Appropriation (2013/14 Estimates) Bill

Well, what a great Budget it was this year. We know that it is a great Budget when the Opposition does not want to talk about it. Day in, day out we have had question time since the Budget, and day in, day out the Labour Party has wanted to talk about anything except the Budget. Where have the questions on the Budget been? No, they have not been there. In fact, we have had to ask our own questions on the Budget because the Opposition does not want to attack us on it. Instead, it has gone and talked about things that the people of New Zealand do not think are important, and continues to do so.

In the justice portfolio I have to say, yet again, that I am so outstandingly excited and pleased with the work that is going on right across the justice sector, as we work towards our Better Public Services targets. Part of that, of course, is about reducing reoffending rates, and that is something that the Labour Party could never do. All it could do was build new prisons and put more people in jail. It went from about 5,000 prisoners in 1999 when Labour came into office, to 8,500 by the time it left office, only 9 years later. Labour members are the people who would not deal with recidivism and would not put in the programmes dealing with reoffending that they needed to.

This Government, in this Budget—even though it is a tight Budget and even though there is not a lot of money to splurge around as we are trying to get back into surplus—has put in an extra $4.4 million to expand restorative justice. This is a Government that actually deals with reoffending, that actually deals with crime, and that actually gets crime down. So across the justice sector, across corrections, across the police, and across the justice ministry we have these targets, which are all about reducing crime. We have got targets for ourselves for 2017 of a 20 percent reduction in violent crime, a 15 percent reduction in recorded crime, a 5 percent reduction in youth crime, and a 25 percent reduction in reoffending. That is a whopping target to give ourselves.

How are we going so far? Well, after 18 months on these targets we currently have a 9 percent reduction in recorded crime, a 7 percent reduction in violent crime, a whopping 14 percent reduction in youth crime, and an 8 percent reduction in reoffending—an 8 percent reduction in reoffending already. It is a shame that Labour never cared enough about people to actually bring down these rates, but we are doing it, and we are doing it at a time when the rest of the world is in economic turmoil. We look at what is happening in Europe, we look at what is happening even over in Australia, which has been always the lucky country, and yet it is starting to find it pretty tough as well.

We have got through this very difficult time by being very careful, and by focusing on what matters. What matters actually is the people of New Zealand and what they want. They want less crime, and they are getting it. We are delivering it. At the same time, what we are doing is we are giving the technology tools to our workers in the justice sector, the police, corrections, and in the ministry so that they can make better use of their time, and they do not have to spend as much time travelling to and from the police station, the courts, or wherever. They can actually use iPads, iPhones, and everything else so they can access the information they need. This is about safety for them. It is also about efficiency, and it is about keeping crime down. We are going great guns.

I would like to acknowledge my colleagues in the justice sector, the other Ministers: the Hon Anne Tolley, the Hon Chester Borrows, and the Hon Chris Finlayson. I am so proud of the way that we work together. We are just a fantastic team. I have to say that we support each other, but we also have a great team in the Justice and Electoral Committee, chaired ably by Mr Scott Simpson, MP for Coromandel, just in case the Labour Party does not know where the Coromandel is. Labour never held it. The great thing is that Scott Simpson is doing a fantastic job, and before him Tim Macindoe. I am just so proud of it.

Let us come to ACC. My goodness, I am so proud to be the Minister for ACC. No, I really am, actually. We are going great guns in ACC. National came into office, and we inherited an absolute financial mess in ACC. But also we actually inherited a situation where 14,000 people were lingering on very long-term payments from ACC.

💬 Jami-Lee Ross: How many?

It was 14,000 people. Since then we have been able to rehabilitate 3,000 people, so now there are 11,000 people on these long-term benefits. At the same time those numbers are continuing to drop and ACC is now able to do some other things to help people, and to help prevent injuries, which I think is something it should be doing. ACC has a real role in preventing injuries, and preventing people from ending up losing their independence. If that does happen for a period of time, ACC has a role in trying to get them back to wellness or to as much independence as they possibly can.

The biggest risk to ACC and its viability, now that it is, by the way, fully funded in the work account and the earners account, is a change of Government to a Green-Labour alliance—a Green-Labour alliance. That is the worst thing. Under the Budget—[Interruption] I know that Mr Little hates it when I talk about ACC, because it is such a good-news story, and he was so ineffective as the Labour spokesman that in fact Sue Moroney had to take over, and she has been fabulous ever since; I have really enjoyed working with her.

What we are doing is we are signalling a levy drop. That is in effect a tax refund for all New Zealanders who work. So that is around about $300 million down, a levy drop in the next year, the 2014-15 year, and probably a drop of about a billion dollars in the year after that. So we are already delivering, through this, about a 40 percent drop in levies from the time that we took office. If you look at any of the work that is being done around this, the biggest risk to ACC is a Greens-Labour alliance. That is the biggest risk.

Then I have my other portfolio of ethnic affairs. It is a lovely portfolio. I just love ethnic affairs because this Government is all about diversity. We celebrate diversity, unlike the Labour Party, which patronises people and behaves like it does. Look how badly it treats women over there. One of the great things we have done in ethnic affairs is that we have been able to take ethnic affairs and we have been able to focus on the really great things out of diversity. The EPIC conference is all about ethnic people in commerce. What we have done—it started last year, and, yes, it was my idea, OK, but there is more of it this year, and we will do more of it next year—is we are bringing together ethnic people in business and saying, look, the whole of New Zealand has to be focused on business and making this country do really well and perform, so let us actually connect people from traditional, mainstream New Zealand businesses with the many people who have come to New Zealand and who choose to be New Zealanders. These are great people. Let us get them together, and let us help.

Last year we started it off. We had a great inaugural conference of about 200 people. This year, just a couple of weeks ago, I was at the opening—well, yes, I did open it—and there were about 400-odd people there. It was fantastic. It was a great success. I have heard fantastic feedback about the Office of Ethnic Affairs and the work that it is doing, along with our many ethnic communities, but it is also about building relationships with more mainstream parts of business, like the New Zealand Institute of Management. We now have a memorandum of understanding with it so that it in fact is learning from the many advantages of ethnic diversity in the workplace.

One of the great things that I could announce—that I have announced, but obviously no one in the Labour Party wants to talk about it—is about extending Language Line. Language Line is something that ethnic affairs has had running that has helped many people who have had to interact with Government agencies but who did not necessarily feel that confident at speaking in English. Language Line is the basic telephone translating service that has been available to Government departments and people interacting with them. We are now extending that service to private businesses, to be able to provide it to them on a user-pays basis. Because the Office of Ethnic Affairs is only a little agency, it does not have a lot of staff, and we want to make sure we do it right. What we are doing is that we are expanding the service out first to the big banks, and then it will go further and further from there.

My vision of this would be to be able to say that anybody who wants to access any form of business or any social service should be able to contact those services or use Language Line to help them. That is something that I think businesses and the people of New Zealand will all benefit from. It is actually about making the very best of the 4.5 million people who choose to call New Zealand home. We are a little country, our population is even less than that of Melbourne, and yet we are a great little country. I think New Zealand is a fantastic country, the best country in the world. I am proud to be representing this Government. This Budget is a great Budget, and we know how great it is because those members never want to talk about it.

Debate interrupted.