Budget Debate

When Dr Cullen delivered his 2003 Budget last week he was obviously proud of its modesty and conservatism, and unashamed of the fact that he is boasting of a $4 billion surplus and giving millions of dollars to rich men’s yacht races while a third of our country’s children continue to live in poverty. When people like business owners and farmers have a decent surplus, that is the time that they are most likely to invest in future production, whether it is to improve the fertility of the soil or the stock, to expand productivity, or to do any number of a range of useful things. People like Dr Cullen would, I am sure, commend such farmers and business people on their fiscal wisdom in following such strategies. However, when we have a directly analogous situation with a large Government surplus, what does the Minister do?

Rather than investing in that part of society that has the greatest need, and from which our highest social, judicial, economic, and educational costs derive, Labour has seen fit to put off—possibly indefinitely—any real or substantial increase in support for low-income families and children. As Susan St John from the Child Poverty Action Group said, in the group’s post-Budget briefing last Friday: “The poorest children in New Zealand—around 300,000 of them—do not even get a crumb, not even a lick of the ice cream, because their parents’ incomes are below these thresholds.” She was referring to the fact that although Dr Cullen increased the thresholds for the abatement of family support, that action had no impact at all on the many families who live below the threshold level already. While giving an increase of $34.5 million over 4 years to raise income thresholds for family support, the child tax credit, and the parental tax credit, the actual effect of that increase will be to lift the threshold by less than $500. The movement on thresholds simply equates to forecast inflation for this year, and does nothing to address the underlying issue that there have been no inflation adjustments since their inception.

As all of us are aware from briefing papers from the Ministry of Social Development to the incoming Government in late 2002, even after one term of a Labour Government 30 percent of New Zealand children are still living in poverty. Research done by the ministry itself and by others also continues to show strong links between poverty and all sorts of other negative outcomes, and the effects of poverty continue to cost the New Zealand taxpayer immeasurable amounts each year. It is foolish to save money now for a retirement fund when we will be paying for it later with, to name just a few: an ongoing high number of people on the unemployment benefit and all the other benefits that mask unemployment; continuing high rates of truancy, now probably caused, in many cases, by the housing transience that so many poor families suffer; high criminal offending rates; lower productivity due to shortages of skilled and educated workers; and increased hospitalisation of children. Children from the 20 percent of homes in which families bring in the lowest incomes of all are three times more likely to be sick than those from the top 20 percent of homes.

In the past, New Zealand has seen itself as a country that looks after its children. However, in recent studies New Zealand falls well below other countries in the provision of financial assistance to families. Even the UK, after years of Thatcherism, retains to this day a universal child benefit paid at a reasonably high level, regardless of family income and the source of that family income. The assistance offered to families by our neighbour, Australia, also remains more generous than ours, with a maximum tax credit of NZ$66 a week for every child under 13 years, abating from NZ$32,000 up to NZ$83,000, when it goes to zero. New Zealand rates are currently $47 a week, with abatement starting at $20,000.

In one recent UK study, New Zealand was ranked 17th out of 22 countries looked at in terms of Government assistance to children. This is a disgrace, and the Green Party believes that there are a number of things this Budget should have contained, if this Government really had a serious commitment to ending child poverty, and to reducing entrenched social and economic inequities in our country.

First of all, the child tax credit should be extended to all families, including beneficiaries. This would cost around $250 million—6 percent of the Budget surplus. Secondly, the Green Party would like to see an increased level of family support to reflect actual changes in the cost of living since it was first introduced in 1988. Further, the level of the parental income threshold should be raised to reflect the cost of living increases since the payments were introduced, and not just that for this year’s cost of living.

Thirdly, we believe that this Budget, in a year of surplus, should have introduced a universal child benefit. New Zealand is one of the few countries in the world that continues to have targeted, rather than universal, financial support for children. The Green Party went into last year’s election campaigning for the immediate introduction of a universal child benefit, like the old family benefit, at a very modest rate of $15 a week for the first child and $10 a week for second and subsequent children. We estimate that this would cost approximately $600 million a year to implement, or 15 percent of Dr Cullen’s surplus. To take a quick look at an historical comparison, the New Zealand family benefit became fully universal in 1946, and was paid then at a rate of 10/- a week per child. That was equivalent to 1 day’s pay for a labourer. Today, on minimum wages, that would equate to $61.60 a week per child, which makes what the Green Party is asking for look very restrained indeed. After all, research shows that a couple with four children need 69 percent more income to have the same standard living as they would without children. Do we want a society without children?

This Labour Government should be acting now, while it can, to meet the desperate needs of families with children today, especially those who are struggling the hardest, no matter what their source of income. Labour should not go on leaving the children of those who have carried the can for the policies of Roger Douglas, Ruth Richardson, Jim Bolger, Jenny Shipley, and the rest to go on paying an unimaginable price while the rest of us are able to get on with our lives.

In saying all of this, however, I would like to be fair and acknowledge the Labour Government for some of the better initiatives contained in this Budget, including, for example, moves to cut doctors fees for under-18-year-olds accessing primary care organisations; the $55 million over 4 years for early childhood education; the extension of the community internship programme, which was originally a Green Party Budget initiative; the commitment to meeting the goals of the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs for 15 to 19-year-olds by the year 2007; increased subsidised childcare hours, from 37 to 50 hours per week, for low-income parents taking up full-time work; and the building of a somewhat inadequate but welcome additional 318 State houses over 4 years. These are all good measures.

But, even looking at housing, the Green Party believes that Dr Cullen and his Government should have considered doing substantially more than is on offer in this Budget. Housing continues to be a crisis issue for families in places like the Auckland region, Northland, and an increasing number of other localities, like the top of the South Island and Dunedin. I was at first delighted to see the $43 million in capital and $26.7 million in operating costs allocated by Dr Cullen for what he called in his Budget presentation third-sector housing. However, I was really disappointed subsequent to that to discover that in fact it is the Government’s intention to put most, if not all, of this extra funding into local Government housing rather than into genuine community housing projects. Ever since arriving in Parliament, I have been pressing the Government to engage more constructively and creatively, and on a larger scale, with third-sector housing providers, and it is sad indeed that Labour continues to prefer to put what resources it has into local councils, which may simply do another John Banks and sell their social housing off when there is a change of ideology at the top. Genuine third-sector projects have the potential to build homes for families in desperate need right now, in places like Auckland and the Hokianga. If nothing else, I hope that what crumbs remain from local government’s table will be offered to existing competent third-sector providers now.

In conclusion, I will give a quick quote from Dr Gay Keating, Director of the Public Health Association, who summarises exactly how I feel about this Budget: “A failure to use this Budget to break the cycles of disadvantage will cost this country in the future through increased health and social welfare costs. What may appear prudent in 2003 may turn out to be an expensive mistake in 10 years.” I sincerely hope that Dr Cullen and Steve Maharey will come good on their oft-repeated promises to provide substantial relief for low-income families in the 2004 Budget, but I have to say that the children of the disenfranchised and the disempowered victims of Rogernomics and “Ruthanasia” have waited already for far too long.

It is a huge pleasure to rise to speak in this Budget debate and to say how really proud I am to be part of this Government. Indeed, we have seen the foundations that have been laid over the last three Budgets bedded in. This Budget is about staying on course and maintaining our strong positions in times of significant international uncertainty. It is a Budget for all New Zealanders, it is a Budget for my region, the Waikato, which I proudly represent, and it is a Budget for towns like Balclutha—a town, which, as we are well aware, the Leader of the Opposition attempts to represent, but his opponent, Lesley Soper, won both the party vote and the candidate vote in that area. Bill English does not represent even Balclutha, and neither does his party. Those members opposite still do not represent Balclutha, even given the figures in the latest poll, which give them some little glimmer of hope by going all the way up to the huge figure of 28 percent.

I want to talk a little about this Budget in terms of the Waikato. Under this Government, my city has chalked up some significant achievements. We are the home of a significant tertiary education sector. Education is very important for our city. Research is very important, and it is said that up to a quarter of New Zealand scientists are domiciled in the central Waikato and Hamilton area. I am very proud that under the leadership of Jim Anderton, the relevant Minister, we are now getting our Waikato Innovation Park under way. The Prime Minister recently came to turn the first spade of soil for the park. That is a great achievement for our region, thanks very much to the assistance that this Government has given. I also take this opportunity to pay tribute to my colleague the member of Parliament for Hamilton East, Dianne Yates, for her excellent work, along with the local people, the Business2Hamilton organisation and other people in the Hamilton area, who have got the Waikato Innovation Park off the ground.

In health, Waikato Hospital, under this Government, is continuing to be a significant tertiary teaching hospital in terms of its excellent partnership with educational institutions—notably the University of Auckland’s Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and Waikato’s Institute of Rural Health. We will be opening a much-needed neurosurgery unit, which will cater for the mid – North Island. Just the other week, it was with much pleasure and pride that I, on behalf of the Minister of Transport, Paul Swain, opened the next section of the Waikato expressway, immediately north of Huntly through to Rangiriri. I can say as a local member that much more work needs to be done. But this Government, unlike the Opposition, does not just talk about roading; in this Budget round it is spending $1.1 billion on roading. The latest addition to the expressway project is evidence that we are making progress. I also note that education is obviously very significant for Hamilton. We are, in our own right as a city, a very major provider of tertiary education services. We also have some very significant and well-run secondary schools, primary schools, and pre-schools.

I want to talk a little about the Gateway programme initiative—a partnership between secondary schools, the business community, and the wider community in providing jobs and opportunities to assist young people in their transition from school into work and skilled occupations. I would give a gold-star award to Mr Jennings and his team on the Gateway project at Fraser High School, Hamilton, and say how delighted I am that two more schools—Fairfield College and Melville High School—will be in that project by 2007. Nationally, the Gateway programme will progressively become available to all 1 to 5 decile schools by 2007. It is expected that most will take the opportunity to put senior students into workplaces. For members who are not fully familiar with Gateway, the programme prepares young people for the world of work while they are still at school. Senior secondary students get to start work-based qualifications, and they learn the disciplines of work. Indeed, the current Gateway project in Hamilton has been very, very successful.

The package we have rolled out also expands the popular Modern Apprenticeships scheme, which has been a great success in my city. At the end of March there were 240 Modern Apprenticeships in Hamilton, and nationally there were over 5,000. The number of Modern Apprenticeships across the country will increase by nearly 50 percent to about 7,500 places a year by 2006. I commend the leadership of people like Steve Maharey. I also acknowledge the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs and the very positive leadership role being played by local government. The Government’s objective by 2007—and what I want to see and what many people in this country want to see—is that all 15 to 19-year-olds will be engaged in appropriate education, training, work, or other options that will lead to long-term economic independence, and well-being.

I particularly welcome the youth training package, because it specifically targets those young people who do not go on to university or polytech, and enables them to learn the skills necessary for today’s workforce. I certainly hope that one of the cries that Dianne Yates, Nanaia Mahuta, and I have received from industry in Hamilton is noted. It is very, very important that school careers advisers really make young people aware of the options in the trades and the various opportunities in industry. Indeed, to go to university or to polytech, important as that is, is not necessarily the only way forward in terms of post-secondary school education and opportunity for our young people. I strongly commend industry and business in Hamilton for doing their bit in this area.

One of the issues I want to pick up on relates to superannuation. I am delighted that as a consequence of the Government’s strong fiscal position we have been able to move to the full contribution rate for the New Zealand Superannuation Fund this year, contributing nearly $1.9 billion. It is pretty obvious, and is so basic—but, unfortunately, members of the Opposition do not seem fully to appreciate the fact, and even our grandmas can tell us this—that unless we put the money in now, future Governments will not have the resources required to ensure certainty and security in retirement. That is a very, very significant benchmark of difference between this party and the Opposition parties in this House. I am delighted that this Government is putting money away for future generations.

There are lots and lots of good things in this Budget—

💬 Rodney Hide: Name one.

MARTIN GALLAGHER:—and as I go around my electorate the reaction is positive. I tell the member that the public’s response to this Budget shows this Government’s polling rate is 50 percent, and the rating of the Opposition party that that member represents is hovering at 4 to 6 percent—if he is lucky. I think that is testament enough that this Government has the support. Even the Opposition leader cannot even take Balclutha. Who is the member for Balclutha? It is not Bill English, but Lesley Soper, the Labour candidate. She won Balclutha, in the heart of Bill English’s electorate. That is the degree of traction, the degree of support, that Opposition parties are getting in this country. They should learn the lessons of this Budget, which is a good Budget. They well know, when they talk around the country, the excellent reception this Budget is getting.

We are on course. We are tracking steadily. These are uncertain times, but we are not going to the mad rightward lurches that would happen if, say, Mr Brash were either the finance Minister or, maybe by the next election, the leader of the major Opposition party—I will not say main Opposition party, because even the Rt Hon Winston Peters can do much better than Bill English in the preferred Prime Minister rating. I say: “Watch out, Bill English, because Don Brash is only two points behind you.” That is not much consolation, because Bill English is on 7 percent and Don Brash is on 5 percent.

This Labour Government, with this Budget, has forgotten all about New Zealanders—New Zealanders who work, New Zealanders who earn a living—

💬 Hon Judith Tizard: You don’t know anyone.

Judith Tizard calls out that she does not know any, and from hearing her speak in this House I think that is true. Judith Tizard does not know anyone who works, pays his or her way, and pays the taxes that this Budget spends. This Budget is all about Government, all about politicians, all about their spending, and all about their grandiose plans, and is nothing about hard-working New Zealanders who are expected to pay for it.

The ACT party has not forgotten about taxpayers and has not forgotten about voters. We have undertaken the first-ever electronic petition. In this box in front of me, full to the top, are the responses. They would shock Judith Tizard; and they would shock this Labour Government if it had any care for working New Zealanders.

💬 Hon Ken Shirley: What was the petition for?

The petition is for lower taxes, because people want more money in their pockets, not in the Government’s coffers.

I shall read out some of the comments. The first says: “I wouldn’t mind paying the taxes imposed on us by the Government, if only the things they spent it on reflected the difficulty I face in raising it.” Here is another comment, for the interest of the Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues: “All forms of taxation are far too high and act as a real disincentive to business growth and investment in our country.” Here is another one for this Government and Dr Cullen to consider: “Please give us hard-working, overworked, underpaid, stressed employers a break.” Here is another: “I am extremely disappointed that no tax cuts were given to boost the economy and keep it humming.” Finally, here is one response out of literally hundreds of responses: “Yes, we’re overtaxed. Please do something about this. Our tax money is being spent on vote-gathering, PC-type projects instead of building New Zealand’s economy and intellectual-based economy.”

In the last 10 years our economy averaged 3.6 percent growth a year and endured the Asian crisis, and Helen Clark said at the time that the economy just marked time. If we pick up the Budget we see the Treasury forecast for the economy over the next 10 years is a woeful 2.6 percent average growth rate per year. That is a rate of 1 percent less growth than when the economy, according to our Prime Minister, was marking time and the policies were failures. We would not mind that sort of failure going ahead, if that is the difference in response.

Where is the money going? It is being frittered away, as the petitioners in our survey say, on PC projects and policies of reverse racism—policies that get measured not by results, not by the help to the poor and downtrodden, and not by where we will be in 10 years’ time, but simply by how much hard-working taxpayers’ money is thrown at the problem. Civil servants have said to me that the difficulty they have is that they cannot spend the money this Government is throwing at them quickly enough. How is that money being spent?

💬 Hon Judith Tizard: Ha, ha!

Judith Tizard laughs, because she thinks it is funny that taxpayers’ money gets spent in this way. Here is an example of how it is spent. I have a photograph of the Hon Dover Samuels with Hemana Waaka at a Labour Party party before the election. We have a photograph of them having a few drinks. Each of those drinks was paid for by the taxpayer; hard-working people paid for those drinks. Here is a photograph of a speaker at a function with the Hon John Tamihere and Hemana Waaka. Where did the money for that come from? It came from hard-working taxpayers whom the Labour Party once used to say it represented. A $10,000 grant was given, and $5,400 of that was spent on a booze-up for the Labour Party, for John Tamihere, and for Dover Samuels, during the election campaign. We understand now that not only was the Hemana Waaka - Māori Sportscasting International handout paying for that function, but it was paying for Mr Tame Te Rangi to be flown around New Zealand and to Australia to watch sporting matches. There is nothing wrong with that, but who was paying for it? It was the taxpayers of New Zealand. What was Mr Tame Te Rangi’s role in all of this? He was the man overseeing the money being paid to Māori Sportscasting International. We have a Minister of Māori Affairs and a Prime Minister who think that that is an everyday occurrence. Why? Because we have policies of reverse racism when money is thrown at Māori problems, without care or concern.

I want to read an answer that the Minister of Māori Affairs gave to a written question of mine: “I am advised by my officials that there have been no payments of cash by Māori Sportscasting International to any employees of Te Māngai Pāho.” So he was saying that it was just Māori Sportscasting International that paid for Mr Tame Te Rangi to watch the game. Let me read an email released by Te Māngai Pāho. It is from Hemana Waaka’s email address to Mr Tame Te Rangi and is dated 15 October 2001. Members should remember that this email is to a senior civil servant of this Government. The email concluded: “Your payment for services will be placed into account this day.”

💬 Opposition Member: Corruption!

That is corruption, and I understand the payment was put into his TAB account so it could not be traced. The email stated further: “Hiamoe will have with him on his arrival the petrol vouchers/cash/copies of commentators and instructions.” Mr Tame Te Rangi’s job is being the radio manager at Te Māngai Pāho. This was his response, in brief: “What is included in the ‘cash’ that Hiamoe will have?”. Oh, they have gone silent now, have they not? Then he said: “Thanks for the ‘advance’. I am surprised at the choice of words! When can I expect the balance?”.

Minister Parekura Horomia has known about this issue since the beginning of February when I first raised it with him. What has he done? Nothing! What little energy he has, he is expending on protecting thieves and liars, because that is what has happened in this case. This Government is taking hard-earned taxpayers’ money, bundling it up in the millions and sending it to every which way cause, with no abandon. This is just one example, amongst many, of where that money is ending up.

Do we see this issue addressed in the Budget? Do we see a care for hard-working families and for hard-working workers? Do we think that Michael Joseph Savage would tolerate this? Do we think that Norman Kirk would tolerate this? Did we ever think that any Government would tolerate this at any stage? Well, we have one such Government. It is Helen Clark’s Government, and this case is all OK because it is for “Māori”. I say that the policies of spend and waste and the policies of reverse racism should come to an immediate end. I do not know how members of this Government can get up in good conscience and speak on this Budget. We are against it.

I seek the leave of the House to table, in summary form, the comments that we have received on our petition concerning this Budget and on the need for tax cuts for every worker in New Zealand.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Is there any objection to that course of action being taken? There is.

I am very proud of this Government’s achievements, and I am very proud of this year’s Budget. This is a Budget that is forward-thinking. This is a Budget that builds on a series of initiatives in health, education, housing, law and order, and employment. This is a Budget that invests in our future, and this is a Budget that delivers to New Zealanders. At 4.4 percent, our growth rate is one of the highest in the OECD. However, this year, we as a nation have faced much turmoil and uncertainty, such as the war in Iraq and the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic. The prediction is that growth will drop back to 2.2 percent next year, then rebound to 3.2 percent the following year. It is still well above the OECD average.

Let us look at this Budget and what it means for the people I represent—the people of Waitakere. In Waitakere there are waiting lists for State houses. Our Government’s restoration of income-related rents has made a State house an affordable place to live again. I ask members to compare that with the harsh market rents of the previous National Government. Sadly, that Government’s agenda was about flogging off State houses at a shocking rate—13,500 in the 1990s, taking opportunities and housing away from those who most need it.

In this Budget the Government has committed to the purchase of another 318 State houses, over and above the 2,393 already planned. That is good for Waitakere and good for New Zealand. Waitakere is one of our country’s fastest-growing younger cities. It is innovative and vibrant. We are investing in our young people. We are boosting funding to great organisations like Youthline. We are investing big time in combating youth suicide and drug abuse. We are increasing funding for two specialist police teams to bust methamphetamine labs—$6.6 million to fight one of the biggest threats to the health, well-being, and safety of communities like Waitakere. I welcome in Waitakere the reinstatement of community constables in both Titirangi and Glen Eden. Cops in the street and on the beat!

We are investing in families through the newly established Families Commission, promoting positive parenting. Under this Budget, parenting support, family-violence programmes, and improved community-based services will receive an additional $42.5 million. Young people need a good start in life. This is a Government that recognises that. The boost in early childhood funding will benefit our hard-working families, both parents and children, by a whopping extra $55 million over the next 4 years. Waitakere schools have been winners. Operational funding increases and boosts in teacher numbers will ease workload and staffing pressures. They will make our great Waitakere schools even greater. I commend this Government for its investment in the Gateway programme in schools. Waitakere has a number of schools already engaged in the Gateway programme. This is a real success story—a major success story—for our young people. By 2007, no less than nine secondary schools in Waitakere City will be part of that programme.

It is great to be in Government. It is so fantastic to talk to our young people. We are MPs who get out and talk to the people in our electorates. That is why we win our seats. However, it is fantastic to talk to our young people, their parents, and their teachers, and to hear the results. Our kids are getting experience while at school. They are entering jobs that they know they like and know they want, because they have been given the opportunity to learn about them and try them while they are at school. The same rate of success has been seen over and over in the Modern Apprenticeships scheme. There were so many botch-ups by the Opposition when it was in Government, but scrapping the Apprenticeship Act had to be the worst. That ruthless, silly, silly, action cost this country big time. We lost untold skills that we needed so much in our manufacturing industries, and, just as important, so many of our young people lost their hopes and aspirations for their future. But we have fixed that. That hope has been restored. The Modern Apprenticeships scheme is growing and thriving. In Waitakere over a third of young people on that scheme are involved in the boat-building industry. I know that the $56 million package to get all 15 to 19-year-olds into education, training, and work, and the $84 million over 4 years that is committed to the Industry Training Fund, which our Government established, will be celebrated by young people, their parents, teachers, business, and manufacturing in Waitakere.

Our community is getting healthier. Waitakere is leading the charge with private health organisations. Two public health organisations serve most of our electorate. From 1 October they will be able to charge low fees to all patients under 18. That will be extended in the next year, with the aim of 40 percent of the population receiving low-cost primary health care by the end of 2004. Beat that! This Government has spent more on health than ever before—20 percent of our funding. We are spending it wisely. We know that primary health care is an investment, not a cost. Waitakere City is rich in its people and its myriad of cultures. To attend a citizenship ceremony in Waitakere City is a real buzz. It is always entertaining and always inclusive. We recognise the importance of all citizens having the ability to reach their full potential.

I commend organisations in my electorate: tangata whenua, Waitakere Multicultural Society, the Waitakere Indian Association, Pacific Forum, Now, Waipareira Trust, and many, many more who work together to make sure that all our cultures feel welcomed and valued. I am pleased that we have committed over $20 million to assist migrants and refugees into settlement and employment. Those policies are paying off. I am heartened that Waitakere has played its part in beating unemployment. We are up there—down from 2,792 in 2000, to 2,226 in 2003. Those achievements do not happen by chance, and they certainly do not trickle down. They happen, because funding and policies were in place to make them happen. This is a Government with a good heart. This is a Budget that is smart, responsible, and forward thinking, and so is this Government.

New Zealanders have the right to expect that a Government will put in place a framework and policies that will increase the chances of a prosperous lifestyle for them all. This Budget does nothing to give confidence in that regard—nothing at all. The previous speaker can recite her little speech in the way that she has and make things sound all rosy pie, but the future is not rosy pie. Unless the Government can guarantee sustainable long-term growth for this country, we will not be able to afford the kinds of things that New Zealanders have grown accustomed to having, such as good access to decent health services, a decent education system, continuing employment prospects—job prospects—and good growth prospects that will encourage businesses to stay here and invest more money, thereby providing more jobs and wealth creation. This Budget does nothing for any of those prospects. And the pity about it is that this Government continually boasts about what it is doing for Māori, when in fact the reality is the reverse of that.

As far as Māori are concerned, this Budget fails to deliver. In contrast to the 2000 Budget, when this Government rolled out the red carpet—so to speak—with all the ribbons and bells on closing the gaps for Māori, the 2003 Budget carefully avoids any particular focus on Māori. Of course, there is a reason for that. Clearly, Labour is looking to send a message to its core voters and to address growing public anxiety over its handling of Māori issues. If members look through Dr Cullen’s Budget delivery this year, they will be lucky to find the word Māori mentioned more than three times. Māori will probably not be impressed by this Budget, but even more than that, the Māori electorate MPs who sit on the Government side of the House will be even less impressed by this Budget.

None of the initiatives announced in this no-growth Budget will necessarily improve the lives long term of ordinary Māori families who are struggling to live their daily lives. My bet is that not even the Government’s own Māori electorate MPs are impressed by that. Why is that? It is because over the last 3 years those MPs have had to sit and watch while millions of dollars went into the mainstream, only to be soaked up by the bureaucracy and with the benefits to Māori being impossible to assess because Ministers and chief executives refused to be audited.

💬 Edwin Perry: That’s right!

Absolutely that is right! I can tell from the body language of the Māori MPs on the Government side of the House that they will be absolutely disappointed, and probably angry, that the millions of dollars that went out in the closing the gaps programme, particularly to mainstream agencies, have been soaked up mostly by the bureaucracy, and that nobody is able to tell us what the value of that has been for Māori .

Adding to the frustration of the Māori electorate MPs is that while they have seen an allocation in Vote Māori Affairs each year for Te Puni Kōkiri to play the sheriff and to try to pin the big agencies and their chief executives down, in the vote this year they have also seen other parts of the vote like policy development, and brokerage and facilitation—true development activities—lose some of their allocation. The part of the vote that does have an increase is in the area of State-sector performance. In other words, there will be more money for Te Puni Kōkiri to act out the farce of playing the sheriff to big-spending agencies that refuse to be tied down.

That was confirmed recently by the release of official information papers that basically showed that the task of monitoring the big agencies is beyond Te Puni Kōkiri. In my view, it should not have that role, anyway. If the Government is serious about closing the gaps while continuing to dole out money to big agencies like social welfare and others, then the monitoring of those agencies should perhaps come from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. It should not be left to Te Puni Kōkiri, which has great difficulty in trying to pin those chief executives down. It has recently been confirmed that although millions of dollars have been sucked up by those agencies, the value of that for Māori cannot be assessed. That is an unsatisfactory state of affairs. If we were to take the Government seriously—and it is actually time that Māori did start to take the Government seriously—then one has to ask why it has allowed that situation to happen, with all that money going out and nobody, but nobody, being able to assess its effectiveness. It is an absolute waste of taxpayers’ funds, and this Government ought to be ashamed of itself.

I want to make some comments about the treaty claims process. The Government has made much of its $6.5 million in new funding for a treaty information programme. There is no doubt that there will be agencies and members of the public out there who may appreciate that. But what New Zealanders want most of all—Māori included—is to have the historical grievances concluded and put behind us. If members look at the Budget for this year and look at the appropriations in Vote Courts for the Waitangi Tribunal, they will see that there is absolutely no new funding for it. There is no boost of funding for the Waitangi Tribunal, which is actually the key to having settlements concluded. It is time that this Government learnt that no matter how eagerly Māori might want to conclude a settlement, the thing they want most is to have their day in court, and to be able to go to negotiations armed with findings and recommendations from the Waitangi Tribunal. If members look at the Budget they will see that there is nothing in there to enable the Waitangi Tribunal to gear up its activities in that area.

The Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations has set a 2-year time frame for the reaching of an agreement between the Government and the 100-plus claims involving the central North Island forestry, and there is an expectation that the tribunal will move in tandem with that negotiations process. I ask the Minister to explain how the tribunal is to do that and at the same time to continue with the work that it is currently doing and has been doing in the past. My bet is that in the 48 hours following the release of the Budget, tribunal officials and executives probably had to huddle themselves away and work out what they will have to put on the back burner in terms of hearing days, doing research, writing reports, and making recommendations. They would have had to cut back on their forward schedule in order to accommodate the Minister’s time frame of 2 years for those 100-plus claims. That shows the Minister’s ignorance about the value that Māori place on having their claims go through the Waitangi Tribunal.

On the face of it, $6.5 million for a treaty information programme looks worthwhile. I understand that there is an intention that there will be the publication of treaty booklets and pamphlets already in circulation, but there will also be a lot more seminars and workshops on increasing the understanding of the treaty. That will not necessarily benefit the New Zealand public. I guess we could take from it that there is a lot of money in there for some consultants—increasing the gravy train—but no money whatsoever to allow the key organisation, the tribunal, to increase its core activities. That is a total failure on the part of this Government. This is a Budget that the Māori members on the Government side of the House will probably want to hang their heads in shame about—and so they should. If they are to make their representation of their electorates mean anything, then they should make the Government deliver in a much better way than it has been delivering in the past 3 years. This Budget does not do that.

Sitting suspended from 5.58 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Uncertainty swirls around us. It is time for the sound management of the economy. The Budget delivered by the Hon Dr Michael Cullen delivers just that prescription. It is a prescription for certainty and for confidence. Internationally we have war, terrorism, and disease, and the global economy is not performing well. Those concerns affect everybody in my electorate of Napier. I know that because every weekend I doorknock. I know what my electorate is saying, so I know the sort of Budget it wants. It has the very Budget it had hoped for. This is also the Budget that the editorial writer in Hawke’s Bay Today wanted, when writing on the eve of the Budget. I quote: “Good times have given the Government the luxury of being able to press ahead with its social charter—that is, after all, what it was elected to do.” What is that social charter? It is concerned with equity among people in health and in education, and with strength from diversity—diversity of people and of lifestyles.

But no, the anticipation of that writer that there would be a big spend-up was not fulfilled, because there is drought across the country. That affects our Hawke’s Bay economy. Unpredictable frosts and frost patterns affect our wine producers. Returns to dairy farmers are affected by falling milk prices and a rise in the value of the New Zealand dollar. We have a power crisis created by a second very dry winter. That crisis has revealed the flawed planning that gave this Labour Government an electricity generation and distribution model that needs change. We have an unexpected set-back in what we can draw from our gasfields. We have an abundance of coal, but not the technology to use it environmentally wisely. Those are the uncertainties that each person in the Napier electorate has playing on his or her mind and that the editorial writer must have had in mind when he stated “the certainty that wealth needs to be created before it can be shared.”

But there is also plenty of really good news. The growth rate of our economy is strong, as is that in Hawke’s Bay. New Zealanders are returning to live in New Zealand. Well-qualified migrants are choosing to make New Zealand their home and the place to raise a new generation of Kiwis. To those people, Hawke’s Bay is seen as a slice of heaven. The demand in Napier for existing housing stock is phenomenal. Prices are unheard of, and people are buying houses almost sight unseen. To get a new house built is even more difficult. In fact, a senior bank officer said to me yesterday that he was forced to confirm a finance deal, or otherwise there would have been a wait for 14 months before the builder could return to that site.

There is business confidence in Hawke’s Bay—business confidence to market products and to take risks, and business confidence to retain the asset of land. That was no better demonstrated than by Kim Crawford Wines in my electorate of Napier. Just this week that winery announced the sale, for $18 million, of the brand Kim Crawford Wines. It has sold the intellectual property in the brand and kept the land and the assets. An overseas wine distributor has bought the brand for $18 million. That is a demonstration of faith in the economy of the Napier electorate. Unemployment figures fluctuate, but are lower than for a long, long time. Napier is a great place for those looking for work.

In Napier we have innovative educational establishments. The Eastern Institute of Technology is rapidly becoming a flagship in the tertiary education field. Our secondary schools offer variety and excellence. Our primary schools are centres of innovative educational and management ideas, and our young people are being helped by the Gateway programme, by increased operational funding, and by the availability of more teachers in this coming year.

In Napier we receive health services that are determined to keep us fit and well. We have a sports foundation that is the highlight, surely, of the Sport and Recreation New Zealand programme. It is headed by an innovative leader in Colin Stone. It is pulling all the sports together and they are performing well in the new stadium, which is a model of intercity cooperation and was built recently in Taradale. But when medical disaster does strike in Hawke’s Bay we have the health system to cope with that. Hawke’s Bay had the first severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) patient in New Zealand. The record of dealing with that patient has been described by those who know, including the Ministry of Health, as exemplary. Our services were up to that crisis, and our specialists were able to cope with it. The board is now led by a chief executive officer who loves his job. He recognises that it may well be more expensive to have someone on a waiting list than to get the surgery done. From discussions with that chief executive officer, I would expect our waiting list to be reduced to one-third of its current size over the next 6 months.

Napier is a community of small businesses, which have previously had to run to the same rules as multimillion-dollar and multinational businesses. That problem is addressed in this Budget. Assistance with payroll and employee administration will make small-business operation less stressful. I speak as someone who has run small businesses for something like 30-odd years, employing up to five or six staff. Removing the difficulty of meeting large provisional tax payments will enable the small-business owner to plan and to manage cash flows like any household budget—that is, with regular outflows of cash in line with the pattern of money coming into the business. That is what this Budget provides for the smaller business people.

Napier’s own Dr Michael Cullen, as the Minister of Finance, has set the finances of this country into a pattern of certainty and stability. The job for the rest of us in Napier who claim some leadership role is to make sure that the pattern delivers to each family, individual, student, invalid, and business. Dr Cullen has given us the tools to build a strong economy. I will remind members of what those tools are. They are the tools of youth development, because surely the future of this country is in our young people.

Firstly, the Gateway programme enables senior secondary school students to begin work-based qualifications and to learn the disciplines of work. Last year it was available in two schools in Napier—Colenso High School and Tamatea High School. This year it has been extended to five further secondary schools in Napier, and the pattern is now established from that developed in Napier and other centres, so that eventually all decile 1 to decile 5 secondary schools in New Zealand will take part in the Gateway programme. That augurs well for our young people. Secondly, there are the Modern Apprenticeships. At the end of March this year there were 132 Modern Apprenticeships in Napier, and 5,012 nationally. The target of 7,500 Modern Apprenticeships by 2006 should be met. The aim of the mayor’s task force on jobs, for all 15 to 19-year-olds to be engaged in appropriate education, training, work or other options that will lead to long-term economic independence and well-being, will be met.

Those targets of youth development, the Gateway programme and Modern Apprenticeships, are important because many of our young folk going through school these days have faced the urge to become academic, to go to university and polytechnics, when to many of those children and youth, the real benefit is not in academic pursuits but in exercising their bodies and using manual skills to contribute to our country in a very practical way. The sooner that we move away from the academic cringe of feeling that if one uses one’s hands and body to earn an honest dollar one is somehow an inferior citizen, the better it will be. This Labour Government is introducing that kind of equity in the workforce.

But education cannot get by without funding, and I am pleased to say that in Napier this Budget will release almost $300,000 in additional operating funding. I am on the board of trustees of a secondary school in Napier, and I know how important that increase in money will be. Boards of trustees are run by everyday mums and dads, who have to face their own problems and then give their time voluntarily to run the schools.

💬 Peter Brown: Has the member ever got his hands dirty?

As well as that—what that member may have lacked is good teaching—19 additional teachers will be made available to Napier schools in this next financial year. That is a prescription for success, and is a prescription for the social charter spoken about by the editorial in Hawke’s Bay Today on the eve of the Budget. That prescription will lead this country forward, with valuable young people who have a place to fit in and who can find their place in the world. That is why John Roughan, writing in the New Zealand Herald in the weekend, was able to say that the established superannuation fund “is still there, and Cullen is now salting away the tax surpluses to build a fund that might relieve my kids of some of the cost of paying for the retired baby boom. National, true to form, promises to abolish it.”

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: United Future members have split their speeches, so I will give the next member the bell at 4 minutes.

The Government has included some useful educational initiatives in the 2003 Budget. United Future recognises them and wishes to uphold them today, but we are also aware that some budgeted moves could well be counter-productive and even harmful to New Zealand as they take their course.

On the one hand, there has been some real help for students and learners to achieve at the very early levels of education, particularly among Māori and poorer households. For example, one-third of the Māori students who left school last year had no qualifications. There is certainly a need for extra help in that realm, and I believe this Budget is a good step forward. So is training for young people and the industry training investment programmes that the Government has announced. Yet on the other hand, at the finishing level of education for many students—that is, the tertiary sector—there lurks a recipe for trouble that I want to look at a little tonight. In particular, I am referring to what may be called a “time bomb”: the triennial fee maxima of $3,900 each year for arts students, and above that for other students. Both the concept and the amount could shoot the Government in the foot.

The fee maxima idea is hailed as the best deal to give certainty to students and their families, to the taxpayer, and to the institutions providing the tertiary learning. United Future asks whether it is. To me, it looks like a bit of a return to the sad old days of Muldoonism, when all prices were fixed. It is United Future’s belief that what is good for the gander is not necessarily good for the goose in that arena. The students—that is, the learners—the taxpayer, and, certainly, the providers of all tertiary learning are, I believe, on a collision course. Conflicting interests abound. I will show members what I mean by that.

Fact No. 1 is that New Zealand University Students Association representatives desire a long-term goal, they state, of a well-funded tertiary sector with no fees and no debt. I, along with thousands of other New Zealanders, am flabbergasted at that type of economic logic having been taught by the higher institutions in New Zealand. I am not convinced that young students who have had most things free in life to date would deny that they have been supported at great cost by their parents—or even by themselves. The State, students must remember, is not Mum or Dad or the family. To condone such practices is to not prepare our youth to enter the real world, where nothing is free. Everything costs someone something.

Fact No. 2 is that last year New Zealand taxpayers paid around $10,500 for every tertiary student who was being educated. It cost them a fortune, in my terms. That was only 70 percent of the direct cost of educating those students, who number over 500,000. Do the ever-shrinking numbers of taxpayers want to pay more this year and, as we can see, every year hereafter? Of course, every family would be excited if its son or daughter did not have to pay fees, but that very same family would have to pay for that lack of fees through higher taxes. It is nothing other than a “smoke and mirrors” job; the taxpayer always picks up the tab. Will taxpayers want their already closed chequebook to be prised open for yet more taxation?

What will the Government do when the heat becomes white hot this year? The first shots have already been fired by the student unions and the universities since the Budget was announced last Thursday afternoon. Will the Minister and the Tertiary Education Commission seriously consider some long-term implications of the fee maxima policy on students and their families, on the cash-strapped providers, and, certainly, on the overcharged taxpayer?

We have a $4 billion surplus: $11,600,000 is earmarked for the arts, $45 million for sport and recreation, and $28 million for a yacht race, but what is going to crime and the causes of crime? We are disappointed that at-risk children in high-risk families have, for the most part, missed out in the Government’s Budget. Early childhood intervention is, surely, one of the key strategies in lowering the rates of crime and child abuse in this country and in breaking the cycle of crime later on. The Action for Children and Youth Aotearoa report produced in August 2002 concluded that New Zealand is failing to protect children from violence and falling below United Nations requirements for meeting their needs. Family violence costs this country an average of $1.2 billion per year. That figure is conservative and does not include the emotional costs to children and the family. In other words, non-intervention quite simply costs us more—up to 19 times more, by some calculations—than effective early intervention by non-governmental organisations, like the Family Help Trust. The allocation of $600,000 to better resource Project Early—a Christchurch intervention programme for children—and to seed it in parallel schemes in Auckland, is to be applauded and welcomed. It is about time!

But why is this Government putting $17 million in operating and $22 million in capital resources into looking at establishing a Supreme Court that neither the public nor the legal profession has asked for, when it has only put $2 million into victim support organisations? Members should not get me wrong. That $2 million is absolutely essential to help restructure victim support so that its delivery of services reaches the same high standards right throughout the country and enables the establishment of a more efficient and seamless district structure, comprising 14 districts, so that all volunteers get the requisite training and supports, and that the Victims Rights Act is clearly understood and deliverable. But more needs to be done.

An additional 50 Auckland-based police, for which the Budget sets aside funding, is wholly inadequate, when what is needed is about 1,500 police nationwide—a figure that would be comparable to the successful New York initiative, which saw the rates of murder, violent crimes, and burglaries plummet. Where is the allocation of funds to neighbourhood support schemes, so that innocent New Zealanders are empowered to help protect themselves? Surely, that is one of the key objectives in empowering communities to take charge of their streets and their lives. It would be a bridge between the police, the judicial arm, and the people of this country.

I am gratified that $10 million has been tagged to fund two specialist police teams to deal with a scourge of methamphetamine laboratories, organised crime, and terrorism. Money to fund a specialist DNA collection team is to be equally applauded, and $2.6 million additional funding over 4 years for the youth suicide prevention strategy targeting families in which suicide has occurred or been attempted is to be congratulated. I question whether it is enough, but it is in the right direction.

I cannot help but feel that, overall, the Budget has favoured what we do with offenders rather than what we do with victims of crime. Offenders are still the focal point. Without raising another red cent from the taxpayers of New Zealand and the bleeding pockets of hard-working New Zealanders, we could raise between $270 and $300 million if our prison system was as fiscally efficient as the privately run Auckland remand prison.

With what we save, we could look at better funding for victims, restoration—including restitution, as well—and more, and better equipped, police. Our police right now do not have radio systems that are encrypted—why not? We have to equip them if we expect them to do the right job. As far as law and order issues are concerned, the Budget points its nose in the right direction, but the feet are not quite moving fast enough. We could, and we must, do better.

Budget time is the time when we get to look at the Government’s accounts and reflect on whether the Government is managing the economy and its finances wisely. This year we are in the happy position of being able to report a $4 billion surplus before capital obligations. Those capital obligations include $1.8 billion being put into the Superannuation Fund in order to sustainably fund superannuation well into the future. That has been achieved leaving a surplus of $1.4 billion after those adjustments are made, and that is after substantial extra money going where taxpayers want to see that money focused.

Health is getting an extra $737 million, which is an increase in funding of 9 percent—a very real increase that is well above inflation. Education is getting another $481 million, which is a 6 percent increase, and which is again ahead of inflation. Enterprise, industry, and regional development support are getting an increase of $76 million, which is off a fairly low base, and which represents a 43 percent increase in funding. That has been done in an economic climate where our economy is growing at amongst the fastest rate in the OECD, with 4 percent growth. Unemployment is very low, despite our labour force participation rate being at an all-time high. At around 5 percent, it is again one of the lowest in the OECD. Our Crown debt levels are at the lowest since Treasury began collecting data in 1971. When the accounts were taken over from National by the Labour-led Government, gross debt was at 36.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Over the next year or two it will go down to 23 percent of GDP, which is a substantial decrease. Net debt will drop even further, to 14 percent of GDP.

Against that background, one wonders what Dr Brash and the National Party would be saying. I looked with some interest at what Dr Brash was reported as saying in the Dominion Post last Thursday, 15 May. I was intrigued by this quote: “Growth is too low to narrow the large gap in the living standards between New Zealand and Australia that emerged during the 1970s and 1980s.” I thought, my goodness, it is strange for Dr Brash to forget about the decade that we have had since then. Maybe there is a reason for that selective quoting of statistics. So I got out the figures, and they make for interesting reading. In 1980 New Zealand was ranked 18th on per capita GDP in the OECD countries, and Australia was 10th. The decade of the 1980s was mainly Labour-led. In that decade New Zealand dropped back one placing, from 18th to 19th, while the Australians dropped back six places. It seems to me that Labour did not do a bad job compared with Australia back in that decade. Then I looked at the next decade, and I wondered why Dr Brash had not mentioned it. From 1990 – 2000 it was the National decade, in which National effected its “wonderful” fundamentalist policy that is still so favoured by Dr Brash and Mr Hide—or Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, as some of us like to refer to them. In that decade New Zealand started at 19th and dropped back one place to 20th. In the same period Australia went from 16th up to 12th—they went up four places, and we went back one. It is no wonder Dr Brash does not refer to that decade—it is the decade of incompetence.

In most overseas countries the ideology of fundamentalist, neo-classical economics is seen as flawed. Our own New Zealand experience of the adverse human and economic consequences of the austere, misguided, neo-classical fundamentalism was one of the reasons that I became active in the Labour Party, and one of the reasons Dr Brash became active in the National Party; because he still believes in it.

R Doug Woolerton: The only good thing you have done is kick Gavan Herlihy out.

That is a very kind comment from the member. National and ACT’s continued obsession with austerity and neo-classical fundamentalist monetary policy, no matter what the economic and social cost, relied upon a simplistic economic model that was altogether too narrow to make common sense. But have they moved on? No, they have not.

💬 Peter Brown: Have you?

Yes, Labour has moved on, and that is why the member has seen the economy improve, and why the country is in such a healthy Budget position. But have National and ACT moved on? No—never. They cling to the purity of their simplistic neo-classical views. They still think that issues of distribution and efficiency can be separated. They do not care if there is a great disparity between the income and wealth of the haves and the have-nots. They say it does not matter. They say that the economy performs just as well, even with those disparities. Well, we disagree. Our philosophy is that social cohesiveness and equality of opportunity are important to economic prosperity and to personal security. We think the failed neo-classical policies that widened the gap between wealth and income in New Zealand undermined security and threatened the economy to the detriment of us all. We say that their policies—which Dr Brash would return us to tomorrow—were one of the main reasons behind the poor performance of the New Zealand economy compared with Australia.

I reiterate that that poor performance was in the decade between 1990 and 2000 when National was in Government, and that is the reason that we went backwards, as compared with Australia. That is also the reason we are now going forward, as compared with the rest of the world. We recognised that mistake, and we are changing it. What did we inherit when the Labour Government first got back in? We inherited those austere policies and the consequences of them. We had virtually no apprentices. This Budget increases the funding for the Modern Apprenticeships scheme. We had a youth suicide rate that was very high because of the hopelessness with which young people entering the workforce viewed their prospects. I think that was a major part of the hopelessness of youth at the time. This Budget funds a policy that, over the next few years, will see everyone of school-leaving age either moving into employment or moving into post-school education. Those young people will have hope, and we will have a better and more skilled workforce.

We had superannuation that was increasingly under threat as to its sustainability. After the last few Budgets, we have a long-term, sustainable superannuation position, largely because of the contributions that will be made this year, and in the future, of about $1.8 billion, which will go to help fund future superannuation.

💬 Peter Brown: Where are you going to invest all that?

We invest in people. Where will the Superannuation Fund invest? The Superannuation Fund will invest in a range of investments in New Zealand and overseas so as to protect the fund for the future, and to sustain superannuation for our superannuitants.

Notwithstanding the healthy surplus, we have managed to find an extra $167 million to fund an additional 774 teachers in our schools, which is over and above those required for roll growth. As I have said, we have reduced debt, we have funded Modern Apprenticeships, and we have funded training for everyone 15-19 years of age—as long as they are in further training or education, and not on the dole.

💬 Lindsay Tisch: You’re on page 7.

I am on page 7, am I? It is true that I have lost my page. In closing, I reinforce my encouragement to listeners to think again about the selective quoting of statistics that Dr Brash would visit upon us in quoting the statistics from the 1970s and 1980s, but ignoring the 1990s when it all went so horribly wrong.

As I go about this place and meet and listen to Government members, I must confess that I find most of them pretty decent human beings, whom, I suspect, care as much about the future of this country as I do.

💬 Ian Ewen-Street: Except for Doug Woolerton.

Even Doug Woolerton—but he is not in the Government. As I listened to Dr Cullen’s Budget statement, there were hints that, yes, indeed, this Government might be taking seriously the idea of a 100 percent pure New Zealand—looking after those things that, if not pure New Zealand, at least make us unique. The $15.2 million for heritage protection may well help to keep intact features like Hamilton’s Hayes Paddock, that stunning reminder of old Labour’s State housing initiatives, from those who would destroy the integrity of the whole by removing houses and replacing them with structures that are less sympathetic.

The Prime Minister’s personal passion for the arts is commendable. I have just been to the launch of the overseas initiatives and heard her speak about some of the wonderful things that are happening in the arts—and they do indeed owe a great deal to her personal enthusiasm, as well as to the funding. Although I am not aware of the detail of how the additional dollars budgeted for sport and fitness will be spent, in the light of the Hon Trevor Mallard’s response to my question about measures to improve the exercise habits of New Zealand youngsters, I remain hopeful that at least some will be targeted to achieve heightened levels of youthful activity.

If the Government really wanted to strengthen the 100 percent pure New Zealand image and provide real opportunities for all New Zealanders, it would be far more generously inclined towards initiatives that encourage New Zealanders to support New Zealand businesses and New Zealand products. Mr Len Cook, the former chief statistician, is quoted in last week’s Listener, as saying: “The Tourism Board’s 100 percent pure is stunning. It would be wonderful if that became the whole brand of New Zealand.”

💬 Peter Brown: That’s why he lives and works in London.

Indeed, he does. Although much has been made by others of the purity of the New Zealand environment, our huge waste problem, and our over-dependence on chemicals in our production and processing of food, I want to talk about the products that fill our shop shelves and Kiwi shopping baskets. They are not 100 percent pure New Zealand. Although some suggest there are some things we cannot or do not make, an examination of our history would suggest that those things are relatively few. We are a food-producing country, but the levels of imports on our supermarket shelves are a disappointing testament to our collective willingness to undermine the employment opportunities of our children, our neighbours, our friends, and ourselves by buying those imports when alongside them are New Zealand equivalents that are frequently as cheap, and cheaper.

But it is not only food and jobs that cry out for a greater commitment to support local manufacturers. The overseas products may well be those of sweatshops and lax environmental standards—shortcomings we may well ignore when they occur somewhere else but would result in an outrage if the products were New Zealand – made products and the social and environmental degradation happened here. All too often, the manufactured imports are cheaper—and for a reason: they are disposable. They are not made to last; they are made to throw away, to join the other 80 million kilograms of rubbish New Zealanders throw away every week. New Zealanders deserve better than the cheap throwaway.

The Government appears unwilling to dig too deeply into its surplus to support local business, so I had to look to existing spending, beyond the paltry $1.84 million targeted at small business. I looked at the $73 million intended for Trade New Zealand to improve our trading prospects. Our balance of payment deficit over many years is an issue, but there is another obvious line of attack that the Government could mount. Reducing the level of imports by spending even a modest proportion of the Trade New Zealand $73 million to support Business New Zealand’s “buy local” campaign could begin to change New Zealanders’ mindset. New Zealanders valuing New Zealand - made and New Zealanders buying quality is a marketing campaign that should be child’s play in a country that has totally transformed the smoking habits of millions of New Zealanders and made drink-drivers, once the object of sympathy, into persona non grata.

Is this inconsistent with the Government’s policies? I would not have thought so. Yet in the past almost nothing has gone into supporting the concept of New Zealand – made. Are we saying one should never buy foreign? Are we saying one must always buy New Zealand – made? No, that is not what the Green Party is saying. The Green Party is saying that it makes sense to spend our money in places where it can find its way back into our own pockets and where it supports people in our community to live well and to enjoy life.

This year’s food safety budget is underspent by approximately $5 million. Ordinarily, a Budget underspend would be cause for great celebration and rejoicing, but when one considers the parlous state of food safety in New Zealand, I find the underspend, frankly, cause for alarm. The Food Safety Authority, we remember, is an agency that does virtually no monitoring or testing of the vast amount of produce that is imported into New Zealand, or of any food that is produced here in New Zealand. Yet, when we look at the accounts, much of the underspending occurred in the critical area of monitoring of our food supply—an area where the agency is notoriously weak, and we do not have even the most rudimentary programme in place.

Let us take the simple issue of campylobacter, just as an example. New Zealand has the highest rate of campylobacter poisoning of any Western country. It is about twice the rate of similar countries, and it is growing by about 25 percent every single year. Last year, more than 12,000 New Zealanders became ill as a result of campylobacter poisoning, and about 500 ended up in hospital. We know that most campylobacter poisoning comes from eating chicken meat, and that four out of every five fresh chickens sold in New Zealand are contaminated with either campylobacter or salmonella.

What is our Food Safety Authority doing about this intolerable level of contamination? Where is our national strategy to clean up poultry rearing and processing plants, and food outlets, and to halve campylobacter rates within 5 years, as Britain has pledged to do? The answer is that there are no such programmes in New Zealand—I should say no such national strategies, because there is probably some little programme sequestered somewhere in the authority.

Another vital food safety issue is the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in our food chain. A recent survey of data from 100 poultry farms all around New Zealand has found an extraordinary 50 percent of them contaminated with the antibiotic-resistant bacteria, VRE—Vancomycin-resistant enterococci. One would think that this would be a cause for alarm and treated as a serious food safety concern, particularly as if these antibiotic-resistant bacteria were to transfer their resistance to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, prevalent around New Zealand, we would have a national health scare that would make Sars look like a dress rehearsal, and this has already happened. But, astonishingly, we have no programmes in New Zealand to estimate the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the food chain or to randomly test chicken meat.

I put forward a Budget bid to do this last year and was told there was no money in the Budget for this work. That was the previous Government, so I have to say it is galling, to say the least, that not only is this work still not being done, but there is $5 billion languishing around in the Budget that could have been spent on that important study.

Now, in a positive light, I am relieved that the Food Safety Authority will finally look at imports and regulations around the domestic food supply, but I am completely mystified as to why the agency was vehemently opposed to country-of-origin labelling, when it is explicitly required, in its terms of reference, to support consumer choice through accurate and meaningful labelling. Two recent consumer surveys have found that 70 to 80 percent of consumers want to know where their food comes from, but officials are arguing that there is no interest in country-of-origin labelling here in New Zealand. This is absolutely preposterous and very mystifying.

I turn to Vote Health. We are pleased that there has been a significant investment in primary health-care. We support the concept of public primary health-care organisations and multidisciplinary teams of health-care professionals working together. Unfortunately, we have seen no evidence to date of these multidisciplinary teams in the primary health-care organisations. Pharmacists and complementary health-care professionals are clamouring to be included in these teams, but so far they have been shut out. We are also concerned at the way the primary health-care organisations are being implemented on a geographical basis, and the impact on medical practices that miss out on the higher subsidies. Already, we have medical practices facing ruin as patients are lured to clinics that are able to access subsidies and therefore charge reduced fees. Surely it is not the Government’s intention to see medical practices shut down around New Zealand.

I would like to start off with a positive statement—that this year’s Budget reflects the needs of the majority of New Zealanders. I extend to my colleagues confidence in the growing reputation that the Government continues to manifest as a sound manager of the country’s finances. New Zealanders are supportive of the Government, and the media commentators are catching up with that fact. The Budget may be easy to attack, but it is hard to argue with the numbers: that in the year just gone, growth in the New Zealand economy as we know it was at a rate of 4.4 percent—amongst the fastest growing in the OECD.

The Government has made a decision to save the surplus, and let us be very clear what that surplus represents. This Government has delivered a $4 billion surplus as the international economy comes under attack from war and disease, and although international influences may see a negative drop in the growth rate to 2.2 percent, this rate is expected to rebound in the following year to a rate of 3.2 percent. Future services will be sufficient to maintain infrastructural investment, including dealing with the infrastructure deficit we inherited, and it will meet our debt targets, and finance contributions to the Superannuation Fund. Gross debt as a proportion of the gross domestic product (GDP) is at its lowest level since Treasury began collecting data in 1971.

The Government is securing a reputation that is not flashy or flighty. There are no surprises; it is just plain old common sense. It is back-to-basics sound management of the national coffers, and that is not hard.

The ordinary Kiwi out there understands the effect of GDP, unlike Mr Muldoon did, or the Business Round Table, which squabbles about how business has suffered and forecasts doom and gloom for the next decade. I intend breaking the provisions of the Budget down to demonstrate how they will assist iwi, hapū, and whānau, and how they will address the disparity at the lower end of the socio-economic pit where Māori are. Let us be very clear why that is, and why Māori are at its lower end. The origins came from the lack of vision of previous Governments, and their lack of willingness to make substantial change to that socio-economic climate. That attitude continues.

I want to mention an article in the National Business Review of 9 May headed “Labour’s treaty rights talk takes a wrong turn”. The assertion that Māori have superior rights under the treaty “opens an area that is vastly more contentious than the settlement of land grievances.” The article continues to say that the issue “is already creating opportunities for the Opposition. National’s Bill English insists there should be ‘one standard of citizenship for all,’ ”. He describes the separate Māori seats as an example of special treatment for Māori that needs to be ended, and says that the Opposition’s task is to strip away the veneer that the treaty is a living document, which somehow moves with a predestined life of its own and beyond the purview of political accountability. The article also suggests that the primacy of Parliament needs to be reassessed over a set of principles that have never been tested at the ballot box before.

Well, “never been tested”—my eye! I think that that is a load of garbage. Why do members think the Māori seats returned to Labour en masse? I say that the Opposition is using Māori issues to justify its existence, and I extend a challenge to Māori members in the Opposition. I want them to take a call, and I would like to know from them whether they support that position, and whether they support stripping away the very veneer of the treaty as a living document. It would be interesting to hear their responses.

Over recent weeks we have been subjected to a continual barrage from the Opposition benches, of claims we are spoon-feeding Māori and creating a two-tier society, and a short-sighted attempt to introduce the option of abolishing the Māori seats. To go further, yesterday’s announcement from the Opposition in today’s Dominion Post headed “ ‘Punitive’ truancy plan sparks anger” is again targeted at penalising parents on benefits, which we know will hit Māori families. There is a method to that madness. It is specifically targeted to introduce another way to penalise Māori, and to keep Māori in that low socio-economic pit. The recent Marae DigiPoll shows impressive support for this Government, and 68 percent are satisfied with the Government’s performance and support the Government’s policies and directions.

I must say that that is impressive. The treaty programme announced in the Budget, with its allocation of $6.5 million, has the purpose of raising public knowledge of the treaty. I reiterate that it is to raise public knowledge; it is not designed to create a two-tiered society. It is to do the complete opposite and make the information accessible to the public, to explore other options, and to improve the information available—bearing in mind that the target audience is the general public and not just Māori.

The key feature over the coming 4 years is the allocation of $1 million to develop iwi radio. That is about fostering confidence—the confidence to manifest the very essence that allows a culture to survive: the promotion of the language, te reo. It will allow it to evolve as our nation evolves. Again, the target audience is the community, not just Māori. There will be an injection of $4.4 million into education to inform, and to develop policy on how better to engage whānau, to aid the development of teachers in te reo and tikanga Māori, and to uplift the quality of te reo used by teachers in mainstream schools. Those provisions are all designed to lift achievement among Māori. The target audience, again, is not just Māori; it is whānau.

In health, there are provisions reducing prescription fees to a maximum of $3 for all children aged between 6 and 17 years and enrolled in interim primary health organisations, and for patients of all ages enrolled in access primary health organisations, and extending the health-line services so that New Zealanders will have access to a 24-hour health information and advice telephone service from next year. The target audience, again, is all New Zealanders.

The success of the health-line over the last 3 years has been significant. We need only to go out into communities to appreciate how well the programme is regarded. The health-line improves the health and well being of New Zealanders by directing consumers to the right care at the right place at the right time.

The challenge of youth unemployment is being tackled head-on, as is youth training. There is a $56 million package to get all 15 to 19-year-olds into education, training, work, or other options by 2007. A range of different training options will be made available, including expanding the Gateway and Modern Apprenticeships programmes, as well as providing specialised support from Work and Income. The Gateway programme prepares young people for the world of work while they are still at school. Senior secondary students on the programme are able to start work-based qualifications, and they learn the disciplines of work. Nationally, the Gateway programme will progressively expand to all decile 1 to 5 schools, taking in 12,000 students a year by 2007.

In my area of south Auckland the Budget package also extends the popular Modern Apprenticeships scheme, which has been a great success in the Papakura region. At the end of March, there were 40 modern apprentices in our region. Last September there were 25 in Papakura, and nationally there were 5,000 in March. The number of modern apprenticeships will now increase by 50 percent, to 7,500 places a year by 2006. Papakura employers and educators need to ensure they do their utmost to secure as many of these extra modern apprentices as possible, to assist our young people and to keep our local economy growing. These initiatives, and others in the youth training package, mean that the Government will meet the goal it agreed with the Mayors Task Force for Jobs by 2007. All 15 to 19-year-olds will be engaged in appropriate education, training, work, or other options, which will lead to long-term economic independence and well being. I welcome this youth training package because it specifically targets those young people who do not go to university or polytech, and enables them to learn the skills necessary for today’s workforce.

At the other end in education, I too, like my colleague, spend time on the local primary school board of trustees, and often we are seeking funding on that board to deal with pre-school entrants. There is the need for special assistance to teach pre-schoolers the very basics—and that is the ABC, colours, and numbers. That is becoming familiar and ongoing. I am very pleased that the Government will assist in that situation in pre-school with an extra $55 million over 4 years to increase participation in, and the quality of, early childhood education.

I want to finish on a positive note. It was not very long ago that the business sector lacked confidence in this Labour-led coalition to manage our finances. That view has certainly changed. In fact, it has changed so much that the lack of confidence has switched to now being directed to the National Party. The Government is proving to be fiscally prudent. That is a whole-of-Government approach, that is what inspires confidence, and that is why this Government is so sound.

I am always fascinated by what the Minister of Finance calls accrual accounting. He often accuses members on this side of the House—

💬 Rodney Hide: Do they have it in Hamilton?

R DOUG WOOLERTON: I do not know whether they do; the people in Hamilton are very practical. In the Waikato they are even more practical. Dr Cullen says that people on this side of the House do not understand accrual accounting. I will tell members what we do not understand—that is, Dr Cullen going around the country lauding the fact that he has a $4 billion surplus. All over the place he is saying what a wonderful Treasurer he is to achieve a $4 billion surplus. But when we asked what it is to be spent on, that surplus, in the speech he gave, became $1.36 billion. A couple of billion dollars has disappeared. I do not know whether that is a lot of money. It seems like a heck of a lot to a person from the Waikato. It is a lot of money in the Waikato. Anyway, that has gone on other things.

Then we look at this $1.36 billion and ask what the Budget gives to people like my brother just out of Hamilton, who is beavering away, barely making a living with his 1,000 cows. He is a solid worker, like all the Woolertons. He is a good man. He asked me: “Doug, what am I going to get out of this Budget? Are we, the people who really make this country go, going to get some incentives?”. I answered: “No.” He asked me why. I said that the reason is that Dr Cullen says he does not know whether he has a surplus. I cannot understand that. I would have thought that a man versed in the deep, dark mysteries of accrual accounting would know whether he had a surplus. But evidently Dr Cullen does not know that, so I cannot satisfy my brother in answer to his questions.

That is the problem that the good, average Kiwi cannot get around: what is this person talking about? The Government either has a surplus or it does not. If it does have a surplus, then it can get on and do things for our population and get some growth going in this country.

I searched all through this Budget. I worked into the small hours, through page after page. I had a heck of a job, and had to get my wife to nudge me to keep me awake half the time. But I read it. I was looking for a reference to agriculture. My colleague Shane Ardern from the King Country would understand this. I was searching through this Budget to see what the Government will do for our main income earners.

💬 Shane Ardern: What did you find?

R DOUG WOOLERTON: Nothing. I found all sorts of things that the Government is going to spend the money on, but I found nothing for agriculture. But hang on, the next morning I was up at 4.50 a.m. to go over the Budget again. I will tell members what I found. I found that the Government was to spend some more money in the area of biosecurity. Loosely, I suppose, one could say that that might be a help to the farmers, but actually it will not be; it is something that affects all New Zealanders. I gave him a bit of kudos for that. Then I found something else. Shane Ardern will be interested to hear this. Market access and the negotiations surrounding Doha were referred to. The Government put a couple of bob in there. But more than a couple of bob will be needed, because our Minister for Trade Negotiations is never here. Next time, I think we will ask that Shane Ardern go with him to keep an eye on what he is doing, because, from where I sit, he is not making much difference to trade access. It is not making much difference to trade access when the Americans put up a farm bill worth trillions of dollars in subsidies to its farmers, to the detriment of the farmers in this country.

We in this country are surviving on a consumption-led economy. That is why we need all the immigrants who are coming in. We need them to bring the money in with them, because we are surviving on consumption. We are not putting the money into where it should be, which is production. And that, in the main, in this country—and I am sorry if people do not like it—comes from farms, forestry, and fisheries.

If a person is forced to remain dependent upon others, essentially he or she is their slave, because he or she is subject to their control. Economic freedom lies at the base of all liberties. A person’s property is his or her life. It is what he or she spends. A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious, but it cannot survive non-reason within it. An enemy at the gate is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the unreasonable moves amongst those within the gates freely. His whispers rustling through all the alleys are heard in the very halls of government itself. He speaks in the accent familiar to those victims. He wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of people.

This country is dependent on foreign capital flows to maintain its standard of living. As every year ticks by and we do not look any closer to ever managing to turn it round, our credit line as a nation withers. We assume that this is a society in which there is not too much poverty or too much trouble, and in which most people can get away to the beach. Well, hello—wake up New Zealand! Many of us, it seems, are still demanding an easy way out, believing that the world owes us a living and still seeking a free lunch.

Why is it that four out of every 10 schools has a teacher shortage? Has the Government put a band-aid over a wound that needs a bandage and serious first aid? Why is there a constant change of the following: first, assessment philosophy and practice; second, seriously overworked teachers; third, too much administration for senior teachers and staff so that leadership in the classroom from these people is reduced; and, fourth, lack of motivation by some students, because many good job options do not exist—for example, trade apprenticeships? Our undeveloping nation is increasingly unable to employ us, house us, care for us, and give us the lifestyle we aspire to. Former third nations, such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and others are not catching up to us; they are roaring past us.

In the area of law and order, our police are becoming the laughing stock of the criminal world. There are to be 50 more police for Auckland. That is hardly a joke, I say to Mr Hawkins. What makes it worse is that we allow criminals into the community while their applications for home detention are being processed. This Budget is on the side of the criminals.

Our people are dying because of the health system. We have practically run out of outlet means to generate the power that consumers demand and pay for. We know that the means, such as coal, are there to do this.

Our education system fails us. We have practically no Defence Force to assist the free nations for the defence of our freedom. This Government has told our Vietnam veterans that they did not fight in Agent Orange – spread areas, which is not true. This will be proved by a former commander of 161 Battery, with whom I served in Malaysia and Borneo, and it will cost.

We have been budgeted into being a Third World nation because of the policies of this Government. How can this Government sit back and watch our rail system deteriorate? How can this Government not pay our servicemen and servicewomen the same rate as the Australian service people are paid who served in the same theatre of East Timor, with the same expectations and results? How can this Government say we have a surplus, when this country is struggling in the social services area? The roads, railways, hospitals, schools, and all the rest of the infrastructure we built were a great cost over the decades. They are in decay. The welfare State has collapsed on itself. It has not only become unaffordable; it is increasingly not meeting our basic needs, despite the endless millions of dollars being poured into it.

All this tells us that the fiscal policies that have been put into place by the Government have been terribly wrong. The world is leaving us behind. We are becoming increasingly impoverished and we will end up languishing at the end of the Earth.

💬 Jill Pettis: Oh, for goodness’ sake!

The member should just listen; she might learn something. The policy of building the economy with borrowed money to stimulate short-term growth is both pointless and damaging. As the leader of the New Zealand First said, the balance of payments is plunging deeper into deficit. We need to repay our debt as quickly as possible. We should get out of deficit and live within our means by encouraging a viable economy.

I congratulate the Minister of Finance on introducing a responsible Budget. It is responsible because it acknowledges that there are external matters the impact of which we cannot fully predict: international terrorism, conflict, disease, and economic stagnation in many of the world’s most important economies. There are local factors like drought, the impact that the severe acute respiratory syndrome has had on tourism, and the prospect of a dry winter. All of these call for a responsible approach, so that we can withstand the impacts of these external and internal factors.

This Budget is a responsible Budget because it invests in the growth and innovation framework. It is a responsible Budget because it prioritises health and education in terms of investing in the social fabric of society—the health and well-being of all New Zealanders.

I want to focus my comments in this Budget debate for 2003 on the immigration aspects of the Budget. This Budget shows this Government’s commitment to migrants by ensuring that the benefits are shared by all. Just 3½ years ago I inherited an immigration portfolio that was focused solely on the numbers of people coming into the country. This Government said from the outset that it does not matter how many people come to New Zealand under immigration policy; it is what happens to them after they arrive in New Zealand that matters. Successful settlement outcomes benefit the migrants and benefit New Zealand. Everything we have done over the past 3½ years has been about improving the prospects for new migrants, as well as minimising the failures, which impose a considerable cost on New Zealand as a whole. There are people who like to pretend that there is no cost imposed on the New Zealand taxpayer when there are failures, but I can assure this House that there is an incredible cost, and one that I am determined to reduce.

When I became Minister I coined a phrase. I said there were people in this country who had residence who could not get work, and there were people in this country who had work who could not get residence. This Government’s approach to developing settlement programmes has been about addressing the former of these—people in this country who have already got residence and cannot get a job. I am amazed that the National Party finds that situation acceptable, but I guess it was its policy that brought it about. The work-to-residence policy, including the talent visa, has been about addressing the latter—people who can get work in New Zealand, well-paid work, but cannot get residence. Our approach is about addressing that issue.

The settlement programmes are growing. They have been incredibly successful. For example, the Auckland chamber of commerce successfully matched over 300 skilled migrants with skilled work in its first year of operating the “New Kiwis” website. What a fantastic partnership between the public sector and the private sector, working together to make a difference for skilled migrants! The talent visa accredited employers programme has seen 125 employers accredited in the past year and 250 talent visas issued since it was established. That is a tremendous record of achievement in just 1 year of operation, when there was nothing like it in place before we took office.

There is no question that this Government has made a real difference to immigration policy, but we are not ones to rest on our laurels. For over a year now, I have signalled the need for New Zealand to shift from being a passive recipient of immigration applications to being an active recruiter of the skills and the talent we need. In fact, the National Government set up a very good programme before it left office in 1999, and that was a research programme—the longitudinal study of migrants in New Zealand—to establish what made for successful settlement of migrants to New Zealand. We are using the information that that survey is giving us to know what we should be looking for in terms of successful settlement outcomes, and we are also looking at how we can improve the outcomes for those who take residence here.

The skilled business stream of the New Zealand Immigration Programme is where we need new migrants to hit the ground running when they arrive in New Zealand. It is no good that they sit back and cannot participate in either society or the economy. That is not what the skilled business stream of migration is for. If migrants can hit the ground running, then it is good for New Zealand, it is good for the migrant, and it is an absolute win-win. This year’s Budget contains within it funding for the infrastructure to enable this to occur. This funding will allow the Immigration Service more actively to match skilled migrants with actual, real opportunities, real jobs, here in New Zealand, and that will mean they will be able to contribute to, and participate in, New Zealand’s society and the economy sooner.

It will also enable us to recruit in parts of the world where we have not had a real presence in the past, and we will be able actively to recruit those already living, working, or studying in New Zealand. Close to 40 percent of all applications for residence are lodged on shore. Clearly, those who have already been here—living here, working here, studying here—for 2 or 3 years have already begun well and truly to establish themselves, to be well settled in this country. The outcomes for those who are already living and working here are exponentially greater than for those who have never even visited New Zealand in their entire life.

The reason that settlement outcomes are poorer for those who have never been here is really about expectations. Unmet expectations are the key driver of poor settlement outcomes. People need realistic expectations before they move halfway around the world. I want to quote from a letter written to the Prime Minister a few weeks ago. It is from an Indian professional engineer who had come to New Zealand on a job search visa. His visa expires in September, but after his multiple job rejections he has already booked his ticket home. He can be here until September but he has booked his ticket home. He speaks of meeting other Indians, and says that 95 percent of those whom he has met are working in menial jobs well below their level of qualification. In fact, he describes in the letter people actually saying they have had to underplay their qualifications and their skills in order to get forecourt attendant jobs at the local service station. He says: “In my case I am almost ruined. I left my class 1 engineer post in India, and I have already spent about half a million rupees. Even I had to ask my son in the UK to send some money meant for his studies.” What he says is that he, as a new migrant, is prepared to take a step down the ladder, but he is not prepared to go to the bottom of the ladder and start all over again.

What this Budget signals for immigration is that we no longer want to invite people to come to New Zealand under the general skills category when we know they are destined to fail. We want to provide potential migrants with a realistic assessment of their prospects in New Zealand. We want to match skilled migrants with skilled job opportunities. We want migrants to know what they need in order to gain skilled employment, and if that means meeting professional registration requirements, undertaking further study, or improving their English ability prior to gaining residence, then that is the right approach. We know from the bitter experience of the doctors, the information technology specialists, and the scientists driving taxis whom we have all met that it is not good enough to tell people that they are qualified for skilled migration but not qualified for skilled work in New Zealand.

In the role of Minister of Immigration I do have to accept that there are those who seek to abuse the system, and this Budget addresses that issue as well. We are putting in $19.82 million to strengthen the present immigration capability for intelligence, providing more resources for the investigation and prosecution of immigration fraud.

I think the public would have been confused when they heard the Minister of Immigration talking about how to stop abuse of the system. But, on the same hand, this is the Minister who gave a work permit to a patient receiving dialysis treatment. That person cannot even work. [Interruption] I tell that member to take a call, and not hold back now. Members on the Labour benches have suddenly woken up. They should take a call. This Minister of Immigration will also be remembered for losing a court case. [Interruption]

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

💬 Rodney Hide: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I draw your attention to this point. The senior Government whip continued to shout abuse after you had called for order. I do think there should be a bit of a pull-up of that member, who is the senior Government whip.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: I have called for order.

I hope the senior Government whip from down south learns some manners in the parliamentary debating chamber. If he would like to take a call, he is most welcome to speak in his own time.

This Minister of Immigration will also be remembered for losing a court case. After claiming that the Labour Government was not bothered about the number of immigrants, suddenly on 11 November 2002 she announced an increase in the difficulty of the English language test, and all sorts of things, which incited the association of immigration consultants to take a court case. This is also the Minister of Immigration who says she cannot take the criticism from students queuing overnight to get their student permits, so she removes the same-day service of granting them permits.

Let us not be distracted. I want to come back to the Budget that was delivered last Thursday. Last Thursday, after the Minister of Finance had delivered his Budget speech, I got in a taxi to go all the way to Auckland airport. The taxi-driver was lamenting why he should bother working 10 hours a day to make ends meet. He does not feel positive about his future and his family’s future. He wants Michael Cullen to explain why he was boasting about having a $4 billion surplus. The Government does not earn money. Guess where the Government’s revenue comes from? Let us look at this information. Forty-four percent of Government revenue comes from salary and wage earners—like the taxi-driver I was talking about—company tax makes up 11 percent, GST 24 percent, and other taxes 14 percent. Ninety-three percent of Government revenue comes from taxes. How dare the Minister of Finance stand in this House and boast about making a surplus, when taxi-drivers and other hard-working New Zealanders are being overtaxed to produce that $4 billion surplus! [Interruption] The Minister of Immigration has had her say. If she would just listen, she might learn a few things.

The Minister of Finance shamelessly held up the carrot of tax relief next year, in his own words, “maybe for low-income earners”. Why next year? Why not this year? Are we too cynical in suggesting that election year is coming closer? It is not the Minister of Finance’s surplus; it is the surplus of hard-working New Zealanders who are being taxed too much. The taxi-driver got progressively even more upset when he also found out that 36 percent of the tax collected goes to social welfare. He was not too sure how long he wanted to carry on working, instead of simply giving up and going on the dole. That is what is so criminal about this Labour Budget. The Government is taxing hard-working New Zealanders, and keeping the surplus for an election year bribe.

In 1999 Labour promised no new taxes. Since then we have had three extraordinary urgency parliamentary sessions to pass additional taxes on cigarettes, alcohol, and petrol. It gets even better. All the people outside Auckland blamed Aucklanders for the petrol tax, but Aucklanders still have not seen any relief in terms of the traffic jams there. Young people recently were blamed as being the reason for the Labour Government imposing an excise tax on alcohol, but I have yet to see young people staggering down Courtenay Place with bottles of cream sherry in their hands. I sat in on some of the Primary Production Committee’s sessions when it heard submissions on the Wine Bill. One submitter after another was asking the Labour members to explain why the wine industry was not consulted on the latest tax grab, when the Hon Jim Anderton had written to the industry and promised consultation. Can we trust Labour Ministers whenever they say they will not raise taxes? In effect, the Labour Government seems to have got into a habit of binge-taxing hard-working New Zealanders, because it actually believes that it can spend taxpayers’ money better than taxpayers can.

Let us look at one of the many examples of Labour’s binge-spending of taxpayers’ money. This particular project that I am going to share with the public is known as “What’s in a name?”. Apparently the Government, through New Zealand Way Ltd, paid $1 million for the domain name www.newzealand.com. So I asked some questions of the Minister. It appears that this $1 million debacle came about without even the exercise of a simple cost and benefit feasibility study having been done prior to that purchase on behalf of the New Zealand taxpayers. Worse still, we are not even clear whether there was full and accurate understanding of what was actually being purchased and in what circumstances.

Initially, the Government could not understand why the domain name www.newzealand.com had to be purchased at all, because it believed that the name “New Zealand” was a trademark that belonged to the New Zealand Government. As a result of this fiasco, the Government took the US company Virtual Countries to the World Intellectual Property Organization, claiming that its use of the domain name www.newzealand.com was a trademark violation. The Minister of Tourism now admits that this disgraceful blunder cost the taxpayers $3,500—all because the Government has yet to join the technological revolution. What happened to the Labour policy of economic transformation? Funnily, the Government does not even understand there is a major difference between a trademark and a domain name. A domain name is simply a web-based address, while a trademark is a name, a symbol, or a device used to identify a product that has been legally registered as such, and the use of which is, therefore, restricted to the owner or manufacturer. That is despite the fact that last year Labour passed legislation regulating trademarks and patents. So the Government does not understand what a trademark is, or the difference between a trademark and a domain name.

Perhaps as a result of this embarrassing international faux pas, the Government went on to spend $1 million on purchasing this disputed domain name. I ask this question: before the Minister spent $1 million, did he bother to seek some advice? Do members know what happened? The Minister asked for some advice. Guess what the advice was? It was that the Internet is a valuable marketing and communication tool. Imagine! One would be hard-pushed to find anyone disputing that claim, but, with this domain having a $1 million price tag, I thought that one could expect a few probing questions from the Minister, on behalf of the New Zealand public.

💬 David Benson-Pope: Turn the dialysis machine off.

The senior Government whip is piping up again. The Opposition does ask questions, unlike that Labour lot. We are getting very concerned. I learnt the latest: all Labour members, apart from five, seem to hold some sort of position—yet they have not even learnt to ask a few probing questions. Those lazy Labour members of Parliament leave all the tough questions to be asked by the Opposition.

Before the Minister of Finance stands in this House ever again to boast of a surplus, he should read his own tax statements. He does not earn those surpluses; he overtaxes hard-working New Zealanders.

Mr Speaker, mihi kau ana ki a koe i roto i te Tūru rā, i a rātau e rongo ake anō ki te kōrero nei ki ngā mema o te Whare Miere nei, tēnā koe.

[An interpretation in English was given to the House.]

[Special greetings to you, Mr Speaker, in the Chair, and also to those listening in to this debate by members of this Parliament.]

This Budget continues the work this Government has done in supporting the Māori of tomorrow. In my maiden speech to the House I said that the future for Māori is about acknowledging who we are and determining where we want to go. My opinion remains the same. This is a good Budget for Māori. It builds on the back of previous Budgets, and it has been informed by this Government getting out and talking to Māori kanohi ki te kanohi—face to face. We have been to 14 regions, we have talked to hundreds of Māori, and, especially, we have listened to them, and we have come back to try to translate into sensible policy what they have requested and asked for.

This Government has responded to the call from Māori that participation and achievement in education is a key issue, driving the success of the Māori of tomorrow. Our demographics tell us quite clearly that our age profile bulges in the 14-16 year age band. It is a huge number of people, and the interesting thing is that it is totally opposite to the non-Māori demographic band. As an Associate Minister of Education I am proud of the extra funding in the Budget that will see a teacher-student ratio of 1:20. In real terms, that means an additional 155 teachers in Māori immersion education, so that we can ensure that our reo, the language of the tangata whenua, the first nation people of this country, is preserved. There are a whole lot of issues in relation to our education. We want to help whānau support their children’s learning. That is critical. We want to move on from just being the lay people and the manual labourers, which, at times, the labour market has forced us to be. There needs to be work to improve the professional development of teachers in te reo Māori, and literacy programmes in all primary schools.

This Budget will also deliver funding to develop a framework for best teaching practice for students from diverse backgrounds, especially Māori. The question needs to be answered: whose framework, and who has managed and orchestrated Māoris’ non-participation in education forums at all levels? In short, this Government is determined not just to lift educational achievement but to ensure that cultural participation is recognised and preserved, and, most of all, to ensure that we head off on the economic trail that we want very much to be part of, and that I can say we were part of in the early days. It is fascinating that, in treaty claims and historical summaries in this country, what generally is focused on are all the negative issues, and the connotations are that all we did was bash up and get bashed. There were partnerships at the turn of the 20th century where we were in control of a whole lot of economic situations, but they were either flogged off or taken away. [Interruption] We want all New Zealanders to have the chance to reach their full potential, even members of the Opposition. It is important that they reach their full potential. Some of them will fill up the gap a lot more, with their size, than other people will.

It is important to appreciate and say that we are clear about closing the distance between non-Māori and Māori achievement. Māori have been clear that another key area for this Government is training and employment. Too many young Māori are leaving structured learning early, without or with few qualifications. This Government has announced major initiatives that will assist Māori school-leavers to gain the basic skills they need to contribute to building the economy of the nation. If we want to be free and continually preach—[Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I refer the member to Speaker’s rulings 51/5, (1) and (2).

If we want to be clear and honest about preaching equity, and if we are not just to worry about it overseas, let us practice it in our own backyard. Let us stop this racist scratching. Let us ensure that we recognise the culture of this country. Let us make sure that on the way to collective nationhood, which Māori want, everybody participates, and the majority do not incessantly and unnecessarily bully people who are striving to achieve. [Interruption] Too many young Māori are leaving structured learning early. Those who have placed themselves in the fraternity of those who practise legalese, and earn a lot of income off the backs of Māori, and have been employed on the backs of Māori, need to think again.

Māori school-leavers need to gain the basic skills they need to contribute to building the economy, and to learn the fundamentals of business. They should not just learn about these pyramid games and all this nonsensical, false building that goes on in the economy. We have got better at it. We do understand it. We do understand the fundamentals. Māori have assets that they want to make sure are played in the economy.

The expansion of the Gateway programme, increasing the number in the Modern Apprenticeships scheme, and additional funding to help early school-leavers get further educational training and employment all contribute to the Government’s goal of having all 15 to 19-year-olds involved in education, training, or work by 2007—Māori, Pākehā, immigrants, the whole lot. This Government continues to recognise that jobs and training play a key part in accelerating Māori development. The labour market is a fascinating thing. It is an area that, with vibrant business, creates jobs. Under the last Government, over a period of time—

💬 Richard Worth: The last Government was Labour.

The Government before that. The unemployment rate was running at 22 to 18 percent for Māori people. This Government has taken it down to 10 percent, and, across the range, it is down 5 percent. That is one of the best unemployment rates that this country has seen in 32 years. Shame on those people who kept us out of the labour market! To change the attitudes of employers and job seekers, we will assist Māori job seekers to join the Modern Apprenticeships scheme. Like I said, the unemployment rate has trended down. [Interruption] I am not too sure what the response to that is—

💬 Hon Dover Samuels: That member’s never worked in his life.

That is right; some people have never worked in their life. They have pretended to turn up to work at 9 o’clock, and have finished at 4 o’clock.

The Government has also recognised that Māori are bringing their own ideas and assets to development in this country. It is critical to understand that. Let me remind members that Māori are partners in one of the biggest fishing companies in this world. Te Ohu Kai Moana has presented the allocation model to the Minister of Fisheries. There is still a long way to go, but progress continues to be made. I was fascinated to see the other week, at the mussel factory in Blenheim, that of the people there about one-third are Māori, one-third are Pākehā, and one-third are other people. So Māori are doing a lot for this country’s economy.

Steps forward continue to be made in other treaty settlements this year. Deeds of settlement have been signed with Ngāti Awa and Ngāti Ruanui. The Government has passed legislation such as the recent Maori Purposes Bill to speed up the process by which treaty claims are reported. I expect that further progress will be made in that area over the next few months.

Alongside improving economic and employment outcomes, whānau development is important to us. Family collectivity is important. It is about working from the bottom up, about whānau, hapū, and iwi development, but it is also about getting a stake in the top end—managing our businesses, owning our own businesses, and determining what is good for us. The Government has a role to aid and abet and support the progress of Māori people, but Māori people are more than able now to determine what they want to do, how they want to do it, and when they want to do it.

This Government continues to recognise that it is important for Māori to have the opportunity to interact with the Māori language and culture in the 21st century. There are certainly claims of historical redress, and we are putting a lot of effort into working through that. Contemporary issues are starting to come out, and we will take time to work on them, so that fairness is perceived.

There is extra funding for radio stations throughout the country. The funding is for the professional development of iwi radio staff, governance training in te reo Māori, and management and planning skills.

It was good to hear a number of the comments made by the previous speaker in connection with advancing the cause of Māori. I am glad he did that, because too often Government members are quick to criticise Māori for underachievement. We all know how important it is that positive signals are given by Parliament to all sectors of the community to advance all people, regardless of their ethnicity.

The issue I would like to speak about tonight, in the context of this bill, is the funding that is being provided for the establishment of the new Supreme Court. I start by saying that, even for those who have a fair knowledge of numbers, the Budget is not a particularly comprehensible document. Just to take an example, the executive summary document, issued in relation to the Budget, provides some detail about the funding required for this new court. When one looks at the narrative explanation of that funding one sees it is not particularly meaningful. The executive summary, at page 14, has a list under the heading “maintaining a fair justice system for all”. It begins: “$17 million operating, and $22 million capital, to establish the Supreme Court of New Zealand”. When one looks at those numbers more closely, it is apparent that the $17 million operating money is a payment to be spread over 4 years of varying amounts in each year. That $17 million, of 4-year appropriations, has in year 1 a $3.9 million operating cost.

The reason for speaking about this aspect of the Budget is that we are looking at an area of identified profligate waste. There is no need at all to spend this amount, or any part of it, in seeking to establish a new Supreme Court. The original cost estimates contained in the Cabinet policy committee material had estimated annual operating costs of the new court at $5.2 million, and the estimated capital cost of constructing new premises, excluding land, at $10 million to $11 million. Why are we spending that money? Could that money not be better put to other initiatives that would bring greater benefits to New Zealand? I suggest that the answer to that is self-evident. Instead, we are confronted with legislation that seeks to establish a new appellate court—a domestic court—as the final court in New Zealand, and to do away with long-established links with the Privy Council. It is an ideologically driven position. There is no move for that change from the major user groups.

Who are the major user groups? Quite clearly, they include Māori. We have had submissions from the Federation of Māori Authorities, from individual Māori, and from iwi groups, all to say there is no case for this change. Mita Ririnui is attempting to interject to ask a question. Let me explain to him, because, although I have already stated the point, he may not have understood it. The point is simply that the Budget has a significant appropriation to establish the Supreme Court, when there is no valid reason for the expenditure of those reasonably significant sums of money.

In the Justice and Electoral Committee we have listened and Mr Ririnui has listened, albeit with exhausting and tiring patience, to a raft of arguments that have touched on the future of this new court and the plans for the removal of the Privy Council. We have heard arguments on issues relating to access to jurisdiction. It is the Attorney-General’s proud boast that this Government is strong on access to justice issues. That is absolute nonsense. I say that, because there have been swingeing fee hikes that have denied to civil litigants on a number of occasions the opportunity of accessing the courts, and now under the guise of cost saving, or nationalism, there is a proposal to do away with the Privy Council.

There has been no rational argument presented to the select committee sitting in judgment on the Supreme Court Bill for the abolition of that court. In fact, the arguments run, as Mr Ririnui would know, the other way completely. We have heard an argument—in fact, Mr Ririnui propounds it—that, as a matter of national identity, we should no longer defer to an overseas jurisdiction. The reality is that many overseas jurisdictions themselves defer to those jurisdictions. We ourselves have lines to the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations. The United Kingdom has lines of access from its highest courts into the European Court of Justice and into the European Court of Human Rights.

When we look at the justification for this budgeted expenditure, we see it is also the case that there have been startling reversals by our highest court, the Privy Council, of decisions made by the Court of Appeal. In fact, in a period of 2002 when there were 10 cases decided, seven of them were reversed. Some of the criticism made by the law lords sitting in the Privy Council, has been nothing short of alarming. In one such case, Taito v the Queen, the Court of Appeal was criticised for applying a procedure of no legal validity “contrary to fundamental conceptions of fairness and justice”, so as to dispose of appeals from poor people, in that their appeals were dismissed without a hearing, while wealthy people were granted a chance to argue in open court.

In another decision, Dymocks v Todd, the New Zealand courts were chided for “leaving out of account factual matters of great importance”, and the Court of Appeal was encouraged to keep an open mind on the important issue of whether the common law would imply an obligation of good faith into a contract, as the civil law of Europe often does.

Finally, in a case, Harley v McDonald the Privy Council set aside an award of costs against a barrister who had vigorously represented a difficult client for the reason that she had not been given a fair hearing. It said that the Court of Appeal showed a “fundamental defect in its reasoning”.

If it is right that this Government prides itself on prudential financial management, then I ask why this money is being wasted in setting up a new court, against the wishes of Māori and against the wishes of the other major user groups. It probably comes down to a wish by the Attorney-General to advance a cause that she fervently believes in—that is, the cause of republicanism. In the decision to make these changes, many of us see one of the steps along the way to that outcome. Why is it that the taxpayers of New Zealand should pay an indulgence fee to meet aspirations that the Attorney-General has? I suggest we should not do that. From National’s perspective we would seek that that link be retained; we would seek that the Privy Council become a leave court; we would seek that its jurisdiction be extended; and, finally, we would seek that this money not be spent.

After listening to Opposition members, with their rather quaint stance of clinging to the wreckage of the past with the Privy Council and not embracing new change that New Zealanders are looking forward to, I want to come back to the world of the Budget. I am proud of this certain and solid Budget, and I am very proud of the Labour-led coalition Government that supports the way that we as a team—a team with great leadership—will make it happen. I do not believe that over the last week United Future has felt very compromised in being associated with us as a coalition partner that is on a pathway paved with support for education and health while demonstrating that we can also very soundly manage the country’s finances—and the country’s finances are in a very sound position.

I went into politics to promote the focus on the family as the cornerstone of communities—communities that are built up to feel proud of their achievements, that care for each other both locally and nationally, and that stand tall on the world stage. This rebuilding cannot take place without healthy children and parents, a sense of hope and certainty, a vision for the future armed with skills, education and training, and a tolerance to participating in growing civil society.

The Opposition labels this Budget as socialist rhetoric. It has not twigged that this is a 10-year journey that the country embarked upon 4 years, ago—three Budgets ago—and that this Budget is the stuff of a long-term Government. It is about staying on course and maintaining our strong position in times certainly of great uncertainty. This is not a Budget of soft and pappy throwaways that gladden the hearts of a select few. There is something in this Budget for every individual, family, voluntary organisation, local authority, small business, and company. Overseas investors and visitors are eyeing us up as a place in which they wish to invest and contribute.

Rotorua, as an electorate, has responded very positively in the media, from a principal in a very high achieving boys high school, saying that the targeted funding for keeping kids fit and engaged in sport is absolutely great, to the chair of our chamber of commerce, commending the support and focus on small business development and also the extra funding that has been very cleverly put in this Budget for finding overseas markets. Even the chair of the New Zealand Medical Association, who resides in Rotorua, liked the further funding to support the primary health strategy implementation—and that association had not been that enthusiastic about that future. The chair of our district health board, Stewart Edward, welcomed the certainty in the package. The population-based funding increase of $36 million puts us on track to deliver deficit elimination by 2004. The local police even went to the newspaper to say that they support the $6.6 million funding for the team approach to crack down on local methamphetamine laboratories. We in Rotorua are ashamed to say that we are well aware of laboratories in our community. We found out about one on Friday, because we noticed a massive increase in the power bill of one of our local houses in the community. So we are probably contributing to our power target as well, now that that has been found and will be dealt with.

I was very positively received at the jewel in our crown in Rotorua when, last Friday, the New Zealand Forest Research Institute Ltd launched its biomaterials vision. This is a futures glimpse on what science and research can deliver from wood products in the next 25 years. It will advance the widespread utilisation of renewable materials and products from plants for economic, environmental, and social returns. It is great to hear a Crown research institute talking about social returns. This will be a world supported by energy producing cells from pulp production instead of fossil fuel, biodegradable plastics that can be made from the waste stream, an environmentally sustainable world of building materials, and cosmetics and products that we have not even dreamed of, all developed from biomaterials. The New Zealand Forest Research Institute Ltd, a Crown research institute, has grabbed the collaborative model and attracted partners from the international field of research, industry, Industry New Zealand, the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology and venture capital funders. It thanked us on Friday for the $140 million Government support for research and development over the next 4 years. This will go some way towards helping it to achieve its vision. That was the response from our local leaders.

I have noted other areas that underpin my key areas of interest. Vote Health emerges as the big winner, with 20 percent of the funding cake. The vote increases to $9.6 billion this year. This is unprecedented support. This is the sort of cake—more like a carrot cake than a spongy pud—that nurtures the sector. It is logical. If we are to avoid burgeoning hospital costs, we have to go along this route. It targets healthy lifestyles and wellness. This is a vision we set out to achieve with our primary health strategy 2 years ago. This strategy receives a further $165 million this year. The ingredients of our healthy cake are bound together by population-based funding to boards that will ensure a redistribution and a fair share of funding will go to communities based on health need, and it is generous toward product development. Funding support this year was announced for 40 more doctors in training, and increased support for the rural sector is a solid start towards workforce rebuilding—something that the Opposition took no care of for 9 years, and now we are having to catch up.

Access to affordable care will see low doctors’ fees for patients who are less than 18 years old, enrolment in interim public health organisations from October of this year, and a reduction in prescription fees to a maximum of $3 for all children in these schemes, and there are 40 of them. Access schemes, which are those primary health organisations in the areas of highest need, will ensure that patients of all ages pay a limit on prescription fees. This is supported by another new initiative called Care Plus. It is being piloted from January in 2004 and will cater for many older people with very poor health, as well as those people who are under 65 years and require very high levels of coordination in terms of their care. We will see projects being developed, such as the Bumps and Falls Prevention project in Rotorua. This is a combined project with the Accident Compensation Corporation, Merck Sharp and Dohme, the senior citizens unit within the Department of Social Services and Employment, and general practitioners all working together such as they have never done before.

All health workers will applaud the $22.1 million funding going towards accident prevention and treatment and focusing on rehabilitation and district health boards. Boards will see some major bricks-and-mortar capital projects advanced, with $656 million going towards hospital buildings across the land. There will be new hospitals in Wellington, Kenepuru, Nelson-Marlborough, and Southland; the hospital in Auckland will be completed, along with ambulatory services; and there are a number of smaller projects. A national capital committee is being established to ensure that we spend wisely on buildings in the health sector in order to get the very best for our money.

💬 Richard Worth: This is capital?

That is in the Budget this year. Young people are at last recognised as needing funding to support their resilience and to develop services around them. We are getting more money for a residential health unit in Christchurch, focusing on drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and $13.2 million will be used to combat youth suicide and drug and alcohol abuse. This is a wonderful Budget for the young people in our country.

My first observation is that this Budget has not provided an economic road map for the people of New Zealand. This Government has clearly abandoned its objective of getting New Zealand into the top half of the OECD and, by implication, it has no growth goal. The outlook is bleak. Treasury is forecasting 2.2 percent growth over the next 10 years, and that is a generous interpretation. The good times have gone. This Government has been lucky. We should be clear about that. The three stars—low dollar, low interest rates, and high commodity prices—all came into alignment, but those good times have now gone. What I was looking for in this Budget was some direction to give me some confidence that the Government knew how to manage in the tough times, not just in the easy times. Having said that, I point out even in the best of times all we could achieve was 4 percent. We pat ourselves on the back and say that is good. I say it is not good enough. That 4 percent was not really our own doing. It had more to do with the disasters in other people’s economies, such as mad cow disease, droughts, and something this Government would understand very well—foot-and-mouth disease. Forecasting a $4 billion surplus is something the Government is wearing like a badge of honour. I say we are simply overtaxed. What we need to do is stimulate growth. What is wrong with this country? Over the last 10 years we have seen the standard of living worsen in New Zealand by about 30 percent compared with that of Australia.

💬 Clayton Cosgrove: Who was in for most of that time?

It does not matter who was in Government for most of that time. The fact remains that there is now a 30 percent gap in the standard of living between us and Australia. A person earning the average wage in New Zealand could go to Australia and be better off by $200 per week. That is an indictment on this country. It is an absolute indictment. What is wrong with us? If the Wallabies beat us, there is a post-mortem, but when we take a thrashing economically we just say that that is our lot. I have bigger aspirations than that for this country. If this country is to have its children stay at home and call New Zealand their country, we have to address those issues. Members should not be fooled by the Government’s rhetoric of net migration figures. We should be looking at the skills that are leaving this country. If we compare the skills that are coming here with the ones that are going, members will find that we have a desperate concern.

We need growth. If members’ eyes glaze over when we talk about growth, then they should unglaze them, because there is direct correlation between our standards of health and education and our crime rate. But reducing tax is not enough. What we need to do is remove the impediments to growth: red tape, the Accident Compensation Corporation, the Occupational Safety and Health Service, labour laws, and, of course, the Resource Management Act. What did “Blackout Pete” give us when we wanted to do something about the energy crisis? He gave us another tax. That is very helpful, is it not? We had another tax the other day on sherry, and now we have a tax on electricity generation. This Government has an insatiable appetite for tax. Unbelievably, this Budget was silent on electricity generation. It was silent on infrastructure development, Auckland roading, and forestry infrastructure. Why does the Government not give back to the forestry industry the carbon credits it stole so that the industry can do something about its infrastructure requirements? We are forecasting that we will have a wall of wood to go to the market, yet it escapes the Government that unless we invest in infrastructure, it will just not get there.

The biggest black mark of this Budget is that it did not have the courage to do the right thing and reduce welfare expenditure, and that is killing us. It is sucking the lifeblood out of this country. It is the biggest social failure in our history. We now have multigenerational beneficiaries and multigenerational State housing tenants. It might interest members to know that in 1973 there were 30,000 beneficiaries in this country. Today, there are nearly 400,000 working-age people receiving some form of benefit in this country. That is a 12-fold increase, and the population has not even doubled.

💬 Clayton Cosgrove: What would you do about it then?

I would reduce our welfare expenditure. That is what I am trying to get through to you, if you would listen and shut up.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The member must not use the word “you”.

I apologise. I was just thinking out loud. The city of Christchurch would not be able to house the number of people on benefits in this country. That is how acute the problem has become. We now have 1 in 4 working age Kiwis on a benefit. Let us have a look at the domestic purposes benefit. Thaddeus McCarthy, when he recommended it in 1973, said: “I anticipate that we will have 20,000 people on it, max.” Of course, we now have 120,000 people on it, and of that 120,000, 16,000 are women who will not even name the father of their child. This Government tolerates that type of dishonesty. I say to the members opposite that this country cannot afford that type of dishonesty. Where will the people of New Zealand go to get direction on honesty? They cannot come to this Government, because dishonesty is endemic in it. Let us have a look at some of its clangers. Minister Hawkins had no record of receiving a letter telling him about leaky homes. Minister Horomia is misleading the House at the moment about the misuse of taxpayers’ funds. Minister Carter misled the House about the Hobson Dam site, and the Prime Minister misled the House over some clauses in the Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2). She is pleading that she was unconscious for the last 2 years. Well, I agree with that! What about this clanger from Michael Cullen: “Telling the truth does not mean that what you are saying is correct.” What a clanger that was. All that dishonesty caused me to pen a little ditty, which goes like this:

George Washington couldn’t tell a lie,Richard Nixon couldn’t tell the truth,Helen Clark can’t tell the difference,And Michael Cullen doesn’t think there’s a difference.

The Budget has not escaped that insipid political correctness that has snuck into this country over the last 20 years. Because Michael Cullen is a servant of the politically correct people, he has spent $6.5 million so that we can get better acquainted with the Treaty of Waitangi—instead of spending money on the tens of thousands of people out there who need heart surgery, or surgery for their ailments, or on those people who we have to send to Australia for cancer treatments.

How insipid is that? What sort of spin is that? It is nothing but indoctrination. The people who are listening would be excused for thinking that the Treaty of Waitangi is a complex document. “Here it is—this is the Treaty of Waitangi, and we are going to spend $6.5 million learning this.” It is an indictment. It is the sort of expenditure that we expect from this Government in terms of boat races, and we will probably get a “Sovereign Yachts result”. What about bureaucracy? This is how he will deal with bureaucracy: he will put an advisory board in place. That says so much about Michael Cullen. That really helps small business owners, does it not? They could not sleep last week when they heard that. There will be an adviser to the adviser to the adviser to the Minister—that is really going to help! When Michael Cullen was asked to take on the job of Minister of Finance, the Government members put him to a test. They interviewed him, and said this to him: “Minister, what is two plus two?” He looked back and said: “Whatever you want it to be.”, and that sums up this Budget.

This is the fourth Budget presented by the Minister of Finance, Dr Michael Cullen, and it continues the fine tradition established by his previous three Budgets. This Budget is built on the strong foundation he has laid, and it ensures that even in a very difficult global environment, our country can maintain its strong position. This Budget is not only about providing fiscal certainty in an uncertain world, but also about providing balanced policies—policies that demonstrate that this is a Government that keeps its word, unlike a lot of previous Governments. They are policies that are not afraid to invest in the future of Aotearoa-New Zealand. They ensure that our economic growth rate, which is currently one of the strongest in the OECD, is maintained. They provide for surpluses to be used to ensure the long-term fiscal stability of this nation.

This is a Government that keeps its word. More New Zealanders are now in work than ever before. Since December 1999, there has been an increase of 132,000 in the number of New Zealanders in paid employment—that is keeping our word. We are reducing the cost of primary health care: 34 primary health organisations have been established throughout the country, providing high-quality, lower-cost, integrated health care to 40 percent of the New Zealand population—that is keeping our word. This Government has made superannuation more secure by establishing the New Zealand Superannuation Fund to help to meet the cost of supporting baby boomers in their retirement.

💬 Lindsay Tisch: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I do not want to interrupt the member, but either she is speaking very loudly, or the microphones are very loud, because there is an echo. The member is either too close to the microphone, or it is too loud. I am trying to help the member, and not trying to interfere.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The point is well made. Perhaps the person who does the audio in the House can take note.

Or perhaps some of the people on the other side who are shouting out inanities might stop, then I could speak a little more quietly.

This Government has made superannuation more secure by establishing the New Zealand Superannuation Fund to help meet the costs of supporting baby boomers in their retirement—that is keeping our word. We are extending the Gateway initiative in our secondary schools, so that the pupils and businesses involved in that scheme can benefit from work-based learning—that is keeping our word. As of 31 March 2003, over 5,000 young New Zealanders have taken up Modern Apprenticeships, and we are well on track to meet our 6,000 target by December 2003, and that is keeping our word.

This Government is working to improve the sustainability of our infrastructure in transport, energy, water, and technology. We are prepared to make the investment that will pay off for the New Zealanders of the future. We have established the Tertiary Education Commission to steer development in the tertiary sector. We have put in place the growth and innovation strategy that will strengthen our Government’s capacity to grow.

What Budget 2003 shows our nation is an integrated, whole-of-Government approach to lifting our sustainable growth rate and improving life for all New Zealanders. This Budget offers certainty and stability amidst a threatening, confused, and insecure world environment. It reinforces the reputation of this Labour-led Government for fiscal prudence and economic pragmatism. The Government accounts are in excellent shape, and if events unfold in line with Budget forecasts, there should be room in next year’s Budget for sustainable new initiatives that will particularly be aimed at assisting low and middle-income families to smooth the transition from welfare to work.

We are exceeding all of our fiscal targets. Our economic growth, at 4.4 percent, is one of the strongest in the OECD. Although negative international influences will probably see that growth dropping back to around 2.2 percent next year, growth is then expected to rebound in the following year, and will still be above the OECD average. That is a not bad sort of a record to have. The big bogey “inflation”, which has been targeted over many years by some who shall remain nameless, is expected to ease back to below 2 percent in both 2004 and 2005. The economic outlook is very good.

It is interesting that a lot of Opposition speakers have gone on and on about the surplus. Although Dr Cullen has said that the paper surplus is just over $4 billion, when one includes the revaluations and accounting changes, it gets about two-thirds lower than that. It is prudent to ensure that those surpluses are sustainable before they are spent. This Government believes that future surpluses will be sufficient to maintain our infrastructural investment, which is something that was not done in the previous 9 years, so there is a lot to catch up with. We have to deal with the infrastructural deficit we inherited, but we think that future surpluses will enable us to do that, meet our debt targets, and finance the contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. All in all, the economic picture is looking pretty rosy, which should not surprise anybody, because traditionally in New Zealand history, Labour Governments have repaid debt, got the economy on a good footing, and put New Zealand in a better financial situation.

I just want to spend a little time talking about something very dear to my heart, and that is education. Education, like health, has been a winner in this Budget. Educating for a successful, innovative economy is a crucial theme of Budget 2003. If I can paraphrase Peter Fraser—and I know he would have liked this Budget—education is about the development of each individual to his or her full potential, and about the pursuit of values that cannot just be expressed in monetary terms, although I do not expect anybody sitting on the opposite side of the House to realise that. Total education funding rises by $393 million to $8.2 billion for the 2003-2004 year, and further increases are provided for the other policies that start early next year.

One of our first priorities is to reduce the inequalities in educational achievement that beset our country. We want to make sure that every New Zealander can reach his or her full potential, regardless of background. We will start by putting a lot of money into early childhood education, because that is where it all starts. If we can get the children of New Zealand off to a really good start, with a really good early childhood education system, that good start will show up through the primary years, the secondary years, and—as research shows—even through to tertiary education. So a lot of money will be spent on early childhood education, most of it going into making sure that there is access to early childhood education for children who currently do not have it. Money will go to the developing centres fund, and there will be capital funding to implement new centres. There will be extra grants to continue our commitment to assisting the upgrade of staffing qualifications in the early childhood sector. Education is a winner in this Budget, and New Zealand will be the winner because of it.

Health, education, housing, and jobs—at every election, that has been my mantra. That is what Labour stands for, that is what people expect of Labour, and that is what we see in this Budget. Money is going into health, education, housing, and jobs.

As the member for Hamilton East, I am particularly pleased that money is going into health. We have a total rise in health spending of $711 million next year, to $9.6 billion. As my colleague Helen Duncan has said, extra money is going into education. We have 774 teachers going into early childhood, primary, and secondary education. We can say “x billion”, “x million”, and so on, but people cannot generally conceive of what those billions or millions mean. They do, however, understand 774 teachers. In my electorate, they understand that they are getting 13.5 more teachers, and as my electorate has seven secondary schools, they are particularly pleased about it, because they also know that teachers want non-contact hours in which to prepare and work. Those extra teachers will help out in our schools, making class sizes smaller, and allowing teachers to improve their skills and have more preparation time. So in education we have extra funding—close to $167 million over 4 years—to provide those 774 primary and secondary teaching positions.

As I have said, one of the consequences of that will be the introduction of a 1:20 teacher-student ratio for students learning te reo Māori, bringing an extra 155 full-time teacher equivalents nationwide. The improved ratio applies to Māori students who are taught in Māori and more than 12.5 hours per week at Year 11. That is particularly important in my electorate.

I have heard people on the other side of the House scoffing at the amount of money going into Treaty education. The feedback I have had from the Hamilton East electorate is that people are particularly pleased about that, and are saying it is long overdue. Treaty education is something that we have to do in each generation. When we had a Labour Government in the 1970s, we had a good deal of Treaty education, but it has been neglected. Certainly, the Leader of the Opposition should be one of the first to enrol for one of the courses, so that he will learn a little more about the Treaty. I think many of his colleagues would benefit from some of that training as well.

Money is also going into youth training. There is a package of initiatives worth $56 million for the 15 to 19-year-olds involved in education and training. There are leaving-age packages going into Gateway programmes. In Hamilton, we have a particularly good Gateway programme, which is enabling young people to move from schools into jobs. We also have the Modern Apprenticeships training scheme, which is a most popular programme, particularly with young people and parents. I hope that we will be able to get more publicity out about that programme. In my electorate in particular we have many young people on that apprenticeship scheme, and I am pleased to say we had the Apprentice of the Year, as well.

Having worked on the weathertightness of buildings inquiry, I can say that one of the major demands that came out of that inquiry was that we have qualified apprentices going particularly into the building trade, but into other trades as well. People ask why we did not have those trained people, and I can say it is because of 10 years of National Party ignorance and neglect of our young people. That has bounced back on us. I heard a whack at the Government from the other side over weathertightness. It was Mr George Chapman of the National Party, the chair of the Building Industry Authority in 1998, who received the first letter from Prendos about a problem with building in this country—and he did sweet nothing about it. I will not accept that George Hawkins and other people in the Labour Government should accept the responsibility for that problem, a large part of which was due to lack of training and lack of apprentices.

We are addressing that problem as quickly as we can. We are introducing regionally based programmes across the country, which target early school leavers. There are youth training programmes, and I am particularly pleased about the $85 million over 4 years that is going into industry training, which will train people on the job. That is particularly important and very popular with both employers and young people.

So there is a good deal going into health and education, but let us look at the third one—housing. In my electorate, 90 State houses were built in the last year, or acquired by Housing New Zealand. That Opposition sold 13,000 State houses, and that is why we have people on waiting lists, trying to get into State housing. I thank the Minister that over 3,000 State houses will be built to cope with that, and to build up existing stock. That represents many people. We hear New Zealanders say that their parents had a State house, and that that gave them a start in life. Many of those who are now heading our universities and some of our major organisations in this country are people whose families had stability because they had State houses.

When we brought in income-related rents and the acquisition of State houses, I had feedback from our local schools that families were more stable, and that their kids were staying longer at school and getting better results. That is because of the State housing scheme and the fact that we are now building houses as fast as we can build them. At this stage, I particularly want to thank Mark Gosche, who has been Minister of Housing, for the work he has done and for his devotion to his job—despite his personal difficulties and the great trauma his family has had. I think everyone in the House can thank the Minister for the work he has done while he was Minister of Housing. We owe him a great debt, and I think this House also expresses its sympathy for his wife and the situation his family is in at this present time.

We have looked at education, health, housing, and jobs. They are the four pillars of any Labour Government, and are the things that the people of this country look to from a Labour Government. They are what Michael Cullen has delivered in this Budget. We all know the international situation—people in this country do not have to be told. We know of the wars affecting this country. We know what is happening with oil shortages. We know what is happening with the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic and its effect on tourism. Everybody in this country knows that, and they know that this is a realistic Budget that looks at New Zealand as it is situated in the world at the present time.

Coming from the Hamilton East electorate, where at least a third of the electorate is in some way involved with one of our nine research institutes, I am particularly pleased about the additional $140 million that is going into research, science and technology. That is particularly important, not only to our primary industries, to our biotechnology, and to the value added to those primary industries, but also to the creation of jobs. The money that has gone into such things as the Innovation Park in Hamilton, which will create 2,500 jobs, is particularly pleasing, and we look forward to further such developments occurring throughout New Zealand. In the electorate of Hamilton East, in particular, we are extremely grateful for that money.

We are also grateful for the money that will go there not only through Pete Hodgson, the Minister of Research, Science and Technology, and through Technology New Zealand, but also through our Progressive partner Jim Anderton in his roles as Minister for Economic Development and Minister for Industry and Regional Development. At last we will have money going into regional development. For 9 years we had a National Government that purported to support rural New Zealand, that purported to support the regions, and it let our regions run down. I am very pleased that this Budget and this Government are supporting regional development in New Zealand and those of us who live south of the Bombay hills. I am pleased that it is supporting the development of New Zealand as New Zealand, and not just Auckland.

Helen Duncan, one of the Labour members who preceded both the previous speaker and myself, made a speech based on the slogan “We’re keeping our word”. There is nothing original in this Labour Party. That was the National Party theme song in 1978. What a dull, boring bunch Labour Party members are.

💬 Hon Member: And you would know.

I would know. We kept our word, and we were re-elected in 1981. How boring Helen Duncan is! How boring Michael Cullen is!

💬 Ron Mark: She’s a Nat.

Well, maybe she is a Nat in disguise, but there is nothing original on the part of that Labour Party. Of course, in thinking about keeping our word I note there is a novel way of doing that in the Labour Party. I heard Lynne Pillay’s speech. She said that in 2007 there would be seven secondary schools in Waitakere City. I started to think, then to count, and I worked out that currently we have Rutherford High School, Kelston Boys High School, and Kelston Girls High School—those two, I think, in the new Waitakere City—Henderson High School, Green Bay High School, Massey High School, which makes six, and Waitakere College. That is seven. We have seven colleges there now. She is going to keep her word—there will still be seven in 2007! What a wonderful election campaign—we will have seven secondary schools in 2007, and we have seven now.

That indicates of course that that Waitakere member has no idea about Waitakere. She probably does not know where it begins or where it ends, unlike those of us who have worked in Waitakere in one way or another since 1975—as I have done, spending nine of those years as a constituency MP. The situation so far as schools are concerned is that Waitakere is one of the fastest growing areas in New Zealand, and we need not one but probably two more secondary schools there. Massey High School’s roll now is about 2,300 and it gets $2 million in overseas students fees. That situation in Waitakere City is a disgrace on the education scene at the moment, and the member has totally disgraced herself in so far as her discussion about being a constituency member.

I have asked the Minister of Education what he is doing about a new school in Waitakere City. All members will recall how he told his officials not to tell me what was going on, and then I ended up with the entire file, which told me the situation about the lack of progress over another secondary school in Waitakere City. I hope I am right about those seven schools. Kelston Boys High School and Kelston Girls High School, I think, are on the boundary, but it seems to me that currently there are seven schools in Waitakere City.

Mrs Pillay also said that this Labour Government was going to provide State housing for people in Waitakere City, and we all know why that is necessary. It is because of all the immigrants coming into that city, and New Zealanders are missing out. The waiting lists are full of immigrants who slot in on the lower levels of the State housing points system, and State houses are being built in Waitakere City and given to new immigrants. The Hobsonville housing—all those houses taken up by the Air Force—will be taken up now by immigrants.

💬 Jill Pettis: Where was that member born?

I have never had a State house. When I came to New Zealand I could not believe that someone would give a family a State house. My mother could not believe that education was free, and insisted that I went to a school where we paid. The State has not paid for my housing or for my education, other than—and I am very grateful for it—my university education, which, I believe, I have put to good use. I have worked since 1961—43 years non-stop. I think if all New Zealanders set that sort of record, we would be doing very well. I hope that answers Ms Pettis’ question.

Another example of the sleight of hand of this Labour Party when it says: “We’re keeping our word” is exemplified in our sherry and port tax. That Minister, Jim Anderton—

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: You mean the students’ drink.

It is when students go up to the bar after the game and say: “The sherries are on me”; “Pass the port”; “We’ll all pass the port.” after a game of rugby.

💬 John Carter: “Have a madeira, m’dear”.

“Have a madeira, m’dear” and “a madeira for you, m’dear”, for all the girlfriends! Port, sherry, and madeira—the students love them.

The “Keeping Our Word” scenario has been brought up, and in that respect I share what Jim Anderton told the wine industry. I quote from a statement put out by the industry: “To make matters worse this ill-conceived policy was rushed through without consultation—consultation the industry was promised in writing on more than one occasion by the Hon Jim Anderton in February of this year. It is a serious injustice that this promise was not kept.” So Jim Anderton does not keep his word, and this Government does not kept its word, when that word is required to be kept.

Again, from a Waitakere City and west Auckland viewpoint, generations of wine growers will be put to the wall as a result of this Labour Party’s policy, and Lynne Pillay does not care. Really, she does not even know. Let us be frank about it: she does not know how many high schools are in the area. She does not know any of the wine growers, and she does not know the problems associated with generations of “Dallie” wine growers in general, if we can say that word—Croatians who have made a substantial contribution to New Zealand by working all their lives as gumdiggers and then by coming down into the west of Auckland as workers. They have their port stored and their sherry stored—it takes 2 to 5 years, and more, to store sherry. Now they may as well pour it down the drain. All their capital has been destroyed in a stroke by Jim Anderton.

This Labour Party Government, if it wants to, can rush legislation through the House with no trouble at all. It can keep us here until 10 past 5 in the morning. The leader of New Zealand First and myself were here at 10 past 5 one morning fighting that port and sherry bill. We know who our supporters are and we know the support we get on this issue for that product, one way or another. We were here fighting away, and that morning the vote was: 13 New Zealand First, 10 National, and three ACT. We were here fighting for our supporters—

💬 John Carter: No, nine for National.

Sorry. One of them was not conscious. Was one of them not conscious?

💬 John Carter: We can’t remember!

Oh, they cannot remember. We are here to support the people who vote for us, the people who are being ripped off and attacked by this Labour Party. They are people in the last years of their life who like a port or sherry. This Labour Party does not like older people, and I do not know why.

In respect of young people, we heard earlier today that the Child Poverty Action Group is concerned that 300,000 young New Zealand children have not been helped by this Budget. Labour members should take the opportunity to read that report.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.