gaps are in the skills and at where the job vacancies are, and we are investing a substantial amount of money into training and into skills, so that we can help people to make the transition from unemployment to employment—to being constructive members of our public. [Interruption] The Government is being successful, I say to Lindsay Tisch, who barks on the Opposition side of the House. I say to him yet again that unemployment is at a 15-year low, at 4.9 percent. Last year 15,500 people made the transition from unemployment to employment. Members should compare that with the previous National Government’s record. Every year that National was in office, unemployment went up. We have reversed that trend, and I say that there has been fantastic leadership by this Government and by the Prime Minister, Helen Clark.

We have a vision of where this country needs to go. We need to develop and harness the talents and skills of our people. We are investing more in education, and in research and development. We are addressing the problem of the social ills in our society. Although members of other parties talked long and hard about victims and their rights, it was not until Phil Goff got on the case that we passed the legislation on victims’ rights. The National Party and other parties—ACT supported the National Party in that Government—beat their gums mercilessly about tougher sentences, but it was not until this Labour Government came to power, with Phil Goff, that we changed the law.

💬 Lindsay Tisch: What about accident compensation?

Lindsay Tisch rabbits on about accident compensation. I say to Lindsay Tisch that the average cost of accident compensation across New Zealand has gone down by over 20 percent since this Government changed the system. There have been savings of over 20 percent across this country. That member is simply wedded to ideology. The mouth moves like a dunny door in a nor’west wind, and that is why the National Party is in the position that it is in. National is all noise. It has no substance, no vision, and no leadership.

When we go to the next election, this Government will stand on its record. We will still have record low levels of unemployment. We will have record levels of job creation and of investment, and we will be addressing, piece by piece, all the social issues that need to be addressed in this country. We will do so with kind policies that the public will support. We will do that because we are passionate about New Zealand. We are passionate about the people we seek to represent, and we enjoy record levels of support for that and for the quality of the leadership of this Labour Government. I am very proud to be a member of this Government. I think that it has done a fantastic job, and I think that if the Opposition had any shred of integrity, it would move a resolution praising this Labour-led Government.

I am pleased that the Hon Rick Barker identified me as a positive and optimistic sort of fellow. I am prepared to offer congratulations where they are due, and I do congratulate this Government on sticking with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act, which is very important to our economic and social success, and also for sticking with the Fiscal Responsibility Act, rather than abandoning those twin pillars of the modern New Zealand economy. But I say to Mr Barker that it was a mistake of this Government to get rid of the Employment Contracts Act, and it was also a mistake to put up the top rate of income tax. I also point out to this Government that there is a fundamental priority of any Government anywhere in the world, and that is to protect the citizens of a country—in the streets, in their homes, and in their places of work.

💬 Clayton Cosgrove: What about people getting harassed on Pipitea Street?

It is all very well for Mr Clayton Cosgrove to call out homophobic comments, just because he cannot even get his secretary to go out with him. If I were that member I would just pipe down. He should just forget that he cannot get his secretary to go out with him, and listen to me. I say the fundamental priority of any Government is to protect its citizens. But what has happened to crime under this Government? It has gone up. What has happened in terms of people feeling safe in the streets, and in their homes and places of work? That has gone down.

It is not enough just to protect people from the thugs and the bullies domestically; we have to do so internationally, as well. What has this Government done? It has disbanded the combat wing of our Air Force, because the Prime Minister says that we do not have enough money for that. What other action has this Government taken? It has abandoned—[Interruption] I keep hearing from Clayton Cosgrove. He is fixated on his secretary and not going out with her. He should just listen to the important issues. This Government has abandoned New Zealand’s traditional allies with whom we have bonds forged in peace, in trade, and in war. It has abandoned them. I say that that is a disgrace to New Zealand

What happens when this Government says that it does not have the money needed for the police, does not have the money to fix ladies’ varicose veins, and does not have the money for the air combat wing? Last week we heard that Jim Anderton had allocated $1.5 million to EDS (New Zealand) Ltd for a call centre. I do not remember this Government campaigning to give $1.5 million of taxpayers’ money to an overseas multinational computer company. Not at all! That money was a mistake. That is an example of what we are seeing from this Government. The money is going out to be spent on wasteful things and not on the priorities, which are defence, the police, and the protection of the people in New Zealand.

In this financial appropriation, we see that Te Māngai Pāho and Te Puni Kōkiri are mentioned. The Government has given over half a million dollars in 3 years to Māori Sportscasting International, and what do we know? We know that $7,000 has gone back in expenses to a Te Māngai Pāho employee, so that he could go and watch rugby games—in Sydney twice, and all around New Zealand—with taxpayers’ money. This Government says that that is OK. In fact, a year later, yesterday, that employee resigned, saying that he did not feel very good about it. But Clayton Cosgrove did not mind. No, no—he did not mind. He thought it was OK for that to happen.

What did we then find today? We found that the same company, Māori Sportscasting International, received $10,000 from Te Puni Kōkiri—members will love this—to hold a training wānanga for budding sportscasters in te reo, in July last year.

💬 Lindsay Tisch: Where was that?

In Auckland. What happened was that on the Saturday night everyone got in a bus, and they all went down to the flash Lakeside Convention Centre in Auckland, by the airport. Out came the buffet and out came the booze, all paid for by the taxpayer. Oh—and there was band that cost $800. Who should come along, with their Labour Party rosettes, on the campaign trail, but the Hon Dover Samuels and the Hon John Tamihere to do a bit of electioneering at a function paid for by the taxpayer. That is treating, and it is treating with taxpayers’ money.

I ask Clayton Cosgrove whether he agrees with taxpayers’ money that went to a private company coming back to the civil servant who is overseeing that contract, and with money that was allocated for the training of Māori sportscasters being spent on a dinner at the Lakeside Convention Centre—during the election campaign—at which there is a band, and at which Dover Samuels, with his Labour Party rosette, got to campaign and John Tamihere got to hongi, both of them beside Hemana Waaka. What happened? Well, Mr Waaka received half a million dollars over 3 years from this Government. All that he had to do was to kick a bit back to the civil servant and to look after his mates in the Labour Party by helping them to get re-elected. I am surprised that all members of this Government seem to think that that is appropriate.

Here is what we need to do in order to get this economy going. Let us get rid of the Cullen superannuation fund. Let us get rid of the $2 billion a year that is going into it so that Michael Cullen—[Interruption] Clayton Cosgrove still cannot get a date. He goes on and on, but he cannot get a date. He tries the people he employs. They will not go out with him, so he fires them. I just wish Clayton Cosgrove would focus on this debate, rather than going on and on about being unable to secure a date while in Wellington. We need to get rid of the Cullen fund, and, instead of having Michael Cullen play the role of international financier on the sharemarkets of the world, we need to give that $2 billion back to working New Zealanders—the people who create the wealth in New Zealand. If they had the choice between having 25 bucks a week in their pockets or giving that amount to this Government to throw away overseas, what would they choose? There is no doubt in my mind that working New Zealanders would choose to keep that $25 in their pockets. That is why Clayton Cosgrove will not allow them to make that choice. In fact, if we went to the surpluses that Clayton Cosgrove wants to spend, we could give $50 a week to every worker in the country. Alternatively, we could take the top rate of tax rate down to about 23c in the dollar, the company tax rate down to about 23c in the dollar, and the 33c in the dollar rate down to 23c in the dollar.

💬 Clayton Cosgrove: Rich mates!

Cosgrove talks about my rich mates. I am pleased that I have mates—unlike Clayton Cosgrove, who is so desperate for a date that he hit on his private secretary, and then fired her because she would not go out with him. I find it unbelievable that he complains about me having friends, when he cannot get a friend in Wellington.

The ACT party says we should take the money and return it to productive New Zealand. Let us grow the cake, not make it smaller, and let us do this: let us apply the limited taxpayers’ funds to the basics of defending New Zealanders at home and abroad through proper police funding, proper support for the military, and proper support for our traditional allies, whom we rely on for the peace and security of our world.

Today we face a horrifying new epidemic of what is called severe acute respiratory syndrome, caused by a mysterious disease-causing organism that is spreading rapidly, and, amongst other things, is resistant to all antibiotics. We do not know whether this organism is caused by a bacterium or a virus, but whatever it is, the new epidemic is a portent of the horrifying and untreatable illnesses we will inevitably confront if antibiotic-resistant, disease-causing organisms continue to spread rapidly around the world and in New Zealand. They are spreading to the extent that we will find ourselves—and are already finding ourselves—entering a post-antibiotic era in which we cannot treat illnesses with antibiotics.

This brings me to the report of the 2002-03 estimates for Vote Food Safety. If we were to take the report’s totally passive, reactive approach to the use of antibiotics, particularly in animal feed, we would inevitably find ourselves with a huge problem in New Zealand. Essentially this report supports the continued indiscriminate feeding of antibiotics to millions of animals in New Zealand that are not even sick. If we continue with this present policy we will inevitably have more and more resistance, and, therefore, more and more illnesses that are resistant to all antibiotics.

I would like particularly to focus on two sentences in this report that deal with antibiotic resistance. The first statement says there are no plans at present to test poultry in New Zealand for antibiotic resistance. The second one says that there is no evidence to date that the use of in-feed antibiotics in animals has prompted resistance in any human pathogens. What an extraordinary statement! There is growing evidence around the world—overwhelming evidence—that feeding antibiotics routinely to millions of animals, such as chickens, does cause the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. These bacteria, in turn, can remain in meat such as chicken meat, when we buy it in the supermarket, and then can transfer into our bodies by way of uncooked meat, utensils, cutting boards, and so forth. There they can remain and colonise our intestines, and pass on their resistance to other bacteria.

Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. By tradition, the financial review debate is a wide debate, but it is an economic debate. I have been listening carefully to the honourable member, who perhaps should resume her seat while I am taking a point of order, and I do not recollect her mentioning, at all, the financial review, which is what this second reading debate is. She is rabbiting on about antibiotics and bacterial resistance, which have nothing to do with the financial review debate. Although I totally support the broad nature of this debate, I think a person does have to address the financial review one way or another.

It is a wide-ranging debate; it relates to finance, and it also relates to the performance of Government.

💬 SUE KEDGLEY: I can easily refer, if the honourable member wishes, to the fact that a woefully inadequate amount of funding—in fact, virtually non-existent funding—is being allocated to measure the prevalence of antibiotic resistance in New Zealand. Here in New Zealand—the member may be surprised to know, because there was certainly no reference to it in the report—we have the equivalent of an animal superbug, vancomycin-resistant enterococci, established in poultry. It is a bacterium resistant to vancomycin, the antibiotic of last resort. One would think that we would have money allocated in our estimates to survey chickens, in order to see to what extent this particular animal antibiotic-resistant bacterium has spread throughout our chicken flock, but we have no money at all for that; in fact, we have no policy. We have a specific policy of not bothering to test chickens. But a very recent independent survey of over 100 poultry farms in New Zealand has found that 50 percent of chickens are contaminated with vancomycin-resistant enterococci. That is half of our poultry flock, yet we are saying that we will not undertake random testing of chicken meat to establish the incidence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

The incidence of vancomycin-resistant enterocci is small in hospitals, but it is increasing. Australian studies show that the bacteria can spread through a hospital very, very quickly, and the great fear is that vancomycin-resistant enterocci may transfer its resistance—and it has already done this in America—to the human superbug, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which is prevalent throughout our hospitals. If that is the case, we will inevitably have untreatable illness throughout our hospitals. So one would think that the food safety agency would deal to this very serious threat.

SUE BRADFORD (Green): Unfortunately it has been apparent from yet another financial review of the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services that fundamental problems remain, despite the excellent Brown report of 2 years ago, and the fact that extra funding has been poured in by Government.

It was clear to those of us sitting on the Social Services Committee carrying out this year’s review that while commendable efforts have been made in a number of areas, there are still critical areas of concern. I will name just a few of them. There is an ongoing lack of experience and qualifications among departmental social workers, and I can only commend to Government that the Social Workers Registration Bill should be dealt with as soon as possible. There is a rise in the number of unallocated cases, and a gross failure to meet the department’s own performance standards, especially in the urgent and low-urgent categories of notification. There is a clear ongoing problem of lack of support for families before, during, and after the traumatic process of having their children removed by the State, and there is a continuing shortage of beds in youth justice facilities, leading to young people being kept in police cells far too often, and for far too long.

On several occasions I have heard the Minister express confidence in the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services. However I am seriously beginning to wonder whether his confidence in his department continues. My doubt on this score is not only because of these ongoing and huge problems but also because of news I have just heard, that yet another major review of the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services is happening. This time it is a “first-principle, baseline review”. I have only second-hand information on this review at this stage, but it appears that the first-principle review is looking deeply at what the work of the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services actually is, and how well its financial systems work. Heads of the Ministry of Social Development and the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services are involved, along with Treasury and Ministry of Social Development officials, in looking at why the department continues to cost more and more to operate, while its outputs and outcomes fail to meet anyone’s expectations.

While I guess one can always call reviews and investigations commendable, I do ask myself where this one—conducted away from any glare of publicity as far as I can see, and without the involvement of the community sector—is actually going, and what it says about the Minister’s faith, or lack of it, in his department. The Brown report was comprehensive, and the subsequent New Directions strategic programme was put in place to try to implement its recommendations. Why are we having another review now, and where will it lead? Why does the Government not have the capacity to understand that a demand-driven service with a capped budget will always run into big trouble, whether it is the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services, health, or anything else of a similar nature? Why has whoever called for the review not formally involved voluntary sector groups, given that in 2002-03 the department will administer nearly $86.6 million in funding to the third sector?

Whether or not it does anything else, I hope that the review team will look at why the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services seems to do a good job of keeping the lid on community group funding, whilst not exercising anything like the same restraints on its own operations. The department was supposed to be picking up on some of the recommendations of the community and voluntary sector working-party, yet funding for overheads and administration for providers, multi-year funding, and rises in allocations to take inflation and realistic pay scales into account do not seem to have happened.

If the Minister, the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services, the Ministry of Social Development, and Treasury are serious about once again reviewing this organisation, they should be leading the way in the template for Government - non-governmental organisation relations, which they aspire to. They should be operating a fully consultative process that recognises the value and significance of what the community sector now adds to the department’s work, as ignoring their voice is flying in the face of their own strategies.

I believe that if there is to be a review like this, there needs to be a thorough evaluation of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act at the same time, and a look at the whole question of how we provide adequate services in these very difficult areas. We have a system that is obviously totally under stress, despite the best intentions of this Government, and we need to work together to try to end that stress. I think we have to look not just at the department itself, as this new review is doing, but also at the Act that governs the department, and at the same time take into account all the work that has happened in the years since the original Act was put into place so that we can find some really good strategies forward. We should be looking at new priorities and new ways of working that can utilise the very good experience we have had in both the department itself and the community sector in this generation.

No doubt many of us have heard of the “kiss” principle—“keep it simple, stupid”. Yet in reality how often do we operate it? If we spend money without building people of principle, we will ultimately fail. So let us look at one of life’s greatest challenges, such as bringing up children, and ask how the ”kiss” principle works here. Children are worth investing in. As United Future’s spokesperson on youth, I have a passion to see a good return from our investment in this area. When a child is born, do we not just love that gorgeous little bundle that we bring home? But we all know that babies grow, and by the time they reach 2 years old they realise that, yes, indeed, they do have a mind of their own, and, “mum and dad, I’m going to start using it.” The interpretation of this is, “yes, you may have been nice to me up until now, but I still declare war.” I have discovered that that war normally continues for at least 20 years!

But let me help members here; they do not need to be concerned with the complex issues. Members should come back to the simple issues of life, train the children in them, and they will have great results. On the back of our toilet door we had a poster on which were listed the deeper areas of life—the complex and hard areas of life that are essential for children to learn if they are to succeed. Let me quote a few of them: “If you open the door, shut the door. If you borrow something, give it back. If you want people to be nice to you, be nice to them.” Yes, we may laugh at those quotes yet in reality, as simple as they sound, they are incredibly challenging to instil into our children, yet instil them we must if we want great citizens.

My point today, as I speak on this bill, is that it is very easy to make life far more complex than is necessary; for example, by changing the meaning of a word. Who really wants to rewrite the dictionary every time we change a law? Let us keep life simple so that the average person can understand it. I come back to children. We often ask them exactly which part of “no” they are having trouble understanding. Another helpful hint in bringing up children is that parents need to say “no” to a lot more things that they are currently saying “yes” to. “Yes” may be easier on them in the short term, but a few more noes are far more effective in the long term.

So why all this talk of simplicity? Well, personally, many of us, and especially politicians, try to make life far more complex than it was ever intended to be, and complexity normally costs far more. Look at our own childhood memories. What do members remember? I guarantee it is those simple things that cost little, apart from time. Most people on their deathbed often wish they had spent more time on the simple things in life that are normally free.

I want to close on one word that is very important to a healthy society, a word that is imperative to the well-being of children, and a word that is very important to me. Study shows also that it is vitally important to the growth of our economy. It is a word that is clearly defined in the Collins Concise Dictionary, and a word that does not require expansion or greater clarification. But it is a word that is currently under threat, and a word that I will fight with all that I have within me to keep in its current context. What is this word? The word, my friends, is “marriage”, which is defined in the dictionary as “The state or relationship of being husband and wife. The legal union or contract made by a man and a woman to live as husband and wife.”

This word needs to be respected, not pulled apart, if we want a truly great society. Simplicity is the way forward, and that is why United Future—

💬 Sue Bradford: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I wish to pick up on the same point of order as my colleague Dr Lockwood Smith. Laudable as the member’s sentiments may be, I cannot find anything in his speech to do with the financial reviews of any Government department.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: I thank the member. I refer all members to Standing Order 332. Members need to relate their speeches to the performance and financial measures that the Government is taking.

I will speak to Sue Bradford’s point. United Future stands for the family. The family is the greatest thing for the economy that there will ever be. And as we rebuild the family in this country and teach those principles, members will find that, indeed, our financial expenditure in the nation will drop dramatically.

I want to reflect on health expenditure. When reviewing expenditure on health, it is important to look at what I want to call the health climate of New Zealand that made the spending necessary in the first place, and to ask ourselves what has been done, and what is being done, to reduce the need for costly health procedures.

When the focus is predominantly on surgery waiting lists and expensive treatment centres, and that alone, we will perpetuate the ever-deepening hole that contains health funding. The risk factors are well documented and continue to beg for attention. United Future is committed to partnering with both Government and community organisations to reduce health risks by addressing the lifestyle issues that destroy New Zealanders’ quality of life.

For instance, one of the key socio-economic risk factors in health outcomes is unemployment. The Government is to be congratulated on the present tracking down of these statistics. The environmental factors that need consideration are things like water quality, issues surrounding fluoridation, and naturally occurring mineral deficiencies such as selenium. The impact that these have on public health and public health expenditure needs to be considered and addressed.

We continue to pay dearly for the unacceptable levels of obesity and the closely related prevalence of diabetes, high blood pressure, and blood cholesterol concerns. Smoking and the culture that surrounds alcohol consumption in New Zealand need to be made an even higher priority. In 2001 the alcohol and public research unit reported: “Alcohol consumption amongst young people is of concern as there is evidence that heavier drinking cohorts of young people go on to be heavier drinkers in later life and experience more alcohol-related harm.” It also reported that “younger drinkers are more likely to experience alcohol-related harm than older drinkers.”

Whenever we review our financial priorities we should assess whether those priorities include long-term planning and whether those plans are getting the planned outcomes. How do we facilitate an increase in activity levels, an appropriate fat intake, and the inclusion of fruit and vegetables in Kiwis’ diets? What are the ranges of strategies that have been identified and are being funded to reduce behavioural risk factors in the Kiwi lifestyle?

Government investment in what seems to be the obvious is essential if we are to be able to afford the health services we want for the future. Child immunisation and sight and hearing tests at school entry point need to be funded at a more effective level. Last week I received a letter from a schoolteacher who said that she has discovered that the hearing test at her school does not pick up the problems that many of her children are suffering from, but that a more expensive test would. We need to look at those kinds of issues. Oral health funding for schoolchildren and injury prevention for children are all areas that will save us dollars in health and give us dollars in the areas where we want to spend.

While work and research continue as a part of the fight against life-threatening cancers, never before have we enjoyed the weight of evidence regarding the increased risk that is a consequence of lifestyle choices. Publicly funded public health education strategies have never been more relevant in this regard. In relation to the health of our young people, youth suicide, youth motor vehicle mortality, and teen pregnancy are all preventable youth health issues. United Future wants to challenge the Government to see that the New Zealand public tax dollar is used to a greater extent to fund initiatives that proactively work to help the public address the health issues that are personally preventable, and to offer its support to that end.

I am pleased to speak in this financial review debate. I am very proud of the achievements of this Labour-Progressive Government, and particularly proud of the achievements we have made in economic industry and regional development. In the past 3 years we have achieved some magnificent progress for New Zealand. When I say “we”, I mean all sectors of the New Zealand economy, particularly the regional New Zealand economy. However, we cannot be complacent; there is a lot more to do yet.

The appropriations from this House have gone towards improving the standard of living of all New Zealanders by creating jobs and building stronger regions and communities. I want every member of the House to celebrate that. There are some who do not, but I know how strong the regions of this country are in comparison with how they were when this first coalition Government was elected in 1999. Members can say that that it is nothing to do with them, but they are not believed out in the regions. That is why those members are there, and that is why these members are here. Any time the National Party wants to trade its regional development record against this Government’s regional development record, make my day! I know how everyone in the regions feels about that, and so do the members opposite.

However, we need to make much more progress towards stronger businesses and industries, and, of course, it would be good to increase our relative standings in the OECD. It does not matter when that is achieved, as long as it is achieved progressively, and I believe it will be achieved. In the 2002-03 Budget, which I am proud to be associated with, we will invest $112 million on Vote Industry and Regional Development. That is 0.3 percent of total Government spending in this financial year. If anyone thinks that is extravagant, I would like him or her to talk to the Queensland State Parliament. I can assure the House that the Queensland Minister of State Development has a bigger budget than that. Nevertheless, I believe we are making very good use of ours. It contrasts very neatly with the no-assistance for industries and businesses of the National and ACT-supported Government that, interestingly, spent $12.9 billion, or 37 percent of its total Budget, on dependency created through unemployment and hands-off economic policies.

ACT and National clearly support Government intervention in the economy, but not if it involves making the economy stronger. This money is making our economy stronger and people less dependent, yet we are constantly criticised for doing it. I urge the National Party to consider what the relevant and relative views—

Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith: Has the Minister read the OECD report yet?

The OECD report on Industry New Zealand? What this Government is doing is extremely good; the OECD describes it as “cutting-edge development”. We have encouraged growth in an area of innovation and creativity where New Zealand has strengths. It is a sensible and targeted effort to bolster development, to help create jobs and reduce the size of unemployment costs in future years—both human and financial.

I have just come from a meeting on youth suicide. I am the Minister to whom this Government has given the responsibility for that issue. I can share with members of Parliament the fact that various studies have shown quite clearly the very direct link between unemployment and youth suicide. A recent study in America showed that unemployed people were three times more likely to commit suicide than those who were not. Is there anything about that we do not understand? As the unemployment rates in New Zealand fall, it is not a great surprise to me personally that the suicide rates have fallen. We should all be pleased about that. My experience in the front line as a member of Parliament and constituency MP is that unemployment is one of the most serious causes of depression in young people. In the 1980s and 1990s, kids were losing jobs in all directions, getting sick, and even becoming invalids, because they were unemployable after being out of a job for a long time. This Government has the best record for 15 years in reducing unemployment. I do not know why members do not celebrate that, unless it is because they like being permanently miserable.

I am puzzled by the continued use of the mantra of tax cuts as a solution for all business ills. Every time there is a business issue, ACT or National announce that tax cuts will solve it. There is a saying that for every complicated problem there are a number of simple answers—all of them wrong. Tax cuts are simply just another less efficient economic intervention. A tax cut across the board is a general subsidy for business—that is all it is. If we want to make funds available for the development of the New Zealand economy, surely we should at least target them. If members opposite want to cut a few hundred million dollars off, say, business taxes, then they should ask themselves which schools, universities, hospitals, and other important social services they will close in their electorates. Every day in this House, members opposite ask why there is not more money for operations in hospitals, why we do not have more teachers for our kids in schools, and all the rest of it.

At one stage, we had one of the National Party members—I think it was Nick Smith—suggesting that we should have laptop computers for everybody.

💬 Clayton Cosgrove: Gerry Brownlee.

It was Gerry Brownlee. I think that suggestion was going to cost about a thousand million dollars. There were certainly no tax revenue proposals to go with it. We were going to cut tax, but have laptop computers for all the kids in schools. I have never quite figured out how that works. Perhaps Lockwood Smith could tell us how that works. How can one cut taxes for everybody in the country, but have laptop computers, F16 fighters, and all the rest of it?

I have just returned from Australia, where I looked at some of the economic industry and regional development incentives. I can tell members that we are among the learner brigades when it comes to actually getting Governments involved in the way their economies work. Lockwood Smith quoted the OECD, which has said that our economic development programmes are among the world’s best-practice programmes. We support advice, and, where it is beneficial, we support grants. I fully support assisting businesses, regions, and industries. Do members of the Opposition not support that? Do they not support regional development? Do they not support the development of our businesses? Do they not support clusters of industry coming together and using innovation and creativity to build the economy in New Zealand? That is what is happening all around the world. Governments are working in partnership with their local and regional communities, and with their local businesses and industries. That is best practice internationally. The Opposition is trying to tell us that we should desist and go back to the practices of the 1980s and 1990s, which were miserable failures in terms of economic development.

If we look at New Zealand’s international indebtedness, we can see that by the time we got to 1989, we had levels of well-being that were about 5 percent below those of Australia. That was not a great situation. By the end of the 1990s, the levels were 40 percent below those of Australia—we went plummeting down. The policies we are being urged to go back to were miserable failures. Why would one go back? I can assure members that the regions of New Zealand do not want to do it. The businesses of New Zealand, which I talk to from one end of the country to the other, do not want to do it. In Christchurch, Rodney Hide made a comment that this was all about handouts to business. The Press—which is not exactly a socialist rag—went all over Christchurch asking businesses what they thought about Industry New Zealand. They said it was the best thing since sliced bread, and that, without it, they would not have been where they were; they would have taken much longer to get there. They were grateful. So if Rodney Hide thinks that attacking Industry New Zealand, the Ministry of Economic Development, and regional development is the way for ACT to go, I say good luck.

Today in this House we saw his leader say: “Let’s have a vote in Parliament to really see where the representatives of New Zealand are on this issue.” What was the result? The votes were 35 to 80-something—that is how in touch with the reality of New Zealand the ACT party is. National has aligned itself with that lot, and it is no wonder that National is where it is now. This Government has taken New Zealand on to a new level of economic and social activity. I applaud the Government for that, and am pleased to be part of it.

Ngā mihi ki a koe; ka mihi ki a koutou ngā mema o te Whare nei.

[Greetings to you; greetings to the members of the House.]

It gives me pleasure to participate in the debate on this bill. From the inception of the debate today, we have heard, particularly from Government members, that this is a Government of growth. If their interpretation of “growth” means, for instance, that they have increased the health budget by just over 12 percent during the last financial year, then why is it that the health needs of New Zealanders are not being met? If we are to talk about growth, I say that the needs of the New Zealand public are certainly growing. Yet, in spite of the compliments that this Government gives itself, the health of New Zealanders is no better.

💬 Hon John Tamihere: Not in New Zealand First.

That member should not worry about it—we will be there, and we can fix it. However, 63 percent of the vote was set aside to purchase services from district health boards. Yet we have had a number of district health boards ending the year with a deficit.

💬 Jill Pettis: That’s not the first time. Where have you been?

That is right, and it is getting worse. I am glad I am not one of those people on hospital waiting lists. The Government might praise itself over the so-called diminishing numbers on hospital waiting lists, but they have only come about as a result of the administrative acrobatics imposed on district health boards by the Government through its Minister of Health.

💬 Bill Gudgeon: That’s right. It wiped the waiting lists and told people to go back to their general practitioners.

It will not get any better. The deficit for district health boards was $250 million. If we are going to talk about growth, not one member on that side of the House will deny that there will not be growth in that area under this Government. This Government is failing the people of New Zealand. If it wants evidence, it should ask those people whose names have been removed from waiting lists—not because they have had their much-needed operations, but because of the administrative manoeuvrings imposed by this Government through the Minister of Health.

People are being referred to Australia to undertake urgent surgery. Although it is a credit that that is being undertaken, why do we have to send our people offshore to get much-needed operations? Is it not ironic that today we had a debate on Iraq, and people were talking about our relationship with Australia, yet we do not support the decision Australia has taken to act with our allies?

💬 Hon Phil Goff: Neither did your party. It voted against.

Be that as it may, this Government is sending our people offshore to get the services of that country, yet when it comes to the serious issue of defending the rights and democracy of the free world, it contradicts that very relationship.

💬 Hon Phil Goff: No. The member has just contradicted what his party voted against.

Never mind that, I have made my point. In the area of mental health—and perhaps that member might need its services—there has been under-spending. Why is that?

💬 Jill Pettis: Because not enough staff have been trained.

If the Government is going to talk about growth, why does it not increase the number of skilled and trained staff? Nothing has been said about that, and nothing has been done about it either. If we are going to talk about growth, there is an area where this Government can take credit for growth—growth in the need for trained people in the field of mental health.

Recently, $5 million was allocated to Team New Zealand.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

As I was saying earlier, the under-spending that occurred in the area of mental health was shameful, and this Government must take responsibility for the pain and anguish that some members of the New Zealand public have had to endure through the loss of, and harm to, loved ones as a consequence of a service being inadequately resourced. In the context of the recent decision by the Government to grant $5 million to a sporting team rather than offering to underwrite that amount, I have no doubt that all New Zealanders who require health services could well be asking why similar grants and resources cannot be provided to help them, at similar short notice.

Allied to the whole issue of health is the issue of housing. Again, we heard that this Government is about growth. It certainly does not apply that in respect of homeownership. Homeownership rates are falling. Is that what this Government means by growth? In 1991, 73.8 percent of New Zealanders owned their own homes. In 2001, that rate had fallen to 67.8 percent. Why is that? Of course, it has to be a matter of affordability, and it is already predicted that that situation will get worse. I have no doubt that members in the House will agree that the leaky-house syndrome has something to do with the predicted increase in costs for housing. This Government would have us believe that likely causes for the drop in homeownership are later family formation, women delaying motherhood—

💬 Steve Chadwick: Is that a bad thing?

—and an increasing number of short-term and casual jobs. A member on the other side of the House asked whether women delaying motherhood is a bad thing. It is not necessarily a bad thing, but if one is to use that excuse for the declining rate of homeownership in this country, then it is a very poor excuse. Why do women delay becoming mothers? The reason is that they want to go out and work. They want to be able to raise the necessary finance, in order to enjoy homeownership. Yet we are led to believe that this is one of the reasons for the decline in homeownership.

However, to the credit of the Acting Minister of Housing, there is the admission that the Kiwi dream of owning a home may no longer be true. I say to the Government that the Kiwi dream will remain just that—a dream. What is the Government’s answer? It is to provide New Zealanders with rental housing. Although that answer might have merit, it loses its effectiveness if rental housing is provided in areas where there is unlikely to be ready access to employment—for example, the Hobsonville site, where employment opportunities are at a premium. I suggest again that that will ensure that New Zealanders in that sector of the community—those who are in poor housing and unemployed—will continue to support this Government.

I rise to support this bill. The debate tonight is an opportunity to illustrate to the people of New Zealand the stark difference between the Government and the Opposition parties—and there is a stark point of differentiation. The debate tonight is an opportunity to reinforce that differentiation to the people of New Zealand. On this side of the House is a Labour-led Government that kept its promises when it came into power, and in its second term it is continuing to build a social contract with the people of New Zealand. It is restoring the integrity of Parliament between those of us who govern and the people we govern. We restore that integrity by keeping faith with the people who elected, us by not selling them out—by making promises before an election and keeping them afterwards. This Government is an example of a Government that is stable and that has provided strong leadership, and in doing so has built a stable, solid platform from which we can continue to get economic growth.

I am proud to walk up and down the streets of my electorate in Waimakariri, and when I ask ordinary men and women in the street how things are going, they reply: “Hey, things are going pretty well. Yes, we’ve got a few issues. We’ve got a few problems to sort out.” They are proud of this Government, and that is reflected in the polls.

As evidence for what I am saying in terms of the leadership and the strong governance exhibited by this Government, I want to look at some of our achievements in the last 6 months. The rate of economic growth has been 3.9 percent. That is one of the best growth rates in the OECD, even in these troubled international times. There are 15,500 fewer people on the unemployment benefit than there were a year ago—123,000 new jobs have been created since Labour came to power. Unemployment is at 4.9 percent, the lowest rate in 15 to 20 years. Those are real achievements. They are achievements that the people of New Zealand can measure this Government by. If we look at the National Party’s record on unemployment, we see that for 9 years it averaged a rate of 8.1 percent. It did nothing to create economic growth. It did nothing to put people into real jobs and give them a sense of dignity.

I was reminded tonight, at a function, of the law and order and the justice debate. It was Mr Richard Worth who said to me that justice is such a priority in the National Party that he is ranked No. 23 as Opposition spokesperson on justice. That is the priority the National Party puts on law and order and justice. So what have we done? In stark contrast to 9 years of inaction from that crew, we have put in place a Victims’ Rights Act, a piece of legislation that makes mandatory the rights of victims. We said we would do it. We took some time over it. We acted logically and with honour, and we fulfilled that promise.

Let us look at our achievements in tertiary education. We held fees. If National had remained in office and we had not come in and held fees, every student in this country would, on average, have paid $1,000 a year extra in their fees. We held fees. We put $420 million into tertiary education over 4 years. We made a promise at the last election to provide 700 more teachers in our schools, over and above roll growth. That promise is being enacted as we speak. We established Modern Apprenticeships and training, giving our young people a start, some real training—not having them, as Dr Brash would have them, lining up at the central post offices that were sold off by Mr Prebble, collecting the dole, cutting grass with scissors, or whatever, so that those privileged members on the other side of the House could feel good because someone was sweating for a bit of taxpayers’ money. That is what they are about. What have we done? We have put 6,000 young people into Modern Apprenticeships. We had 3,000, and we are doubling that figure now. That is an achievement.

Let us look at the regional economies. That crew over there sold out the regions. They gave up on them. They waved the white flag of surrender. Max Bradford disposed of the regional business development boards. The National Party surrendered. It did away with the position of Minister of Regional Development. It sold the regions out—every region in the country. Every battler in small places, such as the West Coast, Gisborne, and other regional economies, was sold out by that crew. What is our achievement? Our achievement is 12 regional economies achieving a rise in economic growth this year. That is a solid achievement. We have created stable government, strong leadership, and solid economic growth. Without being smug, we are a popular Government, and that is a popularity we must continue to earn every day. We must never take it for granted, unlike that mob over there who for 9 years gave up and surrendered on the people and said: “We’re born to rule, and you’ll line up and vote for us.”, but the people did not.

I have dealt with the Government. Let us contrast that with the Opposition. There is a rebranding going on in the Opposition parties—with ACT and with National. Let us deal with National. What is this rebranding? The rebranding is coming, and it is coming in the form of Gerry Brownlee, or Don Brash, or Simon Power, or maybe even that bastion of National Party conscience, Maurice Williamson. There has been no policy in 3½ years from that crew—just whingeing and whining.

Then we turn to the ACT mob. They are going to rebrand. They are going to call themselves the Liberals. The “member for Waiheke Island”, Rodney Hide, got up tonight and tried to slander members of Parliament again. He got up tonight and had a go. When we are talking about misuse of taxpayers’ money, I would like to know why Mr Hide’s leader and he shook hands and gave out tickets at the Wellington Fashion Show and the Auckland Fashion Show of the Pipi Foundation. They shook everybody’s hands. They knew deep down where the money was coming from—Industry New Zealand. Yet old spongy pud, Rodney Hide, gets up here and has a go. There is a word I could use for him, but I will not. But I will use the phrase “double standard”.

I would like to know who paid for Rodney Hide’s stomach stapling operation. I would like to know who did it. I would like to know whether the member is going to sue the doctor for medical misadventure, because it obviously did not work. He sits there as a member of the party of rorts. Those boys over there have form. [Interruption] Not Mr Ewen Street. Rodney Hide has the audacity to get up in this House and throw mud around still. I say that Rodney Hide has guts. I have always said that Rodney Hide has guts—a tonne of it. He stands up here, after Owen Jennings and the pyramid schemes, and after he went to a scam Fiji conference. To this day he has never got off his chuff in this House to explain why, when he came back from the Fiji conference and discovered there was a scam, he never got up and tried to blow it apart, why he never tried to protect hundreds of New Zealanders who lost millions of dollars. He is the great scam buster! He laughs at the people of New Zealand who lost money.

Then we have Donna Awatere Huata and her problems—the Pipi Foundation. I repeat that their leader shook the hands of everybody who came to those fashion shows. They knew where the money was coming from. He should think long and hard. Then we have the mobile electorate office scam, but we will not deal with that. I thought I was the only person with a mobile electorate office. Mine is a bus, and does move around. I say to that member that he is everything that the people detest about the ACT party. We know about his physical ill-discipline, being “the member for Waiheke Island”. In his speech he talked about thugs, and he did use the word. Well, he would know. He certainly knows how to behave. A colleague once said to me that we should have drug testing in Parliament. Maybe we should get the breathalyser out occasionally and wave it around that member. He can sit there and he can laugh at people. I like the fact that Rodney Hide is still here. Everybody on this side of the House likes the fact that Rodney Hide is here, because he shows the ugly side of the ACT party. He stands up here—what a double standard! He is trying to throw mud at the Government, and trying to tear down decent members of Parliament on all sides. I know that even some of the National Party people cringe now, because he is an embarrassment and the members in his party are an embarrassment.

But the good thing about our little democracy is that people like him get found out. When someone harasses people in a pub, when someone has a go at people in a toilet, people talk. That is a good thing. That thug has been found out, and he will be found out. The members of his party are judged every day by his lack of calibre.

Members of the public who are listening to the debate this afternoon would have every reason to be totally confused as to what is going on. This afternoon we heard someone from the Green Party raving on about bacterial resistance to antibiotics, we heard Paul Adams from United Future talking about marriage, and we have just heard that extraordinary rave from the member for Waimakariri, Clayton Cosgrove. I am sure my colleague Rodney Hide feels he has just been whacked with a wet bus ticket, for all the impact that that rave from Clayton Cosgrove would have had. Clayton Cosgrove inherited the electorate of Waimakariri from the Rt Hon Mike Moore. Mike Moore had big shoes.

💬 Rodney Hide: And a big heart.

Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH: He still has a big heart. Anyone from this Parliament who has enjoyed the hospitality of Mike and Yvonne Moore in Geneva will say that Mike Moore has a big heart. I know that Clayton Cosgrove has been in this place for only 5 minutes and he is a very junior member, but I say to him that a little bit of intellectual integrity does go a long way. Some of what he has put to this House this afternoon showed a total lack of intellectual integrity—quite apart from a lack of discretion.

The one thing on which I would agree with him is that he said this afternoon that what we have heard about in this debate and what we have seen recently is a stark differentiation between the Government and the Opposition. He is dead right. Let me say, in this financial review debate, why that difference is so stark. We heard the Minister who is ranked No. 3 in this Labour-led Government, the Hon Jim Anderton, say this afternoon—if I took him down correctly—that tax cuts for business were like giving a general subsidy for business. That is right at the heart of the difference between the Labour-led Government and the Opposition. We do not agree for one moment that tax cuts are the same as a general subsidy. Why? Because the money that businesses and individuals earn is their money, and Governments take a certain amount off them in tax. But it is the money of the people of New Zealand; it is not Government money.

That is a stark contrast between Labour and National. National believes that the people of this country earn their money. Sure, we have to tax them to be able to provide the certain essential services Governments provide, but it is the people’s money. It would not have been so bad if it were just Jim Anderton who said that. After all, we all know that Jim Anderton is a bit on the outside. I do not want to be too unkind to Jim Anderton, but he plays his little games around the regions, handing out his little photo opportunity grants to businesses around the regions. It makes him feel good. It keeps him happy. We all realise that that is Jim Anderton, so we would not be too worried about this view of business income being Government money. But I can say that none other than the Deputy Prime Minister, Michael Cullen, said almost exactly the same thing at the Finance and Expenditure Committee. He said that New Zealand business leaders were just like the Post Primary Teachers Association. They just want more money from the Government. He said that they want tax cuts, which is the same thing as the Government paying them more.

That is totally consistent with what Jim Anderton said in this Parliament this afternoon, and it shows a huge contrast between the Labour-led Government and the Opposition. We believe that people’s money is their money, and no Government should be so arrogant to think it is the Government’s money, and that by cutting taxes the Government is subsidising the people of this country. That is just outrageous. So Clayton Cosgrove was dead right. There is a huge difference. We respect the hard-working people of this country; Labour does not. Under that Labour-led Government the country in the developed world that has achieved one of the biggest increases in taxation of working families has been New Zealand. In the whole of the developed world, since it has been in office, the only country to have increased the tax take more on working families has been the Czech Republic. The Labour-led Government of New Zealand has increased the tax impost on working families, according to the OECD analysis, more than any other country in the OECD other than the Czech Republic.

We might say, OK, if we were maybe at the bottom end of the OECD in terms of tax impost on working families we could understand that, but we do not rank at the bottom end of the OECD in terms of tax impost on working families. The income tax burden on working families in New Zealand ranks No. 6 in the developed world. If this Labour Government could achieve in economic growth what it achieves in imposing taxes on working families, this country would be a lot better off.

I want to focus on growth for a moment, because when we were examining the financial reviews at the Finance and Expenditure Committee, Treasury came along and said that one of the key priorities of this Government was growth. It is interesting, because we had Helen Clark tell Parliament a couple of years back: “Vision is important. We can look ahead 10 years and see where we could be. If we embrace innovation wholeheartedly, we could be in the top half of the OECD.” More recently the Prime Minister has actually denied ever making that statement—but it is on the record of the House that she made that statement to the House.

Why has the Government backed off this growth goal? Treasury presented this goal to the Finance and Expenditure Committee as recently as the financial reviews conducted at the end of the last year, back in early November—not very long ago. What has happened? All the advice this Government is receiving, quite contrary to what Clayton Cosgrove said a few minutes ago, shows that if the Government sticks with its current policies, far from growing back into the top half of the OECD, New Zealand is more likely to decline in our relative standard of living.

I have right here the OECD’s most recent analysis of New Zealand for the period of this financial review. The report recommends, first, that if the Government is serious about growth it has to implement the recommendations of the ministerial review on compliance costs. What is the Government doing? It is ignoring it. The second thing the OECD analysis says is that the Government must proceed with the reforms of the Resource Management Act. What is the Government doing? It has basically gutted the legislation introduced by the last National Government to reform the Act.

Then the OECD said that the Government must reduce the top personal tax rate down to the corporate rate and do something about effective marginal tax rates, which are such a disincentive for people to raise themselves out of poverty. I know that John Tamihere is about to speak, and I want him to tell us why this Government is so happy with an effective marginal tax rate of 100 percent on working families earning between $10,000 and $15,000 of income a year. That means that for every dollar our poorest working families, earning between $10,000 and $15,000 a year, earn, John Tamihere’s Government takes the lot. The Government takes every single cent of every extra dollar that a working family with children earns above $10,000 to $15,000. It is no wonder we have people trapped in poverty under this Labour Government.

The OECD says that the Government must do something about that. It must do something about reversing its decisions to remove the work test on benefits. It must do something about benefit reform, this report states. It says that things like community work should be considered by the Government. It says that the income-related rents policy should be reviewed because it is trapping people in poverty. So many of the policies of this Government, according to independent OECD analysis, are not helping this country grow at all, and that is why Helen Clark is backing off that growth goal so rapidly.

I commend the Appropriation (2001/02 Financial Review) Bill to the House. In doing so, I support all other speakers from the Government with regard to a number of the following points. We have built a strong foundation for growth. We will continue to provide a stable Government with strong leadership. Our aim is to build and sustain solid levels of economic growth and to fund good public services and infrastructure sustainably. But more important than that, I want to spend a few moments to reflect on the heart, soul, and conscience of a good Government.

One of the greatest ancestors of the Labour Party, the late, great Rt Hon Michael Joseph Savage, has inscribed on his tomb at Orakei one of the greatest celebrations a leader can ever have granted to him or her. It states that there cannot be any greater acknowledgment than the love and respect of one’s fellow Kiwis. That great man worked for it and achieved it. Under the leadership of this particular Government I am proud to stand in the House tonight and say that our leader—and our leadership—is exhibiting exactly the same fine qualities exhibited by that great ancestor of the Labour Party, on any measure.

I want to spend a few moments on that. Members can hear “the honourable member for bulls”, from the Kaipara area, the Hon Lockwood Smith, and I want to say in terms of his interjections that the only game in town, the only intellectual capability to debate a range of major issues, resides on this side of the House. This is a very healthy situation to be in, not with regard to the bankrupt bunch of bozos who sit over there.

I want to move on to a couple of issues in terms of a snapshot of our recent achievements, because it is vitally important as we debate this bill that we understand exactly the capability and prowess of this Government. This Government is one of the smartest, savviest, cleverest business-related Governments the country has ever seen. I have caused a search to be done with regard to tax law alone. In the last 3 years this Labour-led Government, leading into this new term, has passed more taxpayer-friendly provisions than any other Government in the last decade. There is absolutely no secret as to the make-up of that former Government. The Hon Dr Lockwood Smith was part of it, and on any research the Hon Dr Michael Cullen, as Minister in charge of revenue, has moved more taxpayer-friendly legislation through this House in 3 years than the National Party did in 10 years.

We have presided over a growing economy. There has been an increase in economic activity of over 3.9 percent. This growth has been driven by the household sector and by tourism, and continues the solid economic performance of the last four quarters. More people are in jobs. Over 15,500 fewer people are on the main unemployment benefit than a year ago, and almost 120,000 more jobs have been created since we came into Government in December 1999. These are not just marvellous performance indicators. These are gobsmackingly good, and the Opposition cannot argue against that. What it prayed and hoped for desperately is some catastrophe, but it will not get a Tampa. It will not get anything like a catastrophe, because over here is a very business-savvy Government that is better, person for person, across every portfolio. The Opposition just does not stand a chance.

Deep down, in the true vein where all Kiwis think, we always want things to be fair, and what is happening on the other side of the House is absolutely disgraceful, in respect of the inability to stand up on any issues with any integrity—or, more so, with any capability or capacity. They argue on the other side of the House over who should be the Leader of the Opposition. They have no vision, no values, no policies, and no programme with regard to leadership in any sector in this country. They are absolutely bankrupt. On any measure we are right up there.

Let me just reflect on a few of the Opposition parties’ contributions to this debate. I pause once again to think about a number of contributions from National Party colleagues on the other side of the House and provide some rebuttal. Well, there we go; that is it! They did not say anything worth rebutting, so I do not think I will waste any more time on that. So much for the National Party!

It has four spokespersons on welfare: Don Brash is spokesperson one week, Katherine Rich is spokesperson another week, Bill English is spokesperson another week.

💬 Clayton Cosgrove: And Maurice.

Maurice Williamson is always a back-up player. He is a great impact player, is our Maurice Williamson, and God bless him. Anyway, every home has one, and thank goodness for Maurice! National has so many spokespersons on one issue that it sends out a very confused message. Walking into its caucus every Tuesday must be very confusing.

I now move on to New Zealand First. New Zealand First is a very interesting party. Collectively, its members have an IQ of about 110. I have to say that Winston is reasonably OK, notwithstanding the fact that he has some major problems with being erratic.

💬 Dr Don Brash: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Does this speech have any relationship at all to the bill we are discussing?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): It is a wide-ranging debate. If members like, they can refer to Standing Order 332—as long as it relates to the issue at hand.

💬 Dr Don Brash: It is drawing a long bow.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I also mention that members’ Christian names should not be used. I refer to Speaker’s ruling 6/1 (Supplement) which states that the only way a member can address a member is by his or her title, portfolio, or full name.

I was talking about the Rt Hon Winston Peters, the member for Tauranga. I understand that he is under great stress, and I can see that. Having to lead 12 others who sort of wander in here dazed, like Brown’s cows, has to be a struggle. As a consequence, he does not preside over any caucus, because he does not have caucus meetings. Notwithstanding that, I shall tell members how good some New Zealand First MPs are. When they arrive, even security staff stop them, 9 months into the sitting of the Parliament. Who are they? What do they stand for? That is enough of New Zealand First.

I shall move veritably along to the ACT party. That party came into the House and there was much aplomb over the ability to talk about the Appropriation (2001/02 Financial Review) Bill and to have some insightful and scything comments with regard to the backbone of why its members would have entered here. Earlier today we got more gutter politics from Rodney Philip Hide. When ACT party members walk into this House and start to get into debates, and they consider themselves to be quite smart, because they are driven by white-collar money that understands all about secret commissions and blind trusts—

💬 Rodney Hide: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is out of order for the member on his feet to suggest that a political party is driven by white-collar money.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The member is not actually referring to corruption. Therefore, it is not out of order. It is a debatable point.

I just want to settle Rodney Philip Hide down. Under no circumstances would I say that he was involved in anything that was less than generous to Kiwi society, apart from a scam conference he did attend, and he acknowledges that, when $10 million of good Kiwi money relevant to investment went down the gurgler. We also know that pyramid-selling schemes had been discussed in that caucus. We also know that ACT has an office in Wellington—although one would not know that it was an ACT party office—funded by taxpayers to open as an electorate office, but it is never open. I shall tell members what goes on in that office. Mr Prebble goes to sleep in it. That is what the taxpayer gets. Richard Prebble goes to sleep in it.

I shall tell members a few other things for the benefit of Mr Rodney Philip Hide. The day that he gets up in this House and attacks my elder and my leader in terms of the Māori caucus in this part of the House, I tell him that he should get his facts right. Mr Hide and Mr Prebble, with the knowledge of the Pipi Foundation money going into it, with the knowledge that Industry New Zealand money was going into it, stood outside this Chamber at a fashion show, and welcomed everybody in on taxpayer funds. Richard Prebble was at the front of the queue welcoming people on taxpayer funds.

Here is ACT’s problem. We are constituency MPs, and as such, we understand that when we get invites to go to constituency dos, one turns up. ACT MPs have no constituency, no heart, no conscience, no soul, and would not know how a Kiwi community worked. However, they are on the take, and that is probably the end of it.

I want to make a couple of comments with regard to what Mr Tamihere said. In one respect he was absolutely correct. He mentioned that recent growth in New Zealand has been good, and indeed, it has been. Let us be quite frank and open about that. Why has it been good? It has been good because the exchange rate has never been lower in New Zealand’s history; because export prices have been extraordinarily good; because weather down on the farm has been good; and because this Government has reaped the benefit of the great policies of the late 1980s and early 1990s—low inflation, low public sector debt, and a liberalised economy—while at the same time deploring them. There has been a huge growth in this economy in the last decade, because of those reforms.

The Prime Minister, in her speech to the House at the opening of this year’s Parliament, made the point that growth in the New Zealand economy in the year to September had “peaked”—her word, not mine—at 3.9 percent, and from that point on slows down. Treasury estimates that in the financial year beginning 1 April the economy will grow at 2.5 percent. That was its estimate when the exchange rate was at 57 on the trade-weighted index. It is now at 61 on the trade-weighted index. I suspect that the best estimate Treasury can make now would be about 2 percent, not 2.5 percent. According to the Minister of Finance’s own projection published in December, the economy is projected to slow down gradually over the next 10 years, so that in 10 years’ time the growth rate will be 2.1 percent. Let us be quite clear about that. Growth has been quite good, for reasons that have nothing to do with the Government at all, and is projected to slow down from this point.

I want to speak particularly about the bill. Apparently it is not fashionable to talk about the bill when one is speaking in a second reading debate. However, there are three issues that I want to talk about. The first one is the quite extraordinary fact that the bill explains that the Department of Conservation overspent its vote by $93.5 million. Its vote was only just over $100 million to start with, so this is an overspend of something like 87 percent. To the best of my knowledge no Government speaker—

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: How much?

Eighty-seven percent.

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: No, it can’t be.

My colleague Maurice Williamson questions this. However, clause 7 states that we are validating unappropriated expenses incurred by the Department of Conservation of $93.5 million for the financial year ended 30 June 2002, whose total expenditure was $201 million. That is a huge overspending. To the best of my knowledge no Government speaker has bothered to explain why that expenditure took place. There has been no explanation at all.

There are two other points that I found of great interest. The schedule details expenditures totalling $42 million in current expenses. They are all itemised in great detail. The biggest itemised expenditure is for secondary and tertiary education, at about $17.5 million, or 41 percent of the expenditure listed in the schedule. The National Party supports the Government playing a major role in financing education. What we worry about is that the present system is totally failing to deliver to a significant fraction of the young people coming out of our school system. Yes, there are some good schools; yes, there are some good tertiary education institutions; yes, there are some well-educated people; but far too many kids are still coming out of our schools unable to read or write.

I have been talking this afternoon to a person who works in the literacy area. He has a sign up at his literacy school that says “One Kiwi in five cannot read this sign”. That is a deplorable situation, and one that condemns those young people to a life of low income and unemployment, and frequently to drug abuse and crime.

I have told the House on previous occasions about the manager of a company in Hawke's Bay, who I met last year. He advertised for a forklift truck-driver and found that three-quarters of the applicants could not read well enough to be employed as one. They could not read the safety instructions or the pallet labels. They could not be forklift truck-drivers because they could not read well enough to do the job.

I have also mentioned an incident that happened to me in January this year, when my son and I sought to buy 10 tickets to ride the luge in Rotorua. The tickets cost $3.50 each. When I suggested to the 18-year-old woman behind the counter that 10 tickets for $3.50 should be $35, she said, “just a moment” and keyed in $3.50 ten times—

💬 David Benson-Pope: And she went to school while your party was in Government, for goodness sake!

I am making the point that it is important we get the education system right. This Government has still failed to do that. Simply paying more money to fix the problem does not fix it. We are already spending more, relative to our gross domestic product (GDP), on Government funding of education than every other developed country. [Interruption] The Government chief whip has something wrong with his forehead. I ask the member if he is all right. He seems to be expressing some disquiet.

The point I am making is that we are already spending more on Government-funded education in this country, relative to GDP, than in all but two other developed countries in the world. We are still producing a huge number of people who cannot read, write, or do basic arithmetic. The sad thing is that the present Government appears intent on locking us into a highly centralised and unionised system, with total opposition to the kind of liberated, freedom-of-choice option that I believe would deliver much more effectively for our children.

The third item I will touch on briefly is the other major item in the schedule. Education comprises 41 percent, but the other substantial item is the domestic purposes benefit, which eats up 33 percent of the expenses listed in the schedule. I am happy to say that on this side of the House we have a number of people who speak on social welfare, because we all care about it deeply. The reality is that in the last 27 years, the number of those on the domestic purposes benefit has risen from 17,231 in 1975, to 108,980 in 2002. This is an increase of 532 percent, at a time when the population has increased by just 22 percent. It is a huge increase. The Minister’s December Economic and Fiscal Update projects a further increase of 4,000 by 2006-07. The increase in the appropriation last year suggests that the numbers are more likely to exceed that estimate than fall short of it. This is a huge tragedy, which the Government is making worse by making it easier for people on the domestic purposes benefit to resist going back to part-time or full-time employment. It is a tragedy for the people concerned, and it is a tragedy for the country.

That was the voice of the future of the National Party, tragic though it will seem to the 40,000 people who switched off their radios after hearing that the Speaker was calling the honourable member, Mr Brash. That was the voice of the future of the National Party.

I congratulate Mr Brash on his total, absolute, entrenched-in-concrete, gob-smackingly arrogant, consistent denials that his views, his vision for the future, and his policies for our country have been rejected, have failed, and are past their use-by dates. That is the truth, and I wish only that someone else in the National Party would come forward with some vision that could perhaps offer some intellectual rigour to the debate that we have previously enjoyed. The once-great National Party is now reliant on a man who wants to raise the age New Zealanders have to reach before they get the pension, and to encourage literacy rates by slashing people’s benefits. That is the voice of the future for National. No wonder that it is now going down the gurgler even further than it was.

I welcome Dr Brash as the Opposition spokesperson on senior citizens. I look forward to standing up in front of every Grey Power meeting around the country, arguing against his proposal that people should be 75, at least, before they get the basic superannuation, and seeing the reaction of ordinary, hard-working retired New Zealand citizens to that proposal. That is the future face of National.

But it is no surprise to any of us on this side of the House that National is looking for a future face. When National’s leader—I’ve forgotten his name—Bill English took over as the party leader after he and his colleagues tipped out Jenny Shipley, who was a good, strong leader—regardless of what I thought of her policies, one has to admire her strength as leader—21 percent of New Zealanders had Bill English as their preferred Prime Minister. Since that time his support has dropped, not by a little, but by a lot. There has been a 250 percent plummet in his popularity as the most preferred Prime Minister, and now only 6 percent of the population think that. Of course, people are never asked to identify their close family relationship with the person they are identifying as their preferred Prime Minister.

Six percent of the population want Bill English as their Prime Minister, so no wonder the National Party is looking around for a future leader. If it is not Don Brash, and if it is not the member who spoke previously, Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith, who has even more out-of-date ideas, then my Canterbury colleagues and I will continue to back Gerry Brownlee. This is one of the few areas—

💬 Hon Lianne Dalziel: No, I want Maurice!

I am sorry, but I do not think Mr Williamson is putting his name forward—yet.

💬 Hon Lianne Dalziel: He might be. He would make a great double act with Gerry.

He might, but I do not think he is. He would make a great leader. I have heard strong endorsement of Gerry Brownlee, and not just from my Canterbury colleagues—in fact, those of us from Canterbury who are in the Labour Party are very, very keen to have Gerry Brownlee as a leader. There would be very few things better for us than having Bill English as a leader, but having Gerry Brownlee, I am sure, would be one of them.

Maurice Williamson has been really supporting his colleagues. When Aucklanders and Cantabrians are united on an issue—outside of sporting events, of course, where we are hardly ever united—we know we are on to a winner. Maurice Williamson said recently that he thought Gerry Brownlee was a really good MP, that he was effective in the House, that he has a good style and a manner that people warm to, that he has a fantastic sense of humour, and that he has a common touch but a good nose for politics. That is a ringing endorsement. He was not saying that about his leader; in fact, he is saying less and less about his leader. I do not know why, frankly. He can hardly be demoted further than he already is. Those of us who have not yet gone to the “Bring back Maurice” campaign are very keen to support Gerry Brownlee as leader. The National Party has to get a decent leader so we can have some decent debate about policies, rather than the failed rhetoric of the past.

I am very proud to commend the progress of the Appropriation (2001/02 Financial Review) Bill through the House. We have a lot to be proud of as we look at the appropriation measures outlined in the bill. We can be proud of our strong, growing economy; the strong leadership that we have provided in Government; and our commitment to rebuilding on a continued basis the public services and infrastructure of our country so that we can deliver high-quality, accessible health-care, education services, and the basic public health services that all New Zealand citizens deserve, from the time they are born to the time they retire in dignity—not at 75 with a miserable pension as they would under Don Brash, but at 65 with a secure income and support for their future, which they are getting from our Government. I commend the progress of the bill to the House.

I am very proud to speak on this bill and to follow on from the Hon Ruth Dyson, who really set the scene about what this Government in this term is all about.

💬 Rodney Hide: She’s a scene stealer.

Yes, she certainly was when she reiterated statements such as, “We are building on a very strong foundation for growth.” That is exactly what the country understands. We are also building up a public service that had been decimated in the previous 9 years. The depth of strength and reliability in the Government service simply was not there when we came in. We will see infrastructure sustainability built up in the three terms for which we are secure in this Government. We have really positive programmes that we are going to move on, and this appropriation bill will support the Budget that will set targets for us for the next year.

One of the interesting things we are seeing is some cross-sectoral programmes beginning to bite. That is the all-of-Government approach we have talked about. A programme is opening in Rotorua that focuses on truancy. In the previous 9 years the Government did not have a problem with truancy. It just flicked the truants off the books and let them go home. We are prepared to do something about it, and we have a cross-sectoral group in our community that reflects the Police, the Department of Corrections, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, and the Department of Child Youth and Family Services. They are all working together on this. The police have taken a coordination role, and we are out there now working with the principals of all the schools to work with the truants who we know are in our community, and we all know what idle hands get up to.

They are the sorts of targets we are getting into this year, and that will be seen in the Budget support. There will be support for the family violence strategy. When we put out Te Rito this last term, people said “more words”. Well, mark my words, this year there will be Budget appropriations that go towards reinforcing that strategy, then we will see the results that come—not the Budget cuts that we had in the past that we have since had to increase incrementally, appropriation bill after Budget round and Budget round.

The other thing we are doing that the Opposition cannot stand is that we have a whole raft of proposals about keeping people well. One proposal that I am proud to mention today is the Smoke-free Environments (Enhanced Protection) Amendment Bill that I am very proud to sponsor in this House. Opposition members can carp on about waiting lists, but let me tell them that the deficits of the district health boards are less than what this Government spends on smoking-related disorders in hospitals every year. If we could eliminate smoking-related conditions we would not have a deficit and we would be able to treat people on waiting lists. If I hear Opposition members vote against that bill, then they may not talk about deficits in district health boards again, because they were not prepared to do anything about keeping people well so that we could reduce waiting times, and that is what we said we would do.

So we are putting in that money, and we have the strategy and the pathway. It is a 10-year pathway, and the Opposition cannot bear it. Opposition members cannot bear the whole strategy that is going into health. We put in money for a meningococcal vaccine. Members opposite may laugh about that, but in this world we are about to face a pandemic potential from severe acute respiratory disease. We need to resource our ministry to be able to respond according to world health directives, and we will. We can be proud of the fact that we have a strategy to respond to such a high level concern. That sort of sustainable planning in health was not done by members opposite for 9 years, and that is why we are tidying that up.

I also remind the Opposition that we now have 147 elected members around the country working on boards and putting community perspectives into boards about how they will utilise their health dollars. We have a bit of democracy coming through. If members go out into the communities to talk to people they will find that communities like that. We are also tidying things up through, for example, the Health (Screening Programmes) Amendment Bill. It is a tidy-up after the absolute mess of cervical screening and cancer registry maintenance in this country. This appropriation bill allows us to tidy up those things and to put money towards them.

I also want to talk about primary health development. In our community we now have three primary health organisations set up that will give us 100 percent cover for people in our community to enable them to have low-access cost when seeing their general practitioner. It is about keeping people well and then being able to get on with managing waiting lists, and that is what this Government is all about. In fact, by 1 April this year there will be 37 primary health-care organisations in this country, covering 1.4 million people. What will we see from that? We will see low costs when visiting a general practitioner. Every mother, child, and elderly person in this country will get to see his or her doctor at a much-reduced charge from what they are paying now. In fact, after July—and the appropriation bill will enable this with budgeting—people over 65 years of age will see their doctor for free. No one in the Opposition can argue with that. We are keeping people well and we are getting people back on their feet. We are focusing on wellness, health, sports, recreation, and getting people going again, and that will save us an enormous amount of money.

I want to go back again today to the Smoke-free Environments (Enhanced Protection) Amendment Bill, just to say that we should remember that there are 380 deaths every year from smoking-related disorders. That is quite sobering. In our health services we are spending at least $22.5 billion a year on smoking-related disorders, and it is not only at the hospital level of service. That is an absolutely huge amount, and it is money that we will save as a result of that bill.

There is one other thing in health that this Government got on and did, and it never occurred to members opposite. I come from Rotorua, and we have a level of concern at the moment about the wellness and the state of our lakes, which are part of our tourist icon. We are very concerned about them and we need to ensure that we are doing something about it. This Government has put in money to put in sewerage schemes. For small, poor communities like the community at Mourea, that is a very big public health contribution to the wellness of that community and, as well, the wellness of our environment and our lakes, which are incredibly important to us. New Zealand makes $9.7 billion a year out of tourism. If we do not environmentally sustain our environment that the tourists pour into this country to see, then we will be the poorer for it.

Talking of rubbish, I also want to say—and I am not talking rubbish—that the waste management strategy that this Government committed to is starting to have an effect around the country. Yesterday I opened a recycling transfer station in Rotorua, and that is our contribution to reducing the solid waste going to our tips. We need to reduce that waste so that we are protecting our environment. That is another contribution that this Government is putting forward to prevent the environmental degradation of New Zealand, which means so much to us as a tourism icon.

I am really proud to speak on this bill, and, overall, I am proud to be part of this Government, which has a strategy and a long-term vision for leveraging up the economic growth of this country.

Earlier on in this debate we heard Paul Swain ask us to congratulate the Government on its financial review successes. Let us have a look at what he is asking us to do. This Government has discovered that it has a surplus of close to $3 billion, and the Hon Michael Cullen has admitted that he does not know why it has that surplus. That not knowing is the Minister’s excuse for not spending any of the surplus on health, law and order, and education. That excuse is a thin one. The not knowing has one of two possible meanings: that this Government does not have a Budget or a plan for the future, or that this Government does not give a damn about resolving the operating deficits in key public services, like health. Reading through the Appropriation (2001/02 Financial Review) Bill does not give me any confidence that the Government has done anything to resolve any of those problems. The Government certainly has not improved the operating deficits. The money appears to be being spent in the wrong places. For example, $5 million is to be spent on an uncertain and doubtful America’s Cup challenge.

Last week the Government released a report on the building industry overhaul. I am disappointed that the Government chose to do this ahead of the Local Government and Environment Committee’s review of the leaky homes problem. The select committee report is only 1 to 2 weeks away. Why could the Government not have waited and had a look at that report before coming up with its own report on whatever review it has had? It certainly does not make any sense. It speaks volumes about how irrelevant this Government thinks the select committee’s review is. This Government’s contempt for this House was signalled by the Prime Minister when she made a flippant remark just prior to the select committee starting its review. She told the people with leaky homes to see their lawyers. That was only just at the end of last year when the review started.

From the outset, New Zealand First has felt that the select committee’s terms of reference were too narrow. Last week we saw why. It was deliberate. This Government has no intention of taking any notice of the select committee’s review. It was simply a sop to divert attention away from the failure of the Government and the Building Industry Authority to take action, when there was strong evidence to suggest that a major problem of leaky and rotting homes was developing for 2 years prior to their asking for a review. By doing nothing, this Government and its Minister of Internal Affairs, George Hawkins, have given 20,000 more families an uncertain future. Many of those people are first-time homeowners with no reserves. Many others have invested their life savings and retirement funds into homes that, in many cases, are now worthless. Everything is going down the gurgler, just like this Government’s superannuation scheme, which went down the gurgler because investments were made in overseas investment markets. But that does not seem to matter to this Government. It does not give a toss for those people, at all.

From the beginning of this year, the Government transferred responsibility for the Building Industry Authority to the Minister of Commerce, Lianne Dalziel, who has been squawking over there and telling me to do my homework. We are doing our homework. We are seeing the failings of that Minister, as well. This Government has not made allowances for any blame in the financial review. It has not made any allowances whatsoever. Shifting the blame is exactly what we are seeing developers do to avoid their responsibilities. If we look at the newspapers we see the headline in the New Zealand Herald of 5 March: “Housing firms liquidated”. The item refers to developer brothers who face a $3.5 million leaking buildings lawsuit. It lists a number of companies that have folded—gone into liquidation. The Castlerock Group, Castlerock Marua, Eastpark Management, and Ellerslie Properties have all gone into liquidation because they have problems. This is a situation where they have attempted to avoid their responsibilities by liquidating. This Government should widen the investigation into the corporate veil that is being kept over these companies.

We see the heading in this weekend’s New Zealand Herald: “$1m to fix unit leaks at Albany”. There is another case, from the same paper on March 15, of a series of companies being shut down: “Just before Christmas, Manning shut down six companies involved in managing and leasing units at Taradale-developed resorts in Queenstown and Rotorua. Liquidators say the companies owe at least $1 million, went into full liquidation last month and creditors will get less than 50c in the dollar.” Those companies had a paid-up capital of $1,000. That is a situation where companies are being put up to develop a specific site, then are being folded purely to avoid the developers’ responsibilities.

We say that this Government has allowed that to happen. New Zealand First wants to see a further public inquiry—a broadened public inquiry—that goes far beyond the reaches of the select committee hearings we have had to date. We want to see the Companies Act investigated so that directors will be held responsible—not just for their moral mistakes and for hiding behind the corporate veil, but we want to see those people brought to task. There are so many people with leaky homes, but who no longer have anybody they can attack or challenge to get their properties repaired because the companies and the developers have liquidated and disappeared. This Government is allowing that to happen. It refuses to hold a further inquiry. It refused to broaden the inquiry.

Lianne Dalziel is squawking away again. She is one of the Ministers responsible. She will not hold an inquiry to allow those people to have their properties properly investigated. The Government will not allow this matter to be sorted out properly, and the select committee’s work over the last 3 months will basically be for nothing unless we can get this Government to accept responsibility for the whole industry.

💬 Dail Jones: Can New Zealand First fix it?

New Zealand First can fix it, and we will fix it, because we are going to continue to fight for those people. We are going to make sure that they get a fair and reasonable settlement on their homes, and get their homes repaired. Their homes are, in many cases, their retirement funds. This Government is allowing the retirement funds of civil servants to go down the tubes, and it is doing the same thing to those individuals who have bought leaky homes. It will allow that to happen right through until this disaster finally hits the economy of this country—because it will. The ones who will have to pay are the individuals and, eventually, the taxpayers—the poor families that will have to face this problem.

I hope that Lianne Dalziel takes heed and opens up an investigation into the corporate veil situation, because time and time again in the newspapers we are seeing companies liquidate because the Minister has done nothing. The Minister should do something, and finish it off.

This is a Government that likes spending money. It absolutely loves spending money—heaps of it—and it needs plenty of it. The Government gets it from the taxpayers of New Zealand. In fact, so much money has been pouring in from taxpayers that the Government has not known what to do with it. There is surplus of about $3 billion. Members of the Labour Cabinet and Labour caucus have been parading around the country all sorts of ideas about why so much is pouring in and what a great job of economic stewardship this minority Labour Government has done. They forgot to mention three quite important facts: great weather down on the farm, incredibly high commodity prices, and an exchange rate at a level we have not seen in New Zealand since it was floated, when I was just a young foreign exchange dealer in 1984—a rate of 44.10c. Those are the reasons the money has been pouring in.

Tonight I want to talk a little bit about some of the ways in which that money has been used, but I can assure the House of one thing—the money will not be going back to the hard-working taxpayers of New Zealand in a tax cut, nor will it be going back to the hard-working companies of New Zealand in a tax cut. I was amused to read, just the other day, a comment by John Shewan, the lead partner in the area of taxation at PricewaterhouseCoopers. He said that one would have to be a member of the flat earth society to believe this Government’s going to give a corporate tax cut. No one on this side of the House is a member of that society, so we will not be waiting for there to be a tax cut.

Last year the Government bailed out our national carrier, Air New Zealand. It spent $885 million on the recapitalisation of that airline. I do not want to talk tonight about whether that was the right decision or whether the Government could have taken up the offer from Singapore Airlines. I want to talk about an issue that relates to the appropriations and where more money will be sent. Some time after the Government put $885 million into Air New Zealand, the management of the company went to the major shareholder—at that point the 81.4 percent shareholder, the Government—and said that it did not have enough money to run its business properly and would like a little bit more. Michael Cullen, the Minister of Finance, flush with cash, said: “No problem! You can have another $150 million from us, up until 30 June 2003.”

A few weeks ago the company announced that it would have a $200 million rights issue, which, now that the Government is a shareholder of Air New Zealand to the tune of 78 percent after being diluted by the 5 percent stake taken by Qantas, meant that if the Government took up its full rights issue it would put in $156 million. It wants to put in only $150 million. That in itself is an interesting thought, except that shareholders and investors all around New Zealand have been going to their brokers and telling them that they want to invest in Air New Zealand. So why is the Government putting $150 million into Air New Zealand if it does not need to? Why is it spending $150 million of taxpayers’ money and putting it into Air New Zealand if it does not need to? Why is the Government simply not underwriting the transaction—as it could—instead of putting in $150 million? One of the answers could be that the Government wants to keep a remaining controlling stake in Air New Zealand once Qantas takes up its 22 percent stake. But even if Air New Zealand’s major shareholder, the Government, is diluted fully when Qantas buys 22.5 percent of Air New Zealand—as indeed it surely would because the Government is waving it on in that transaction—and does not take up its $150 million stake, the Government would still own 61 percent of Air New Zealand. So why does the Government want to hold 71 percent of an airline when it could hold 61 percent? My point is very simply this: the Government went to the taxpayers and citizens of New Zealand and told them that it was bailing out the airline because no one else would. The Government told them it was investing in the airline because it was in the national interest and no one else would invest. The position has changed, and there is no logical reason at all for the Government to be holding its stake at 71 percent when it could dilute it to 61 percent. That is called stock market investing, and the Government should either tell the people of New Zealand that it has changed its strategy, or it should not do it. It is as simple as that. I could understand if the Government were diluting itself to under 51 percent. I could understand that, because if one has that big a stake, it makes sense to keep oneself above 51 percent. But that is not what this Government is doing. This Government is investing in the stock market. It is nationalising Air New Zealand by stealth, and it is not telling the people of New Zealand about it. That is the truth.

Last week Jim Anderton, the Minister for Economic Development, that benevolent sort of Father Christmas of the corporate sector, biffed $1.5 million at EDS—because it will not come and do a deal in New Zealand if we do not give it that money—and corporate welfare was the name he put on it. He said that that company—a company that earned US$22.5 billion last year—would not come to New Zealand unless we gave it $1.5 million. It is called “picking winners”. Now, one might sit here and say: “Well, they are going to create 360 jobs”. But not that long ago in my electorate, Jim Anderton talked about the triumph for the “jobs machine” when he pumped money into Sovereign Yachts. He said that it would be producing so many boats and so many jobs that we will not know what to do with them. Lo and behold, there are 60 jobs, one boat, and it has not actually been that great a success for the corporate “jobs machine”.

The Government is spending taxpayers’ money. As I said when I started my speech tonight, this Government loves spending money. I would like to give a bit of free consulting advice to the Labour Government. I will do it for nothing. I will not charge. I will do it out of the goodness of my heart, for the people of New Zealand, because I think it is worth it. Here is a little tip, and it will not cost anything. The Government should cut corporate tax rates—that would be a start—and fix the Resource Management Act. And by the way, while it is at it, it should cut compliance tax so that “Uncle Jim Anderton” will not have to keep acting like Father Christmas, giving huge multinational corporates millions of dollars instead of just giving them an environment that would make all businesses in New Zealand operate properly.

I want to touch on one last point of appropriation spending. Whenuapai Air Base is in my electorate.

💬 Darren Hughes: Great for State houses!

Yes, that is right, according to some people—not myself. The basing study of 2002 showed that the Government could spend $29 million, upgrade that runway, and keep the Air Force at Whenuapai, or, by taking option B, it could move 45 percent of the entire Air Force, 1,100 of the 2,400 people who work there, to the middle of the North Island and station them there to protect the bulk of the population, who—and I point this out in case the Government has not noticed—lives around Auckland. I would happily sign off an appropriate amount, because I would be doing the right thing. I simply ask the Government to have a look at where its spending is going. Let us forget about income-related rents. Let us forget about the State houses that the Government is trying to build all over my electorate—to get rid of me. Let us stop that sort of stuff and start spending money where it makes sense. Let us spend money to keep the Air Force at Whenuapai, and let us cut corporate taxes so our country can operate more efficiently. We should not be bailing out Air New Zealand—that is not what is required.

It gives me great pleasure to speak in this appropriation debate. I cannot help but respond to some of the things that my colleague from Auckland had to say. I thought it was really interesting that he was complaining that the Government was spending taxpayers’ money. That is actually what Governments do, and that is why this Government collects taxes—so that it can spend that money for the benefit of the people of New Zealand. If the member is going to continue in Parliament, then it would be a good idea to get that fairly clear.

I was also very interested to see that the National Party now has one clear policy, which that member was articulating loudly and clearly for the House and for the benefit of the people of New Zealand—he is going to sell Air New Zealand. Well, at last we know. Unfortunately, I do not think that that policy will be all that popular, because even when Air New Zealand was totally privately owned, the people of New Zealand still thought of it as “our” airline—our Air New Zealand. When they saw it going down the tubes they were not all that happy, and they were, almost universally, in favour of the Government bailing it out. I am not sure that they are ready to see it sold off again so that private enterprise can muck it up again. In fact, I think there has been a little bit of a sea change in the minds of the people of New Zealand in terms of selling off State assets. They are looking very carefully at what has happened since the railways were sold, and they are not feeling terribly happy about that, either. So I would have to say to my colleague from the Auckland region, Mr Key, that there are two views here, and I do not think that the National Party has cottoned on to the right one. If it had, it would be running at a little higher than 20-odd percent in the polls—depending on which poll one listens to. So National members should take things quietly. I think it was Rob Muldoon who said: “Breathe through your nose for a while.”, but there we go.

I was quite interested when one of the previous speakers—either Don Brash or Lockwood Smith, I think—talked about the debate being all over the place. I would have to agree that, as far as the Opposition parties are concerned, the debate has been pretty much all over the place. Every Government speaker has proudly articulated the fact that this Government has built a strong foundation for growth. We have provided, and will continue to provide, a stable Government with strong leadership. Our aim is to build and sustain solid levels of economic growth, to fund good public services, and to fund our infrastructure sustainably. I have heard a lot of Government speakers talk on those lines, and I think it is absolutely the key to why this Government is so popular. It is consistently polling at about 50 percent, which is pretty phenomenal at this stage in a Government’s life. Government members have achievements to show to the country, and that is why the Government is maintaining its popularity. We have a positive programme that is moving our country forward. We are prepared to invest in New Zealanders in every way—in our country, and in the people of this country—and that is why such good things are happening.

I was interested in the fact that Don Brash spent quite some time talking about education. It seems to be something that he is very interested in. He was talking about a school that has a sign up that states: “One in five New Zealanders can’t read this”, and he was hugely disparaging about the quality of our schools. Well, one does not turn round the school system in 3 years. The reality is that it was under 9 years of National-led Government —

💬 Rodney Hide: How many?

—9 long years of National-led Government that most of those people were educated. The reality of our education system is that it does an extraordinarily good job with 80 percent of students. Eighty percent of the students in our education system are doing extremely well. But that, I know, is not good enough. That figure needs to be 100 percent, but I would have to say that the fact that 80 percent of our students are doing extraordinarily well shows that we are doing better than most other countries in the world. That shows out in every international survey of education that takes place. We do have a tail of students who are not doing well, but, of course, there are a lot of reasons that students do not do particularly well at school. Some students come from homes where there is unemployment, deprivation, poverty, and poor nutrition. They may be in poor housing. The list goes on and on—there are all sorts of reasons. Some have never been able to feel a part of society, and they are alienated. Those sorts of factors can contribute hugely to whether they do well in school. Teachers and a good school system can do only so much. In every country where a significant number of people are living in situations of poverty and deprivation there will be poor school performance.

This Government has also improved the employment rate. Unemployment is now at its lowest level for 15 years. In the time that this Government has been in power, since 1999, it has created over 120,000 new jobs. The reality is that that economic improvement in the lives of ordinary New Zealanders will be reflected, over time, in the performance of that tail in our schools. Members should make no mistake about it: the underachievers in our schools are not in decile 10 schools. They are not coming from the better-off areas of New Zealand. In the main, they are in our decile 1, 2, and 3 schools. Māori, and Pacific Island children, as well as children from other ethnic minorities, are overrepresented in that tail. So the best thing that this Government can do to improve the education standards for New Zealand is to improve our economy and the economic life of the people of New Zealand, and that is what we are doing. We have a good story to tell, and we are happy to talk about it.

Over the last 3 years we have improved access to primary health-care. One of the things everybody knows is that families and children will do better in every way if they have good health. We are making an effort to prevent illness and to tackle health problems early, so that there are not huge waiting lists for conditions that could have been prevented if they had been treated early enough. Already, primary health organisations are providing a broad range of health-care services to over 500,000 New Zealanders, and a further 25 are due to start up by 1 April, when it is estimated that 1.4 million New Zealanders will be enrolled in public health organisations. That will lead to a huge improvement in public health.

There has been an increase in economic activity of 3.9 percent in the year ended September last year. That growth was driven mainly by the household sector and by tourism, and it continues the solid economic performance of the last few years. We have more people in real jobs, and we have more people in real education. This Government has put a great deal of effort and a great deal of money into improving our education system. It has done a lot of work in the areas of early childhood, primary, and secondary education, and, of course, it has cut the cost of tertiary education for students. The Government has made the student loan scheme fairer, and it has made sure, by freezing fees, and, now, by introducing fees maxima, that students can be certain of their fee levels from year to year. If we had not halted those fee increases, which were rife and happened every year during the 1990s, then students would be paying, on average, $1,000 more a year, and they would be facing further increases this year. As well, the Government has funded more than 700 teaching positions, over and above those that would have been required for roll growth, so we are making a huge difference. We are strengthening and expanding the opportunities for people to learn in the workplace, and by the end of the year we intend to have 6,000 young people in Modern Apprenticeships. Believe me, the people of New Zealand appreciate the work that we are doing in Modern Apprenticeships and in training.

I am going to break with tradition here a little and speak about a financial review. In fact, I will speak about the financial review of the Ministry for the Environment, and I would like to bring to the attention of the House a number of matters that concerned the Local Government and Environment Committee when it reviewed that ministry. The Ministry for the Environment has a new chief executive. He had come before the committee for the financial review for the first time, so we thought it was appropriate to give some scrutiny, especially as the ministry is currently reorganising its structure and work programme. Mr Carbon told us that the ministry had taken on more projects than it could satisfactorily deliver on and was in the process of prioritising. The committee agreed that it was important to prioritise and do those things that one can do well, but we were a bit concerned at some of the priorities that seemed to have been chosen, or, more particularly, those that seemed to have been omitted.

Our committee spent a year—the year 2000—on an amendment to the Resource Management Act, which, among many other things, established a more streamlined process for national policy statements under the Act. There have so far been none, except the one that is mandatory. We were assured that the ministry had a lot of national policy statements waiting in the wings and that as soon as the new legislation was through it was keen to give us some. It has been a major reason for the Resource Management Act not working as well as it should. There has been no, or very little, direction from central government. That part of what the bill envisaged has never been carried out. We now find that, apart from the national policy statement on biodiversity—which the committee felt was taking an extremely long time to produce; it has been in the pipeline for quite some time—there are no further plans to do any other national policy statements after that is complete. We wonder why we spent all that time and trouble refining the process to make it more usable. We also wonder just how the national level part of the Resource Management Act process will be accomplished without national policy statements.

I turn now to the New Zealand waste strategy. When it was first published, many people said the problem was that it had no teeth. But the good thing was that it had targets, and maybe with targets for waste reduction we would actually start to make some progress. The select committee was told that two of the targets were overly optimistic and would not be reached. On investigation, it turns out that those are the only two targets that are actually quantified and measurable. One relates to the reduction in organic waste and the other to 95 percent of the people living in areas with access to a recycling scheme. If neither of those targets are to be reached, then the promise of the waste strategy is not being fulfilled. We have concerns that there is a real lack of progress in this area.

Every year of the 5 or 6 years I have been in Parliament I can remember the select committee asking about progress on contaminated sites, and in particular the Mapua site near Nelson, which is the most seriously contaminated site in the country and the first to need remediation. Despite the voting of money several years in a row, there is still no progress on the cleaning up of the contaminated site at Mapua. There is still discussion about how to do it, who should do it, and the contract details of doing it. The committee registered its disappointment that after all these years we are still no further on. There are many more contaminated sites—for example, the Tui mine—that need to be worked on as soon as work on the Mapua site is under way.

Two very important committees reported to the Minister last year. One report was on a pesticides risk reduction policy and the other was from the Agrichemical Chemicals Trespass Ministerial Advisory Committee. Both signalled important issues that needed to be managed in terms of the handling of pesticides and spray drift. The spray drift one was set up when a member’s bill was withdrawn from the House on the promise that this committee would be set up to address the issues. The Government has received a couple of reports, but so far the Ministry for the Environment appears to have no plans to follow up with any action. The pesticides risk reduction strategy report was the result of a Greens’ Budget policy initiative, which was accepted by the Minister, and it appears it is not going anywhere. We are disappointed.

I am pleased to speak in this debate on the Government Superannuation Fund Authority. However, I am not pleased with the review of the authority’s performance in the year in question. My pleasure comes from getting a review in the first place, because the Government fought against having such a review. To quote Mr Cullen’s words about us, the Government did not want his “loony” investment strategy exposed, because it is the Achilles heel of this Government that it took good money out of Government bonds and gambled it on the overseas sharemarket. I was a minority of one at the select committee when we did the review. As the conclusion states: “The majority of us are generally satisfied with the performance of the authority in the period under review and believe it is generally operated according to recognised best practice.” Of course, the other members of the select committee had to say that because they all voted with the Government to change the investment strategy of the fund. Even my colleague Rodney Hide in ACT voted for it, despite the fact that he also is now jumping up and down about the losses the Government Superannuation Fund has made.

The report outlines the position of the Green Party, in its minority view, on the performance of the fund. In particular, it highlights that we believe that the deterioration of the unfunded past service liability of $253 million as a result of factors within the control of the authority is unacceptable. We believe that puts in jeopardy the authority’s own risk objective, amongst other things. As a result, we have no confidence in the ability of the authority or, for that matter, of its investment advisor, Frank Russell, or its investment managers, to achieve the investment objective of a 7.1 percent rate of return after tax. We have good reason for having no confidence in the authority’s ability to do that, because it has failed to live up to its own expectations since the financial review was completed. In fact, figures that have just been revealed to me by the Minister of Finance show that the authority lost $126 million for the 6 months to December. That was its overall loss. Its loss on international shares—and that is net of exchange rate hedging—was $138 million. That is a loss of 12.6 percent over that 6-month period. If that were not bad enough, just consider that the members of the authority, with the best advice they had received from all those expensive fund managers, said that the authority was going to make $75 million over that 6-month period. So we have to add the two together. The under-performance on shares alone was $213 million for the 6 months to December. That is on top of the extraordinary losses that the authority managed to achieve for the period to June last year, which is the period under review.

It is interesting to compare that with the return on fixed interest and cash. The authority had projected earning only $24 million. In fact, it earned $66 million. One of the reasons, perhaps, is that the exposure of the authority’s poor performance and of the total stupidity of Dr Cullen’s investment strategy did at least stop the authority in its tracks, and as of last September it stopped putting more money on the international sharemarket. As of a couple of weeks ago, 6 March, it has announced that it will not increase its target for investment overseas and that it is keeping it at 42 percent, which is roughly what it had invested at the time of the review. What interests me is that if it continues to lose money on its overseas shares, will it continue to pump more money into that asset class just to keep that percentage up? It is a question that I will ask the authority in due course.

The other interesting thing that came out from the chair of the fund is that the return target has now reduced so that now overall returns are projected to be only 2.5 percent above the Government stock rate. The authority originally targeted 3 percent. I ask Dr Cullen how much the authority will have to make in the next 8 years 9 months to get its 10-year target of even the 6.5 percent it is now projecting. It will have to be 9 percent to reach that target. The authority will not be able to do it.

I will address the situation of our defence forces and the appalling run-down we have seen in their capacity. I note that a former ACT member of Parliament Derek Quigley did a very good report for this Government when it first came to office, but what has it done? The Government has sat on its chuff, and not even attempted to implement the good advice it received. I notice that, even now, Terence O’Brien, the head of the strategic advisory body, is calling upon the Government to rethink its position on this country, because, surely, we are living in a very changing and dangerous world at this time. We have the member for Hastings chirping away like a canary. I invite him to listen to some of the reality, and the lack of performance from his Government.

The one capital item to speak of that this Government has embarked on is $800,000 for some 105 light armoured vehicles. I have asked a number of parliamentary questions, and I am not getting responses. I understand that one cannot load one of those vehicles into a Hercules, our main transport plane, without first stripping it down. One cannot put the armament, ammunition, rations, and the crew in the same plane—a second plane would be needed. It is very questionable as to whether the plane could take off if it were fully loaded with one light armoured vehicle. That was the one big capital splash this Government made, and it would seem to be a very spurious one.

New Zealand does have very important security needs, but perhaps the greatest concern of all to the people of New Zealand—and, I hope, to this Chamber—is the way this Government has decided not to support our traditional allies, and is, instead, hiding behind the swirling skirts of United Nations prevaricators. It is the first time in my life time that that has happened. It is following countries such as France, which is the only country that has actually sent terrorists to attack New Zealand. Yet, in the name of multilateralism, this Government is happy to hide behind those swirling skirts. It is nonsense for the Prime Minister to say we will not act unilaterally. How can the 20 nations forming the coalition of the willing—which include all our key, traditional allies—be called “unilateral action”? That is what this Prime Minister and this Government would try to have us believe.

I do not believe any thinking person looks forward to war, or actually wants war. Even at this late stage, it would be nice to think that war could be averted, although that does look possible now. The reality is that military intervention is sometimes both necessary and inevitable to remove a real and imminent threat, to secure freedoms, and to achieve enduring peace. There are times in life when one has to be prepared to stand alongside those who are prepared to defend the values one believes in. History has taught us many times that the use of force is often the necessary price of liberty. In the words of Edmund Burke, that great 18th century Scottish philosopher and British parliamentarian, “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” Few outside Iraq would openly dispute the fact that Saddam Hussein is a dangerous megalomaniac, who has held on to power by brutally suppressing his own people through torture and terror. Most within Iraq hold that same view, but certainly not openly. They do not have that luxury.

It is all very well for this Government to say it supports the policies of containment, and what the UN has done to date. Does it realise that UNICEF, one of the UN’s own bodies, has reported that, on average, 60,000 Iraqi children under the age of five have died as a direct consequence of the economic sanctions? Over 12 years, 720,000 Iraqi children have died, which is over and above the baseline deaths that existed. That is the policy of containment under the United Nations. The lesser of two evils would be to go in and remove the cause of that suffering and misery, rather than trying to claim that the containment policies have been a success, because they have not—that is the point I make. Many hundreds of thousands of people have died because of the inability to act. That is really what Edmund Burke was telling us way back in the 18th century.

The Prime Minister is saying we should just tell Saddam Hussein we will wait a bit longer. We should give him one very, very last warning. It has been 12 years, and 19 resolutions from the United Nations Security Council have been flouted. The now famous Resolution 1441, passed unanimously last November, was meant to be the final warning, and serious consequences were to follow if it was ignored. Now the Prime Minister herself says it is debatable whether that authorises military intervention. She may think it is debatable; I think it is pretty clear. Even if it is debatable, why has she and her Government decided to interpret it to mean that they have to give a final last warning to Saddam Hussein? The time for reckoning is with us. Unfortunately, we have decided we will not stand with our traditional allies. I believe that is very, very regrettable.

I cannot understand the position of the Greens in this Parliament—and, to her credit, I do not think the Prime Minister can either. The Greens are saying we must uphold the UN resolutions, but are then saying that, even if there is a UN resolution, they will not support military intervention. In other words, they are not prepared to uphold the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council. If one is not prepared to uphold the resolutions, then why on earth pass them in the first place? That is precisely the position of Germany, with Gerhard Schroeder, and why? At the elections last year for the Bundestag, he was competing for the left vote with the Greens—and let us remember that it is the head of the German Greens who is the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Bundestag. They campaigned that, even with a UN resolution, they would not condone or support military intervention. In other words, they, along with France, signed Resolution 1441 in bad faith, because they had no intention of upholding it.

That is really the point that needs to be made. We come to a situation where we either have the scenario of a united and functioning United Nations, or the scenario of a divided and irrelevant United Nations. It is clear that, under either of those two scenarios, the strategic interest of New Zealand is to stand alongside our traditional allies. Regrettably, this Government has decided not to do that.

I am glad to take a call. My remarks will mainly centre on the issue of low-income families in New Zealand. National neglected low-income families during the 1990s, creating a serious problem, which the current Government has been left to clean up. Raising children and making sure they get the best possible start in life was a key focus of the Government in its first term, and it was signalled in our social security policies as a key priority for this 3-year term.

During the 1990s families were forced to cope with high unemployment, benefit cuts, and the cancellation or withdrawal of basic health and social services. There is a big agenda for change, and a real ambition on the part of the current Government to address those issues as quickly as we can afford to. Considerable new spending has been invested over the last 3 years to improve the material position of low-income families. We have adopted a whole-of-Government approach to dealing with child poverty, which simultaneously attacks both its causes and symptoms. For example, within housing, the Government has reintroduced income-related rents for State houses, which has helped over 50,000 families. As well as leaving more money in a family’s budget, secure and affordable housing increases children’s chances of better health and better educational outcomes, giving them greater opportunities as they grow up.

Within health we have increased funding for free general practitioner care for children. We have introduced new primary health initiatives, such as the $200 million meningitis vaccine campaign and the introduction of primary health organisations, which provide subsidised care to low-income communities. Within education we have increased investment in terms of quality and access to early childhood education, ensuring that children have a good educational start in life, and we have improved funding for low-decile schools. Within employment we have increased the minimum wage each year. We focused on job-rich growth, which has seen 123,000 new jobs created since the change of Government in 1999. Within social services, which is dear to my heart as I am chair of the Social Services Committee, we have improved the abatement rate of part-time income earned by sole parent beneficiaries so that they can take more of what they earn. We have improved access to hardship assistance from Work and Income and we have changed the debt recovery regime to make it less of a burden on low-income families.

Within the community sector we have provided more funding for community-based social and support services, as well as supporting new and existing organisations to grow so that they can provide additional services. These investments stand beside significant policy developments, like the agenda for children and Te Rito programme, the New Zealand family violence strategy, which we also developed with a wide range of community organisations and ordinary New Zealanders during our first term. We have indicated that we will continue to invest in low-income families as resources become available.

The Minister of Finance has already signalled his intention, in the 2004 Budget, to invest the Government’s surplus on improvements to family income-assistance for low-income families. The policy pledges made during the election will also be honoured. Our vision is simple. We want New Zealand to regain its status as a great place in which to bring up children, and we will continue that ambition with the resources necessary to realise it.

💬 Rodney Hide: Who wrote this?

The member can read about it; it is in Mr Maharey’s media release today.

I took this call because no other member in this House seemed to be interested in doing so. I appreciate New Zealand First’s opportunity to have another speech in this debate—a speech that was not “budgeted” for, which seems to be the appropriate phrase. As I understood it, a member from the United Future party was supposed to speak, but he or she was not prepared to take the call and has, obviously, given it away. United Future has failed to support its Government partner. It seems to have kicked the bucket as far as this bill is concerned. New Zealand First is well and truly here in this House. We had a slight lull, but can New Zealand First fix it? Yes, we can! We were here to fill the slot left by United Future’s failure to take the call.

Of course, it is probably not surprising that we were able to take the slot, because from what I have heard from the United Future speakers in this debate so far, they have not really considered the bill. New Zealand First speakers in the debate certainly have. Brian Donnelly spoke earlier on, speaking, as usual, in his very fulsome way about education. I am sure there is no one in this House who knows as much about education in New Zealand as does Brian Donnelly, a New Zealand First member of Parliament—and I take into account the Minister of Education. Brian Donnelly’s speeches are well prepared, well delivered, and clearly of a superior intellectual content compared with those of the Minister of Education—which would not be very difficult. I am sure we would never find Brian Donnelly with an empty Heineken bottle. He would be much more cultured than that.

The next speech from New Zealand First was from Mr Pita Paraone, who is one of our party’s six Māori members of Parliament. Bearing in mind that there are 13 Māori members of Parliament, I point out that six of them belong to New Zealand First, and Mr Pita Paraone is one of them. He spoke on matters of health, as referred to in the bill, and on housing. He made a very good speech for a first-time member of Parliament.

After that speech we heard from Mr Brent Catchpole, who is an up-and-coming member of Parliament for New Zealand First, and up-and-coming member of this Parliament. He really put the Minister of Commerce, Lianne Dalziel, in her place when it came to speaking about leaky homes, non-weathertight homes, and suchlike. He really got her going, because what he said in this debate was so appropriate. This Labour Party Government has let down the families of New Zealand in so far as non-weathertight and leaky homes are concerned.

In relation to this Appropriation Bill, when we consider housing and the housing needs of New Zealanders we find we have a situation now where, time and time again, builders are going broke on a simple $1,000 company. This is a problem. As a solicitor in practice I know that, in the old days, when one got an agreement for sale and purchase, one did a search on the company of the vendor, to see whether the company was sound. Regrettably, today’s solicitors, because of the pressures of conveyancing practice, seem not to search to see whether the company is a $1,000 company or has any substance or history. When those companies go broke, it is the poor old house owner—so often a young family person with children—who carries the can. This Labour Party Government is really not interested in the homeowner.

During the debate on this bill we have heard a lot about rental properties. We see how homeownership has been reduced from 71 percent to 67 percent; it is going down under Labour. All that Labour wants to do is put people into State houses. We see from the provisions that, for example, more State housing is going into the Hobsonville area. That is the future for New Zealand under a Labour Party Government—State housing. The Labour Government wants to take that lovely land at Hobsonville, built up by New Zealanders in the past, and bang State housing on it. It is remarkable. If we look at the history of New Zealand at around 1900 and at 2000, we see a remarkable change. Hobsonville is one of the areas that quite clearly encapsulates it. In 1900 people were working in Hobsonville, in the potteries there. They earned their money, they were the backbone of New Zealand, they owned their own homes, and they were developing things. Hobsonville was a thriving community at that stage, at Limeburners Bay, where I used to live for 18 years. What does Labour have in mind for Hobsonville today? State houses, State dependence, social welfare. That is the comparison between New Zealand as it used to be in 1900, and the way it is in 2000. Labour has no concept of people owning their own homes, working, and developing their future. It wants to take land that the people of New Zealand have built up over all that time, and bang State houses on it.

The other disappointing aspect is that, even if one does support State housing, even if one does have a social conscience, the place to put State houses is where there is work. What is the point of putting someone who is eligible for a State house, who probably is on an unemployment benefit or a domestic purposes benefit, and is caught up in that culture, in a State house where there is no work, where he or she can never possibly get out of that particular frame of life? It is a tragedy, but, of course, this Labour Government wants to make sure that people who do not have any way of getting out of that trap are even more deeply caught in the trap—putting them in places like Hobsonville, where they will find it virtually impossible to get work, because there is no work in Hobsonville. At the moment the only work is at the airbase. The Labour Government is closing that down. I have to say that, on looking at the Quigley report, I see that National was also going to close it down. That is what is happening at Hobsonville, and the Labour Government is making sure that the airbase at Whenuapai closes down as well, over the space of 5 years or so.

I say on behalf of New Zealand First that if the inevitable happens, and the Labour Party removes the Whenuapai base to Ohakea, then, clearly, we must have a good look at what we can put in its place. I was very pleased to be the local member of Parliament in 1975, when there was a change of Government, and that Government developed Albany. Albany was going to be a State housing area in so far as Labour was concerned in 1975. From 1975 onwards we developed Albany to be the area it is today. I was on the committee for 3 years, and Don McKinnon followed me. Have members ever been to Albany to see how it has developed, and all the jobs—probably 10,000—that have been created there now? Members should look at the houses that have been created there now. They are high-quality homes. That is the type of development I hope to see taking place in the Whenuapai area, if the airbase goes.

I would like to see the Waitakere City Council working with local people. I was at a meeting at Whenuapai the other day. The hall was full and the meeting spilled out on to the road. Officials were there, giving their opinion of what the Government is going to do. The Government’s solution for Whenuapai is to establish an officials committee to look into it. I want to see people from the area involved in that officials committee, and having an input into what happens in Whenuapai. Myself as the member of Parliament for Waitemata, then Don McKinnon as the member of Parliament for Albany, worked to try to develop Albany away from the concept of having just State houses, into one of the most thriving parts of New Zealand. I see Mr Cunliffe agreeing with me. I thank him for his agreement. He is a member for the Waitakere area. It is a pity that no Waitakere members of Parliament have spoken in this debate. It is a great shame. I would have liked to hear what they have to say about this issue.

It is a burning issue. There are 218 hectares of land in Waitakere City at risk. We in New Zealand First want to see that land developed effectively and economically, for the benefit of all New Zealanders, so that everyone there can have a job, can own their own house, and the like, as opposed to Labour policy, which is, clearly, just to bang families into a State house, give them a benefit, and let the taxpayers of New Zealand carry the can. I know of no one who is living in a State house who really wants to live in a State house. I am sure most of them want to own their own home, be part and parcel of the productive community of New Zealand, and see their children grow up and own their homes, as well. But that, unfortunately, is not the Labour attitude.

Finally, with regard to education, I am disappointed at the size of schools like Rangitoto College, with a roll of 2,800, and Massey High School, with a roll of 2,200-odd and growing. This Labour Party Government is allowing the size of schools to get out of control. Who of us would have liked to go to a school with that number of students? When we look back at our school days, at the smaller schools we attended, we remember that we tended to know everybody who went there, and we remember whom we went to school with. What chance do students attending a school like Rangitoto College, with a roll of 2,800, have of remembering that? It is not surprising that the North Shore has seen growth in the number of private schools. People want to get their children out of schools that have massive rolls. Private schools on the North Shore, and I will not name them, are doing very well because of this Government’s failed policy.

I would like to thank United Future for this slot.

I am happy to make a contribution to this debate, albeit it is a wide-ranging debate. It is so wide ranging at times that if this were a cricket match, Billy Bowden would be flapping his hands widely and calling “wide, wide” repeatedly, after listening to some of the contributions in the House today.

This is a bill concerning supply. When it comes to supply, one has to say that the Government has enjoyed a very good run with the economy, and the supply has been steady, such that notwithstanding some major slow-down in the economy in the next few months, the Government will end this year with a very substantial Budget surplus. I want to address some comments towards roading in this regard.

During 2001 and 2002 the Government increased petrol excise tax by 4c a litre. This resulted in an additional $145 million, approximately, which no one in his or her right mind would argue Transit does not need in order to give New Zealanders better roads. Whether we measure New Zealand’s road toll by deaths per vehicle or deaths per 100,000 people, we find that New Zealand roads are amongst the least safe in the developed world. However, I do commend the Land Transport Safety Authority and the police for the magnificent effort they have made in the past year in reducing our road toll. Nevertheless, the social cost of road accidents in New Zealand is estimated to be $3.1 billion a year, which is a huge burden for our families and our economy to have to bear. The tragedy of the increase in tax that I referred to earlier—and I say tragic because lives were lost as a result of our roads not being up to international standards—is that only an additional $32 million of the tax raised was allocated to building new roads, while $70 million went into the consolidated account.

We in United Future, along with many road users in New Zealand, received encouragement from the Prime Minister’s words yesterday morning, when she acknowledged that if we wanted First World roads we would have to put our hands in our pockets and pay for them. I commend this Government, and in particular the Minister of Transport, the Hon Paul Swain. I take this opportunity to congratulate him on his marriage at the weekend. Marriage is alive and well in New Zealand, and we encourage it wherever we see it.

The Minister has a huge task, and I am encouraged by his commitment to work on finding a solution to the huge deficit of roading infrastructure that has been allowed to develop over the past years under previous Governments. We must consider alternative methods of funding, with far greater flexibility than the current Land Transport Management Bill provides, but that will not be enough. We must also still look to increase our revenue allocation to Transit, not only to build new roads but for the maintenance of the increasing road network that we all want to see built.

I take heart from the Prime Minister’s comments. I take it that she means that the Government is prepared to put its hand into the collective pocket of the taxpayers of New Zealand, and that, at least, is a sign of Government commitment at the same time as it is asking New Zealanders and councils across the country to put their hands into their collective pockets and pay for some of the roads that we need, with road tolling. United Future is prepared to support the Government to find pragmatic ways to meet the infrastructure needs of New Zealand, without our being stuck with an ideology that leaves us without any way forward.

I would also like to make some comments this evening with regard to legal aid under the Ministry for the Environment’s budgets and allocations for 2001 and 2002. Sixty-five applications were received for legal aid funding. While we support the principle that everyone should have his or her day in court, as a part of natural justice, we find it difficult to understand why, when taxpayers contribute to give members of the community that opportunity, and the Environment Court rules against their case, taxpayers have to support an appeal so that those members of the community can have another shot at disrupting the application. The applicants have spent their own money. We believe that it is time for those who appeal applications to spend their own money, as well.

With regard to biosecurity, in the light of an increasing number of invaders being found in our country, as per the New Zealand Herald article of yesterday, which reports that we have had five biosecurity invaders in the last year, while in the 5 years prior to that we had only five, I believe that the Government must evaluate its Budget priorities. In 2001 we spent $123 million attempting to cover the protection of the entire nation, including screening aircraft and mail, only to be forced to allocate nearly $90 million over the next 5 years to attempt to eradicate the painted apple moth. There needs to be a debate regarding whether it is prudent to spend $90 million to screen all sea containers, or whether we continue the current practice referred to in the New Zealand Herald article. Last year the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry inspected 24 percent of high-risk containers, and randomly selected a further 5 to 10 percent for internal inspection, whereby an officer puts his or her head round the door of the container and has a look inside. For the first time, the ministry did a thorough recheck of containers already door-inspected, and the results were, predictably, worrying. Five live alien spiders and three insects were discovered in the 1,517 containers during door inspection; in the recheck, the numbers shot up to 124 spiders and 71 insects. It is important, if we are to have a secure biosecurity border in this country, that we be prepared to allocate funding upfront to provide that protection, and do not continue to waste it on chasing after those invaders that have already evaded our security.

I wish to address the Appropriation (2001/02 Financial Review) Bill in connection with the police. But first of all I would like to respond to an extraordinary comment made by the Hon Jim Anderton earlier today. I still cannot believe that I heard it right, that he thought tax cuts were a subsidy. How on earth can tax cuts be a subsidy? Tax cuts are about allowing people to keep more of what they have earned. This is not a subsidy from anybody. In fact, the reverse is true. Increased taxation, either through inflation creep or any other mechanism, is nothing more than legitimised theft, and this is something we have to get across.

In connection with prisons, there is an ideological shift on the part of the Government to decide that there should not be any private prisons. Why? Private prisons overseas, both in America and in Australia, have returned a much better result. There are greater efficiencies, they are cheaper, and they provide better services. United Future is backing a balance between Government involvement and private enterprise—the one to keep the other honest. I cannot believe that the prison system will be held ransom to an ideology that is outdated and outmoded, and that comes from the very kind of thinking that suggests tax cuts are a subsidy. They are not a subsidy. Tax cuts ought to be returned to the people who create the wealth of this country, and as I said a little earlier, an extension of taxation through inflation creep is actually legitimised theft.

I will have a look at prisons, which is really the primary purpose of my being here. In December 2000 the police published People in Policing: a Five Year HR Strategy to 2006. The aims were policing capability, deployment, leadership, and management development. But we have staff shortages, most particularly in Auckland. Between $600,000 and $800,000 was spent on recruitment—that is, police training programmes to attract 17 to 21-year-olds. But what about the wealth of experience of the police who are leaving? We are losing police with experience. We are trying to get police from the United Kingdom. Against this backdrop, the police annual report recorded that violence has grown by 2 percent, following an 8.6 percent increase in the previous year. The Centre for International Crime Prevention found New Zealand to have the worst rate for total recorded crimes of 82 countries surveyed. We had 11,152 offences committed for every 100,000 people, and that was in the year 2000. Our greatest increase in rates of violent crime is in the Auckland region, and guess what? That is where the police shortages are.

But not all is doom and gloom. Christchurch has recently turned round some of these statistics. Violent attacks have gone down 13 percent, dwelling burglary is down 14 percent, and non-dwelling burglary is down 17 percent. We can do it, but we need more resources.

It is always interesting to follow a contribution from United Future, whose members come into the House and make impassioned speeches against Government policy, and then proceed to vote to support that Government staying in power.

I want to start my contribution today on the Appropriation (2001/02 Financial Review) Bill by saying how the earlier debate at 2 o’clock today will be a debate I will recall for the rest of my life. It was a poignant debate with some very, very good speeches delivered by members of Parliament and delivered with passion. I certainly could not agree with all the comments that were made in that debate, for instance the comments of Keith Locke, who clearly held a strong personal view but it was one that I could not understand or agree with in any way at all. But when I thought again about the debate, the speech that really did surprise me was the speech from Helen Clark, the Prime Minister. She managed to take 10 minutes to give a very accurate history lesson on the situation, but after her contribution I was left in absolute doubt as to the Government’s position on Iraq.

I want to start now by talking about the financial review and the very interesting comments I heard at 7.30 this evening, when Clayton Cosgrove started his contribution. He said that this debate would show sharp differences between the National Party and the Labour Party. I do not often agree with my colleague and friend from Christchurch, but on this particular topic I totally agree with him.

This debate does show a very clear difference between a lack of planning and a lack of vision held by the current Government.

💬 Hon Lianne Dalziel: The people in Banks Peninsula have got vision.

Banks Peninsula has certainly got vision. It is a wonderful part of New Zealand. However, I want to talk about a financial plan for this country, because I am deeply concerned that this country has no vision and no plan at the moment. We have had 4 years of good economic conditions, yet this Government has taken a “cross your fingers and hope attitude” to the challenges that face this country. In only the last couple of weeks the Labour Party has been challenged in this House about whether it advanced the suggestion that it could raise New Zealand back into the top half of the OECD within 10 years. I think that would have been an admirable goal, but it would have been a completely unrealistic goal, especially when one considers that the Labour Party claimed it would do it within a decade. Yet as we started this parliamentary term, the Prime Minister in question time in the House has suffered from amnesia. She said that she could not recall having ever set out a target to increase New Zealand into the top half of the OECD in 10 years. Even when her own statements were tabled in the House, she completely denied that she had ever set such a target.

I do not believe that New Zealand will be back in the top half of the OECD by 2011. However, I say to the House that this is a challenge that must be faced by New Zealand, and it will not be addressed unless the Government of the day is prepared to acknowledge that that sort of lift in the living standards of New Zealanders will not be achieved without taking some hard decisions. A large number of measures have been introduced by this Labour Government—now supported by United Future—over the last 4 years, but I do not think that any of those measures will do anything to lift New Zealand into the top half of the OECD.

As I arrived in the House this evening I had a chance to listen to the contribution from Georgina Beyer. She read what I think was obviously a well-prepared statement from the Labour research unit in which she expressed concern for low-income New Zealanders, particularly low-income New Zealanders with families.

I say to the House tonight that low-income New Zealanders are now far worse off in 2003 than they were in 1999. We have had information before this House again quite recently, showing that the tax burden now paid by middle to low income New Zealanders has increased dramatically over the period of this Government. The OECD itself has produced figures, and the report has been available for anybody who cares about that issue. That report proves substantially that low and middle income New Zealanders are now paying a higher burden of tax than they were only 4 years ago. The report also stated that only one other country in the world was recognised as finding itself in this situation—in fact, with a worse record—and that was the Czech Republic. So I say to Georgina Beyer that if she is going to come to the Chamber and express concern about the tax burden that has been imposed on those people, she has the opportunity to do something about it.

The other thing that strikes me about people on low or middle incomes, particularly those with children, is that they are essentially price-takers of important commodities like electricity, petrol, and diesel. Yet this Government has again slammed through a 5 percent increase in fuel, as the United Future member spoke about, on the basis that the roads in Auckland would be improved. When I was last in Auckland I found no evidence at all of any progress—

What year was that?

It was recently, I say to Chris Carter. It was this year, and I found no evidence at all of any project that has been initiated by this Labour Government.

💬 Hon Paul Swain: “Spaghetti Junction”, Grafton Bridge—

If Mr Paul Swain thinks that “Spaghetti Junction” is fixed, to his satisfaction, let me assure him that it is not. If “Spaghetti Junction” is an example of the Minister of Transport’s ability to fix roads, then he would be better to stand aside, become a marriage celebrant, and have nothing to do with transport, because that will not fix Auckland’s chaotic roads.

The other issue I want to touch on briefly is electricity price increases. This country faces a major energy crisis.

Where’s Max?

Chris Carter should mark my words. This country faces a major energy crisis, and I am not aware of any initiative by the Government, firstly to recognise that, or secondly, to do something about it.

Finally, I want to talk on the interesting debate that has been started by John Tamihere, on welfare dependency. There is a person who advanced a considered speech with some passion.

💬 Hon Steve Maharey: Who?

The Minister cannot remember who it was. I thought Mr Maharey would certainly remember the comments of Mr Tamihere. But it was disappointing that, having delivered that speech with conviction, he then had to roll over to Helen Clark, and come back into the House and apologise for delivering it. John Tamihere knows the damage that welfare dependency is doing to unfortunate New Zealanders on low incomes. Steve Maharey knows the damage it is doing, but he is callous enough to want to leave those people on welfare dependency, because he thinks that that way they will vote Labour.

I say to John Tamihere that if he believes in what he is saying, he should not roll over when Helen Clark says he has embarrassed the Government, and he should not apologise for something he believes in, because Mr Tamihere was right. Welfare dependency does not do anybody any good, at all.

I want to speak about a virus that is of some concern, which we believe comes from Asia. I do not know whether it is a viral attack, but the Opposition benches have suffered, and are suffering, from a collective attack of amnesia. It is mind-boggling how their brains stop when they go back before 1999, when for 9 long years they were the Government.

I want to take this brief opportunity in the financial review debate tonight to talk about Vote Police. I remind the House of something that the National Opposition certainly wants us to forget, but we have not forgotten. One of the first things the Labour-led Government did when it came office was to cancel National’s planned $24 million cuts to police spending. National’s cost-cutting would have meant fewer police staff, rusty old police cars, and run-down police stations—something that the Opposition does not want to remind us of at this point. All that cost-cutting—of which we have the written evidence—took its toll, and during its last 4 years in office, National spent an average of $725,000 per year on police stations.

It is all very well for Mr Ryall to go on about needing to increase the appropriation for Vote Police, but funding for police vehicles almost vanished under his Government. In 1996-97, 140 police vehicles only were purchased. In the current financial year, the Government will spend around $960 million on Vote Police. That funding reverses the cost-cutting promoted by National. The Labour-led Government is spending about $60 million over 5 years to rebuild police stations. If members want an example of the performance of MPs, Mark Peck is getting a new police station for Invercargill. That is because Mark Peck got off his chuff and lobbied. Ross Robertson is getting a new police station in Howick. That excellent member Darren Hughes, who is well known to the deputy leader of the official Opposition, is getting a new police station in Paraparaumu. Not bad! What was the record of his predecessor? It was a few rusty old cars tanking around Otaki, and no police station. Under Darren Hughes, there are new cars and a new police station. David Parker is a very good member. In fact, he is so good that over the weekend the press mistook him for a new Cabinet Minister. That is the impact David Parker is having. He is getting a new police station in Oamaru and he has also got a new police station for Waikouaiti. Those are the kinds of members we have on this side.

A greater level of funding has meant modernisation of police vehicles. During National’s last 5 years, it acquired around 270 new police vehicles each year. In Labour’s first 3 years in office, 480 new police vehicles were purchased each year. That is a 75 percent increase under this Government. It is good government and good Vote Police appropriation.

This has been a very interesting debate, and at this hour of the night my contribution—[Interruption] It is very interesting that we have a lot of comments coming from members opposite who have come into the House at the last minute. They think the debate is going to end. They do not realise it is a 4-hour debate, which means we will still be debating this tomorrow because we will still have about 6 minutes to go. My starting now means that I will still have the last say tomorrow. It is a 4-hour debate; it is not a debate that will finish tonight when the House lifts. I will be back here tomorrow. If members opposite are not going to listen to my points now, I will be making them again tomorrow.

I bring members’ attention back to the realities of what is happening out in the communities. In the area that I represent, there have been some very buoyant years. The last couple of years have been very, very good down on the farm. We have had high commodity prices. They have been excellent commodity prices—the best for many a year. We have had a low exchange rate—also probably the best for about 15-odd years. We have had low interest rates, and, above all, we have had that one thing that this Government claims it has had some influence in, and that is the weather. We have had the best weather conditions to be experienced for many, many years. The flow-on effect from that has been that rural communities in particular have done well, and that has flowed through into the buoyancy we have seen throughout the country. That is all going to stop, because in the dairy industry, which forms a big part of the area that I represent, Fonterra, New Zealand’s biggest company, which last year paid out $5.10 per kilogram of milk solids, is forecast to pay only $3.60 per kilogram this year. That means a huge reduction in the incomes that will flow through into the rural sector.

What has the Government done? It has done absolutely nothing to reduce all the huge compliance costs out there that are faced not only by farmers, but also by every business. The Resource Management Act is a huge cost. I see that a bill set down at No. 15 on the Order Paper is about the Resource Management Act, but it will not improve the lot of businesses at all. In the area that I represent, those compliance costs are huge issues that have to be dealt with. This Government has done absolutely nothing about that. It has been able to say that things have gone well and there has been buoyancy, and that is true enough, but at the end of the day, when the hard knocks come—and that is what will happen over the next 6 months—this Government will find that it is not as easy as it thinks it is now. The Government has contributed absolutely nothing to the growth of this economy. It has ridden on the back of the factors that I mentioned before.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.