Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill

As I rise to speak on the title of the Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill, I find it quite clear from the debate already on this bill that it is a totally inappropriate title. I ask the Minister in the chair, Michael Cullen, what sort of future direction he plans for this country when, in fact, we have seen that what is in this bill will lead more middle New Zealanders into dole queues and dependency on the State for handouts. The Minister is proud that he will make some families who now earn $80,000 dependent on handouts from the Government. What sort of future will that be for our country?

There is nothing in the legislation that is designed to retain some of our best and brightest New Zealanders who are leaving this country. There is nothing in the legislation that talks about growth, or that provides a grand vision for creating a country that our children and our children’s children will want to stay in. There is nothing that will keep our doctors from going overseas to Australia, our nurses from going to the UK, or our social workers fleeing from the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services, to get better incomes overseas. There is nothing, and that is why I think the Government is very disappointed that the reaction to this bill has been not quite what it would have expected. Dr Cullen thought his Budget would be welcomed with open arms, but the response has been poor in some sectors. Many people have said there is nothing in it for them or for their families.

💬 Hon Richard Prebble: How many?

Four out of five New Zealanders have worked out there is nothing in the Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill that could make a skerrick of difference to their lives. I wonder if Dr Cullen has seen the headlines in today’s Otago Daily Times: “Budget on the never-never …”, and “ ‘Battling NZers’ will have to wait”, or the commentary that states: “… Michael Cullen may have squandered the opportunity to leave a lasting mark on the New Zealand economy …”. This bill is about future directions, and I think we have shown in our debate what a different opinion to Labour we have about the future direction for this country. We do not see that capturing middle-class New Zealanders to be dependent on State handouts is something to crow about. The Minister wants the country’s people to feel grateful for getting back what was their own money in the first place.

That is why this is a “never-never” Budget. That is why it is not about future directions; it is about a direction down to the soup kitchen. That is why this bill is not about working for families. How can it be, when four out of five families look at this Budget and say there is nothing in it for them? This is a Government that laboriously debated the definition of the family. “Family” was going to include almost anybody who had a psychological attachment to any other New Zealander. But in this bill a family is defined in terms of only those people who have children, because they are the only people to benefit from this particular Budget. It does not matter if a young married couple, just setting out and having to pay back a mortgage, is trying to get ahead to reduce debt before having kids. There is nothing in the Budget for that couple. There is nothing in it for a young apprentice who has just left an apprenticeship and who is going out to work for the first time. His or her taxes will now be redirected to pay for some of the initiatives in this bill.

This bill should not make middle-income New Zealanders increasingly dependent on the generosity of future Governments. That dependence is not something to be excited about; it is something to be embarrassed about. Families who earn $80,000 are now being asked to go to the Government to get a handout—basically, to get the taxes they have paid in the first place. This bill does not work for families. It is not about working for families; it is about four families working harder than ever to pay more for one family that may already be dependent on welfare. That is what this Budget is about. It is a welfare Budget.

That is why the response from the community has not been overly excited. That is why most people can look at this Budget and say there is nothing in it for them—[Interruption] If that member does not think that that is the case, obviously he did not tune into the Holmes show last night, where four out of five Kiwis said that the Budget did not do it for them—four out of five.

On behalf of New Zealand First, I rise to speak to the title of this bill. The title is appropriate. It is short and concise, and it lets people know exactly what the bill is about. This bill will work for families. The worthy goals outlined at the very start of this bill should help families in New Zealand.

This bill is about future direction. We want people to work and to be able to go back into the workforce. The childcare subsidies that we read about in the bill are absolutely critical to ensure that work is made more attractive for people.

New Zealand First is tired of reading negative reports about families and their children in New Zealand, and how they miss out. This legislation actually helps to ensure that those children do not miss out. We see children missing out on the basics, and that is not what a First World country should allow. We do not want to be a Third World country, at all. This bill really is one for families, and New Zealand First will be supporting it.

I am amazed that we continually hear about the Holmes poll last night. I know for a fact that most low and middle income people in New Zealand do not spend their money on ringing the Holmes poll; they save their money for something for their children. It is not low and middle income people who ring the Holmes show. Those people at the top end who can afford it, ring in; low and middle income people spend their money elsewhere.

This legislation is good news for New Zealand families. We have looked at it overnight and we still support it, so New Zealand First supports this part as well.

I rise on behalf of the ACT party to talk to the title of this bill, which should in truth be called the “Future Elections (Working for Welfare Families) Bill”, because that is what it is all about. That is what the future vision of this Government is—getting more and more people on to welfare and State dependency so that it can guarantee to have their vote in future elections.

That is what the Government thinks will happen but it actually will not, because people do not want to live on welfare for the rest of their lives. They know how dispiriting it is, and they know what it causes. In the case in Carterton where the child “Lillybing” was abused and died, the family had $1000 a week coming in, in various forms of welfare payments and family support. That family was not financially poor. It suffered from a poverty of spirit, and that is what locking people into welfare dependency gives to them. The only way such people can increase their incomes or get bigger houses is to have more and more children—children who are not wanted or cared about. In that case—a most disgraceful situation—a child was left clinging to a toilet seat for 4 hours, clinging so that she did not fall in. That is the vision this Government wants for this country. That is what this bill will do for families.

The bill will do absolutely nothing for the Kiwi battler on Struggle Street—not a thing. Members of this Government should listen to talkback radio, but they are too snobby to do that and think that talkback has a lot of whingers and moaners. Talkback is the people’s Parliament and it is what makes the world go around, in this country. If Government members listened to talkback, they would hear what people are really saying about this bill.

They are saying there is nothing in it for the working family. We can take the example of a teacher, married with two children, who is earning $50,000 a year and next door a family with two children earning $25,000 a year. Both families are living in the same street in Auckland and paying $300 a week in rent or mortgage payments. The family who works twice as hard to get $50,000 is sending across the back fence, to the other family on $25,000—

💬 Hon Dr Michael Cullen: Unbelievable snobbery.

The Minister can take a call if he has any problems with what I am saying. He is sending across the back fence around $200 a week. He is sending another $100 a week to the Government to spend how it likes. Why does this patronising Government not just allow those people to keep their own money, so that they can be rewarded for working hard?

This Government, though, thinks that earning $50,000 a year is being rich. One is considered rich and high-income if one is on $50,000 a year, and what does this Government do to those it thinks are rich people? It takes money away from those people, just because they have it. The best thing this Government could have done for families in this country was to give them a choice.

I bet this Government has not seen the press statement from the School Trustees Association this morning, which said that the association has no chance of meeting its budgets now, because of the miserly increase this Government has made in the operational funding grant. ACT would not actually make the grant any greater, but we would let the funding follow the child.

This Government entrusts parents to give it their votes every 3 years, but it will not trust them to pick schools for their children. It allows parents to choose the family doctors they go to—it does not do that based on where they live—but when it comes to choosing schools for their children, the view is: “Oh no. These are just ordinary people. Ordinary people cannot choose. They do not know what is best for their children.” This Government thinks it does know, so that is why it will bring in a bill it calls the Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill. It is an absolute disgrace that this Government thinks it can direct how families will go in the future of New Zealand.

I just want to take a very brief call on the title clause of the Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill, because we think it is a very good title. When we want to work for families and set future directions, we have to understand that that is not an event; it is a journey and a process. This legislation, by the very title that has been chosen for it, talks about a journey and a process rather than an event, and we applaud that.

We have already signalled the fact that there are additions to those future directions that we would like to see addressed in the future, and the truth is that we want to achieve that in a different way from the way suggested by the Opposition. The Opposition says: “The way to fix this, United Future, is just to pull the Government down and throw it on the mercy of the Greens and New Zealand First.”, as if that will somehow translate into outcomes for families.

Well, that is not the way we work in United Future. The way we work is that we honour our word and maintain our commitment. Our commitment is to both those who elected us, who are family people, and to the Government that the New Zealand public put into power. Let us just remember what the voters said on 27 July 2002.

United Future will not allow its judgment to be clouded by what is not being achieved by this bill, but will choose to focus on the substantial achievements offered by this legislation. If the economy responds as Dr Cullen hopes, then United Future will take every opportunity to further the issues that we consider still need to be addressed, so we will continue to support this bill.

If ever there were a bill whose title was a misnomer, it would be this Labour Government’s so-called Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill. We know that this is a bill where the future direction is more and more taxation—and more and more locked-in dependency—by the Labour Government. If this bill had an appropriate title, it would be something like “The Labour Government is Desperate to Win an Election Bill”.

That is summed up perfectly by the front page of the Dominion Post, which says: “The centrepiece of the Budget is a Working for Families package worth $221 million this year but rising to $664 million next April—in time for the election.” I see Dr Cullen sitting there with his hands steeple-ing, and I ask him: what else is it? Will he take a call and answer? The article then goes on to state: “It will cost $900 million and then $1.1 billion in the next two years, which Labour is likely to use as a carrot to win re-election.” As I said, if ever there were a bill more incorrectly named in terms of the future direction for New Zealand, it happens to be this bill.

Perhaps another appropriate title might be the “Labour Government Working for Some Families, but Neglecting Many Others Bill”. That is backed up by the very fact that there are in the order of 25,000 young children automatically excluded from an entitlement of 20 hours’ free attendance at early childhood centres. Members have heard the Labour Government crow about the 300,000 families who are covered by this bill, but we know in actual fact that only one in five households in New Zealand will be helped in any way by it, and that 80 percent of households have been utterly neglected by Dr Cullen and his friends from the Labour Party. Is that the sort of future direction this country wants? Undoubtedly, it is not. Looking at the 25,000 young children who will be excluded, we realise that that means about 1,000 privately operated early childhood centres, and the children going to them, are absolutely ineligible. Working mothers who use private early childhood centres will be surprised to find out that the Government values their children less than others. If ever there were a directed piece of blatant electioneering, it is encapsulated in the title of this bill.

Dr Cullen knows very well that what he should have been doing was working on what he set out to do 4 years ago—the achievement of sustainable economic growth for this country. But, no, he has reverted to form. After 4 long years, what has he come up with but a blatant election bribe, when he knows very clearly that he should have been taking advantage of those 4 years of reasonably good economic growth. Instead, what do we see now but a big spend-up—a huge spend-up—and Treasury predictions of continually falling economic growth. This Government came into power when there was a rate of 4.9 percent economic growth, and the record shows that it has fallen gradually ever since.

Another appropriate title for this bill could be the “Steve Maharey: Let’s Complicate the Social Security Act Bill”, because Steve Maharey was the very man who said: “Look, we want to simplify social security.” Well, as we go through Part 2, we see that it is nothing more than a classic Labour Party beat-up on how to complicate a bill.

The Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill is very poorly titled. Perhaps it should be called the “Labour Future for Working Families is the Road from Work to Welfare Bill”. That would have been a better description of it, because what it does is say to people like the teacher in Waihī: “Even though you are a valued professional in the community, even though we want young people like you to make a commitment to the teaching profession, unfortunately the wage and salary increases expected in this country are so poor and so despondent, that all you can expect is a Government benefit in order to keep up with the expenses of life.”

Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.

The centrepiece of the Government’s Budget, the Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill, should be renamed the “Labour Government’s Promise to Workers to Take the Road from Work to Welfare Bill”. This bill says to teachers in our community, like the man from Waihī who earns $55,000 a year, that the only chance they have for getting more income for their families in the next 3 years is to wait until 2007 to get a lousy $140 a week extra. That should tell every teacher in this country that the Government does not anticipate wage and salary rises from this economy in the next 3 years. It is saying to working New Zealanders that if they expect to have more value from the money they earn, they will have to take it by way of a benefit. We will see 300,000 families advantaged under this legislation, but 1.2 million families will still have to work and battle hard to pay their way through this very difficult world.

I ask Dr Cullen, when he proudly says that this will give the Waihī family on $55,000 a year an extra $150 a week in 3 years’ time, what will happen to that family if that particular teacher has moved up through the salary scale—remember, he has two salary levels to go yet—picked up maybe one or two management units, and got himself over $60,000 a year. The answer is that he gets very, very little, and certainly gets a lot less than he would get if a tax solution had been found that would advantage low-income New Zealanders. This will go down in history as legislation and a Budget that gave up on growing the New Zealand economy and said, rather, that if New Zealanders want to get some advantage from being in work in the future, they will also have to sign up as welfare beneficiaries.

This bill should have its title changed. It should not be cynically described as the Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill, when, clearly, the only place it leads to is welfare, and that is not the sort of aspiration that New Zealanders expect from a Government. It will be good to get on the stump against Labour members some time next year. People will be saying: “Hang on, you guys spent $7,000 a minute passing a bill through all stages of urgency to put more money in our pockets. Where is it?” The Labour members will say: “Well, if you vote for us, you can have it in another 2 years’ time.” People will not believe it, because alongside that, they will understand that any prospect of wages and salaries growing in this country under this Government is now gone.

I move, That the question be now put.

I move, That the Committee divide the bill into the Social Security (Working for Families) Amendment Bill and the Taxation (Working for Families) Bill, pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 222.