Debate on Budget Policy Statement

I move, That the House take note of the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Budget Policy Statement 2015. New Zealand lives in very exciting times. We have a Government that has delivered the best economic results that are possible in this time. We have a Government that has delivered economic growth at a very, very difficult point in our country’s history, and it has delivered the ability for this country to grow even stronger in the future. This is a country that now experiences some of the best economic growth in the Western World.

When we look at actual economic growth of 3.2 percent and forecast growth of 3.5 percent in the Budget Policy Statement, we see an economy that is delivering for all New Zealanders. We see an economy that has got the fundamentals there for all New Zealanders to prosper and grow—for example, the Consumers Price Index was at 1.5 percent in 2014 and is forecast for 1.3 percent this year. Unemployment is now at 5.7 percent, and that is forecast to go down to 4.5 percent in 2018. The current account deficit as a percentage of GDP is now at only 2.7 percent and is expected to go to minus 5.3 percent in 2015. Compare that with what we encountered when we came into office. Compare that with a country that was in recession before the rest of the Western World. Compare that with a country that had interest rates of around 11 percent for our homeowners and our business owners. Compare that with a country that had a current account deficit at around 7.9 percent.

This Government has delivered the economic results New Zealanders have been looking for. It has delivered the economic results that have set us up for the future going forward. Some of those results—the growth rate of over 3 percent—are better than the European area, the US, the UK, Japan, and Canada. Interest rates are staying lower for longer, with mortgage interest rates at 50-year lows. Household disposable income is increasing faster than inflation, rising 9 percent in real terms over the last 4 years. Recent job growth is expected to continue. There are 80,000 more people employed now than there were 1 year ago, and 217,000 more than 5 years ago. Those unemployment rates are staggeringly low at 4.5 percent for New Zealand going forward, and a lot of that is driven out of the growth in Christchurch.

Those economic results are not an accident; they represent prudent economic management, and the Budget Policy Statement is part of that prudent economic management. They show a country that has strong economic management, that has an economic plan, that is following it, and that is delivering in that economic area. If we go and have a look at my local city of Hamilton, we can see that economic growth, and we can see the economic change that is happening. Just this week there has been a huge announcement in our city in regard to roading infrastructure, which has been important—

💬 Tim Macindoe: An excellent announcement.

An excellent announcement, which is important for the growth of that city going forward. There has been $972 million committed to the Hamilton bypass of the Waikato Expressway. That is part of a $1.08 billion project that has just been announced and supported this week in the funding.

💬 Grant Robertson: Must be a by-election coming up.

No, there is no by-election there. But I would remind members on the other side of the House that some of the other parties that may be contesting a by-election do not believe in the roads of national significance. I would like to see the members of the Northland community hear what the New Zealand First Party actually said during the election campaign. During the election campaign New Zealand First campaigned against the roads of national significance.

💬 Tracey Martin: That’s a lie. That’s a lie.

OK. “That’s a lie.” This is what Tracey Martin says: “That’s a lie.” Those are her words. Well, I am going to read out the New Zealand First transport policy that came from Winston Peters on Sunday, 13 July at 2 p.m. in Gisborne. It says: “We are calling for a thorough review of National’s bloated and hugely expensive “RONS” programme which is massively extravagant given all the other areas of necessary spending that are being cut to fund it.” Did you say that was a lie, Tracey? I do not believe so.

It is amazing that Winston Peters can now support roads of national significance in Auckland but he could not do that during an election campaign. It gets better when you look at the transport policy of New Zealand First, because it had a plan: it was going to take away the roads of national significance, and the Pūhoi to Wellsford road was one it was taking away. I was in election meeting after election meeting with the New Zealand First candidate. He stood up and he said: “We are taking away that road.” New Zealand First was going to replace it. It had something to replace the road with: “… New Zealand First will develop a programme of Railways of National Importance (RONI).” OK, they brought Ron back but they did not get the RONI, and Winston is against the road from Wellsford to Pūhoi. I have it in writing here, and I will table it for this country so that people can see. That is what the voters of Wellsford and Northland need to remember when they come to the by-election, because New Zealand First did not support that infrastructure, which Northland needs.

And when we come to the Budget Policy Statement, we are looking at the growth of the New Zealand economy. We are looking at those fundamental economic bases that are there. And if you do not invest in that infrastructure, then there is not the ability to deliver that economic growth. And to all those voters in Northland, remember that we need that economic growth to happen and that that will come through investment in infrastructure. I can tell you from a voter in Hamilton that the Hamiltonians realise the importance of the roads of national significance, because the Waikato Expressway is the defining difference between National and Labour. It is the defining difference between Hamilton growing and not growing, and the same applies in Northland. Remember the words of Tracey Martin: “That was a lie.” Then you look at the reality of what New Zealand First members actually said during the campaign, and I would like to see them revert on that.

💬 Tracey Martin: No, no, no—it’s a lie.

You cannot do that line, Tracey. You have tried it, OK? It did not work. Try another one next time, OK?

Today Treasury released the Crown accounts for the 7 months to January, which show a part-year surplus of $77 million. That is the first time since 2009 that New Zealand has been in surplus. This is in the most difficult of economic conditions. We have a situation where there have been decreasing commodity prices in the last year, where we have a very tenuous and delicate world economic situation, where we have a Government that has maintained social spending and has increased spending in health and education and the areas of priority where New Zealanders want to see an increase in expenditure—all the while being able to deliver a small economic surplus for the first part of this year. That may be difficult to translate into a full economic surplus over the full year but those are the economic conditions that we have to deal with. That prudent economic management has been led by the Minister of Finance, the Hon Bill English, and I would like to pay credit to him and his leadership for making that happen, because this is an important part of the economic management of New Zealand.

In the Budget Policy Statement we set out four priorities that this Government has followed. Responsibly managing the Government’s finances, which I have talked about, and how that will lead to surplus in times to come—and we are already at a current surplus now. Building a more competitive and productive economy to create jobs, raise incomes, and provide more opportunities, and we see that in the infrastructure investments for things like the Waikato Expressway and the Wellsford and Pūhoi roads. Delivering Better Public Services so that people can get better and more convenient health care, so that beneficiaries are supported into work, and so that the streets of New Zealand are safer. And rebuilding Christchurch, which has been a crucial part of the New Zealand Government’s agenda for the last few years and will continue to be so because it is our second-biggest city and we need to rebuild it.

New Zealanders have much to risk from a change in economic policy, and that would be the last thing we need in this country. The economic policy that we have has worked and is working and is delivering the opportunities for all New Zealanders going forward. We do not need a country that has higher taxes, spends more on social welfare just for the sake of it, limits immigration, stops infrastructure growth, and does not provide the economic base for New Zealanders to go forward. National has delivered, and this Budget Policy Statement is an example of that delivery. Thank you.

It is quite difficult, on this side of the House, to take a lecture on prudent economic management from National Party members in a week when they have decided that it is OK to go out and bribe the people of Northland, and buy a by-election with tens of millions of dollars for the bridges of Northland. It is like some kind of tragic, latter-day Simon and Garfunkel song, as Simon Bridges and Steven Joyce wander around Northland with their bridges over a troubled electorate, unable to find a way of actually winning the electorate on National’s record, and having to go up there and drag out these 10 bridges. This week it is 10 bridges, next week it is “Ten guitars”, then it is “Ten lords a-leaping”. Who knows where they will end up? We will have a Sky Tower in Kaitāia, and we will have some kind of Taj Mahal on the Treaty grounds before we finish. This is what National is about, and it is lecturing this side of the House on prudent economic management when this National Government has proved time and time again that it is the short-term political ends that are driving its economic agenda.

That is never more obvious than in the debacle that was the overcharging of New Zealanders for ACC. Time and again in this House we have seen National members, including the finance Minister, Bill English, get up and tell us that the ACC levies are being put up only because his Government knows best. Every official piece of advice that the National Government got from ACC, from Treasury, and from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment said that ACC levies could come down, and could come down significantly. Once again, the National Government has chosen to prop up its meagre monthly surplus on the back of New Zealand workers and employers paying more than they need to for ACC—$350 million ripped off New Zealand workers and businesses because this Government has decided that it wants to project some kind of made-up surplus. It is time for the National Government to be straight up with New Zealanders about the economy and admit that after 7 years of promising surpluses and of seven Budgets there is still no surplus coming. Although Bill English can crow for 1 month, my prediction is that when he stands up here in May, he is not going to be able to do that. He will have come with a seventh Budget with no surplus in it.

That stands in stark contrast to the record of the Labour Government, which delivered surpluses every year—every year that Bill English stood up in this House and said: “Give out tax cuts. Spend that money.” But, no, the Labour Government stuck with delivering those surpluses, and in turn, in the last 7 years, the National Government has failed to deliver one. Two election cycles, seven Budgets, and no surplus coming through. It is important to pick up one aspect of David Bennett’s contribution.

💬 Dr David Clark: Ha, ha!

Just one. Everybody on this side of the House recognises the damage wrought by the Canterbury earthquakes—the damage that they did to people in those regions and to those regions. But the reality today is that it is the rebuild from the Canterbury earthquakes that is propping up the New Zealand economy. It is time for the National Government to be straight up with New Zealanders about the fact that it is the Canterbury rebuild that is allowing it to have any kind of economic growth. The National Government cannot continue to rely on the short-term politics of telling New Zealanders that things are getting better, when so many of them know that they are not.

This Budget Policy Statement is a tale of three things: broken promises, hopeless complacency, and dodgy meddling. We have got the broken promise around the surplus. It was not just that there might be a surplus; it was John Key telling New Zealanders that there would be a surplus. Why does the surplus matter? It matters because that is the test that the National Government has set itself for its economic credibility. Nobody else did it. It was the National Government that said: “This is the test of whether we are running the economy well.” After 7 years, it has failed that test.

It is also a tale of broken promises about what is going to happen in this economy. There was an instructive moment in the election campaign: when Bill English was asked for one new idea about what could happen in the economy, he could not come up with one. It is complacency. It is a belief that we can go on for ever on the back of commodity prices and recovering from disaster. Well, what we have seen with commodity prices is a drop of 17 percent. What we have seen with exports, in the face of a promise that exports would lift from 30 percent of GDP to 40 percent of GDP, is that they have declined to 26 percent—a broken promise. Just this year we have seen the value of exports drop overall by 9 percent, and a 30 percent drop in dairy. This economy needs a Government that is prepared to back those who will grow those export dollars.

Where is the diversification strategy in this economy? It is not there. It is a complacency that we will get by—that when we walk past the port in Wellington and we see the raw logs there, that it will be OK. The reality is that if our economy is to thrive and if we are to go beyond just Aucklanders selling houses to each other, then we need an economy that benefits widely across New Zealand, where we add value in the regions, and where we grow jobs in the regions. Whatever statistics Mr English might be able to stand up in a minute and throw around, the reality of existence in places like Wanganui, in places like Gisborne, and in places like the far north of New Zealand—the reason why people are laughing at Mark Osborne when he stands up and talks about 8,000 extra jobs in Northland—is that life for people in those regions is far, far different from that. Those regions in New Zealand are struggling because this Government is complacent. It has broken its promises. And it is also responsible—[Interruption] They do not like it, but it is also responsible for the dodgiest meddling in the economy that we have seen in many years. My colleague David Clark will talk about this more in a few minutes.

When we look at that Skycity convention centre deal, it says everything about what is wrong with this Government, because the cronyism and the corporate welfare is what is driving it—the short-term political ends. What is missing is the long-term plan, and it is a long-term plan that on this side of the House I am proud to say we are developing right now. That is about a relentless focus on work and on jobs—on decent work that pays decent wages. Nearly half of all New Zealanders missed out on a pay increase last year. Nearly half of all New Zealanders struggled to make ends meet. When we have got an economy that says it is OK for 260,000 kids to grow up in poverty, that is not an economy to be proud of and that is not the economy that the Labour Party wants to see us work towards.

What we have seen in recent times is that an economy in which inequality grows is an economy that slows down. What we have seen in recent times are studies that show us that wages have fallen 16 percent behind where they should be in New Zealand—behind productivity. We have got an economy where a small group of people do well and the vast majority of New Zealanders struggle in their daily lives to make ends meet, with housing prices going through the roof and with rents going through the roof. It is not good enough just to sit there complacently and look at the statistics on inflation. Look at the reality. The reality for people in South Auckland, whose rents have gone up by 8 and 9 percent in the last year, is that they have not seen a pay rise of 8 or 9 percent for a very, very long time.

The Labour Party is focused on the future of work and on what kinds of decent jobs can be created. There is no room for complacency when studies out of the United States are showing that 47 percent of jobs are at high risk from technology. There is no room for complacency when we know we have to create more sustainable jobs that stop damaging the planet and grow the economy and the environment together. There is no room for complacency when the latest unemployment statistics show a rise in unemployment, years after Bill English and John Key declared the recession to be over in New Zealand. And there is no room for complacency when small businesses are being ripped off and overcharged by this Government.

On this side of the House we believe that the Budget Policy Statement represents a Government that has broken its promises to New Zealanders, that has been complacent about the future of the economy, and that has meddled with dodgy deals. It is time for the Budget to focus on how New Zealanders will have decent work opportunities in the future and on how New Zealanders will be able to ensure that future generations grow up where everybody has the same opportunities to succeed, not just the fortunate few. On this side of the House our focus will be relentlessly on growing jobs, on ensuring there is opportunity for all New Zealanders, and on supporting small businesses, not ripping them off to the tune of $350 million.

The Labour spokesman, I think, gave a speech about the economy he wishes existed, with no growth, no jobs, rising inequality, and Government finances going through the floor, but I would suggest he does not follow his own advice. His own advice was: do not look at the numbers; look at reality. Well, of course, reality, according to him and the Labour Party, is reality on “Planet Labour”, where numbers do not make any difference whatsoever. Of course, if he looked at the numbers, he would see that for a party that is campaigning on work, there were 80,000 new jobs in the last year. The participation rate in this economy—that is, the proportion of working-age New Zealanders who see themselves as being in the labour market—is the highest ever. There have never been more New Zealanders who feel that they can access the labour market. There have never been more New Zealanders more confident that they can participate in this economy. That is what I mean about the Opposition giving a speech about the economy it wishes it had.

In fact, New Zealand is looking at a fairly unique opportunity over the next few years, and that is sustained growth of over 3 percent for a period of 3 to 5 years, when we have already had, over the last couple of years, growth of around 2.5 to 3 percent. That is pretty unusual, actually. So it is the opportunity for continued business investment that builds our capacity to be more productive and produce more income, and for households the opportunity for moderate but consistent wage and income increases.

The Opposition spokesman said that last year half of all New Zealanders did not get a pay rise. Well, that is absolutely typical. Every year about half of all New Zealanders do not get a pay rise. Last year the nurses did not get a pay rise. Why? Because their collective agreement was negotiated to cover 2 or 3 years. In any given year that is how it works. But, of course, what they do look forward to is the opportunity for consistent, even if moderate, pay increases year after year. That is what this economy has been delivering, and it is what this economy will continue to deliver.

The conditions for that sustained economic growth have been in some respects surprising. As there has been more work in the economy, the labour supply has shown itself to be remarkably responsive, both through migration—through New Zealanders not leaving for Australia—and through people, particularly women and older people, counting themselves now as part of the workforce where previously they were not. Another condition is low inflation and lower interest rates for longer, which is a set of conditions we did not really expect, but we have been importing low inflation from the world economy. That is good for New Zealand households, even if it makes it a bit tougher for the New Zealand Government to balance its books.

There is one significant imbalance that has been building up in this economy, and that of course is the Auckland housing market. It is not in the rest of the country. The other two-thirds of our housing market, with a partial exception in Christchurch, is actually relatively stable if not becoming more affordable. The House has discussed many times the action the Government is taking to deal with increasing supply in Auckland.

It was something of a milestone today for the Government accounts to show a surplus for the year to January. Back in 2010 our deficit was 9 percent of GDP, around $18 billion in the red. In the last month we have just got to surplus. We have yet to see whether we will have one for the full financial year, but what it indicates is that we are in the zone. The combination of a growing economy and good expenditure management, having largely paid for the Christchurch earthquakes, although not completely—and more costs coming through in Canterbury may affect our surplus this year—and having survived a recession, has meant that our Government finances are headed in the right direction.

But what matters more than that actual number are the significant changes going on in the management of Government expenditure. We have taken a view that the best way for the Government to control its costs is to do its job properly, and that is to effectively change the lives of people who are dependent on the Government either for their income or for other support that they need. So we are moving the Budget process to a strong focus on people, populations, communities, and families, and not on Government departments. So, for example, the way we think about making progress with educational achievement is to focus on the children and families and the difference that better educational achievement will make to the course of their lives, not on the latest bright idea from the Ministry of Education.

This approach is most advanced in the case of welfare, where the forward liability calculation of welfare has yielded a huge wealth of information about our beneficiary population that we simply did not have before. When we took over from the previous Labour Government we saw a system awash with cash and complacency, where everyone was focused on spending more money as the way of showing that they cared, whereas now the measure of whether we care is whether we change the life direction of, for instance, a young child in Government care, through a children’s and young person’s service. Or whether we can, with a 7-year-old who cannot read, get them to where they can pass National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2. Or when we lock someone up in prison, as we should when they have committed a serious offence against the community, when they come out we can reduce the chance of recidivism from what it was, at 60 percent. Sixty percent of people leaving prison reoffended within 2 years. A lot of them ended up back inside, at $115,000 a year—a pretty reckless failure if you do not do anything about it.

This strong focus on the quality and the impact of our expenditure on real people, rather than on big numbers that Government agencies can throw around as a measure of effectiveness, is now gradually working through into the system. It actually is one of the reasons we have got to surplus. The Government publishes 10 results. They are on the Beehive website, and some of them are pretty hard stuff, like a reduction in child violence. Whoever thought that that was an easy problem? What it is driving is a much more focused, effective approach from Government departments. We know that the endless demand for more family violence programmes, which are quite expensive and have questionable effectiveness, will just continue endlessly. Politicians in election campaigns will say: “We’ll spend more on family violence.” Well, actually, you should be getting up to say: “We’ll be spending less on family violence because there’s less family violence. We’ll be spending less on fixing educational failure because there’s less educational failure. We’ll be spending less on crime and law enforcement because there’s less crime.”

And that is where the lazy, complacent Labour Party has not moved one bit from when it was in Government. Every measure this Government takes in that respect, the Labour Party opposes. The changes in State housing—we want to have less serious housing needs, but the Labour Party is opposing what are quite significant changes and how they work.

I am proud to support this Budget Policy Statement. It sets out a clear direction for an economy that is showing sustainable growth, which can deliver better incomes for households right across the income range over the next 3 to 4 years. It also indicates the increasing focus on the effectiveness of spending, with some quite new tools for the Government. This means that not just over the next year or two but over the next 10 or 20 years, Governments will be able to contain Government expenditure because we do our job properly by changing people’s lives for the better.

That member, the Hon Bill English, is clearly living in a parallel universe—the talk about surplus, the endless talk about surplus, a surplus we are yet to see. The Minister says that the economy is finally in the zone. I think he probably means the red zone, where it has always been under his Government. This Government has run two election campaigns on surplus, and yet we have not seen a single—single—surplus. We have not yet seen one from this Government.

This is a Government that has campaigned on the issue and failed. It has failed. It is not being straight with New Zealanders. Yet Government members will ask ordinary New Zealanders to tighten their belts. We will hear it again with this Budget. We will hear that ordinary New Zealanders should tighten their belts. The Government will cut education spending. It will cut spending on domestic violence. It will cut spending left, right, and centre. Ordinary New Zealanders should expect to get fewer services. That is what this Government is saying—that you should expect, as ordinary citizens, to get fewer surpluses.

Why is that? Because there are expensive tax cuts to be paid for. This is the Government that gave 40 percent of the big tax package—40 percent of the value—to the top 10 percent of earners, and the bottom 20 percent got just 2 percent and that was swallowed up in a GST increase. If people remember back, those tax cuts are tax cuts that ordinary New Zealanders are still paying for—in cuts to health services, cuts to education, and cuts to roading. This is the Government that continues to ask ordinary New Zealanders to cut their budgets while it shovels tax cuts at the wealthiest New Zealanders, the wealthiest few.

This is a consistent message from this Government, because it is trying to get to that surplus. It is asking small businesses to pay more in ACC when it has had recommendations from Treasury, from independent reports, and from ACC itself saying that ACC is well overfunded. But, no, it is still asking businesses to pay $350 million more than they need to, and that is assuming a very conservative buffer. That is costing jobs for ordinary New Zealanders.

This Government is not supporting business—it is not supporting small business—and we have seen that in the red tape throughout its time, as it has expected employers, with the paper boy tax, to collect additional data, and as we have seen it expect employers to deal with child support payments that they did not have to deal with before. The Government keeps loading the regulatory red tape on small businesses. It loads the ACC charges on small businesses. It expects ordinary New Zealanders who are struggling to get ahead to keep paying over and over and over again, so that it can try to get closer to that surplus, whilst it is giving huge tax cuts to the very top 1 or 2 percent of New Zealanders. That is what we will hear again in this Budget. We will hear: “Tighten your belts again, please, middle New Zealand. We’ve got some expensive tax cuts for the wealthiest New Zealanders to pay, and we’re going to cut your services again.” That is what New Zealanders are hearing.

We know, at the same time, that the money is going to those wealthiest few. We know the list of those corporate welfare deals that this Government has had. We have heard about the Cabinet club. We have heard about John Key going to dinner with Donghua Liu. We know that this is a Government that has a special access agreement for wealthy donors.

We know that this is a Government that is not being straight with New Zealanders. We know that with the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) the Prime Minister was not sure who the new agency head was. It turns out it was his mate’s brother. We heard that he was not sure whether he had been in touch with him. Then we heard that he had rung him up about the GCSB. So this is a Government that is not being straight. With the Iraq thing—being part of the club—the Government was for once caught out telling the truth.

This Government is always looking out for its wealthy mates. We saw the endorsements around Oravida. We saw Judith Collins over there, donkey-deep in it. We see housing where speculators in the Auckland market are being looked after while this Government does nothing to fix the problem for ordinary New Zealanders. Houses have been going up $1,000 a week in Auckland. That is for big speculators—$1,000 a week they are earning on every home they own. How much would every Aucklander like to earn $1,000 more a week, especially those who cannot afford houses right now? This is a Government that is looking after the wealthy and not looking after the interests of middle New Zealand. We know about corporate welfare for Rio Tinto, we know about corporate welfare for Chorus, and my, my, do we know about corporate welfare for Skycity.

This Government is a Government that has had many MPs fall from grace, and that list is getting longer. We had Pansy Wong, Richard Worth, Phil Heatley, Mr Williamson, Mr Collins, Mr Gilmore, Ms Hauiti, Mr Sabin—the list goes on. There will be more before this term is out. This is an arrogant Government that is out of touch with ordinary New Zealanders and that is committed to helping the wealthiest few at the top.

That is not even mentioning the teapot tapes and the other dishonesty that we have seen, or the Primary Growth Partnerships, where the money is being shovelled, with no measures of success, at National Party donors. These are the kinds of moves we have seen from a Government that is determined to look after its mates at the expense of ordinary New Zealanders, who, in this Budget, will again be asked to tighten their belts: “Please tighten your belts, ordinary New Zealanders.”

This Government has got some corporate welfare on the way. It is trying to get to that surplus, and hard-working New Zealanders and small businesses will be asked to pay too much again in ACC levies as the Government tries to get to its first surplus. Let us think about this ACC charge—the $350 million too much that is hurting our economy. It has been estimated in an independent report that that $350 million a year will cost 700 jobs in New Zealand. We have heard about it from ACC and we have heard about it from Treasury.

The Skycity deal—I would like to say a little bit more about that. It is an example of this kind of corporate cronyism that we have seen right through, from start to finish. John Key is up to his eyeballs in this deal. He kicked it off with a dinner with Skycity executives, saying that the dinner—he himself said: “we discussed a possible national convention centre and they raised issues related to the Gambling Act”. And that is where we got those pokie machines. He told his officials to cancel their business case study and close off the Skycity option. His Ministers and officials repeatedly met with Skycity while holding off other tenderers. No one but Skycity was ever going to secure this deal.

Then the Auditor-General, of course, in her hard-hitting report, said that this process was flawed and neither transparent nor even-handed. This was a deal that was rotten from the start—and built into that deal, right from the start, to get it off the political agenda, it was done quickly. It was a dirty deal done quickly, with provisions that enabled the Government to later say: “We can hand over more cash to Skycity.” Well, the Labour Party launched a petition and the National Party backed off on giving extra money to Skycity. But now the Government is still looking out for Skycity’s bottom line. It is now determined to cut the quality of the convention centre to preserve Skycity’s bottom line. Ordinary New Zealanders are being asked to tighten their belts in the meantime, whilst the Government is delivering a convention centre that is below what was agreed in the initial deal.

In the whole of the election year the National Party had the audacity to get up and say that this was going to be a free convention centre. The original report into the convention centre, written by an independent reporter and still on the Ministry of Economic Development website, says that it was going to create a net 18 jobs for the New Zealand economy—a net 18 jobs. That was when it was an iconic structure, attracting international business. Why only 18 jobs for the New Zealand economy? Because the convention centre is stealing them off Hamilton, Rotorua, and Taupō. That is what the independent analysis found. That is why Mr Bennett is over there quaking in his seat. He knows that Hamilton jobs are going to go up to Auckland as part of having a new, flash convention centre in Auckland. The business will be taken out of the regions to Auckland, and it is sponsored by the taxpayer.

So that is the Government approach. It is allowing Skycity to cut the quality of the convention centre to compete domestically with other players. That is not why the Government gets involved in these things. The Government is involved in these things, or should be, to create international business that brings new people to New Zealand—not just to take them off Mr Bennett in Hamilton, off his constituents, and make them poorer. But that is what we see here.

The Government has put itself over a barrel here. We know that it is so committed to corporate welfare that it finds itself in these positions, defending the bottom line for Skycity. That sums up this Government’s contribution. It has not achieved its goals and it is not achieving its goals. It is failing to reach surplus again, for the seventh time in a row—seven Budgets, seven failures to reach surplus. The Labour Government had nine Budgets and nine surpluses. Let us not forget that track record.

This Government is determined to carry on with its corporate welfare, with its gerrymandering, its “john-mandering”, and its “joyce-mandering”. It is still borrowing a million dollars every hour of every day to afford its corporate promises, and it will ask you, New Zealanders, to tighten your belts again. I say, be warned.

That was an embarrassment. That member, David Clark—supposedly the great economic hope for the Labour Party—just gave a Budget Policy Statement speech going over everything that is unrelated to the Budget. What Labour wants to run is its stock-standard attack lines, which are meaningless, and which New Zealanders do not agree with. If that is what a PhD stands for in the Labour Party, I do not have great hope for the next Labour Government in about 10 years’ time.

When one listens to the Deputy Prime Minister—the Minister of Finance—giving a speech on the Budget Policy Statement, and also when one listens to him in the Finance and Expenditure Committee, the public can see that this economy is in good shape. It is in safe hands. It is in the hands of a Minister of Finance and a Prime Minister who are helping to grow this economy, who are helping to get more jobs for New Zealanders. They are ensuring that there are more people able to put food on the table at home, able to get their kids better educated, able to support their families when they need it. I am proud of the fact that we have a Minister of Finance of the calibre of the Hon Bill English.

The speeches from the other side of the House, so far, are proving that those members just are not fit to govern, are not fit to hold the Treasury benches and deliver a Budget Policy Statement of their own.

💬 Dr David Clark: How many surpluses?

When Mr David Clark—doctor, sorry. Dr David Clark—I do not believe it. I find it hard to believe he is a doctor. But when Dr David Clark was giving his speech earlier, he had this interesting conundrum. He was talking about his view that, supposedly, the Government cut services, but at the same time he yapped on and on in this House about the Government borrowing money. Which is it? You cannot have it both ways. The fact of the matter is that when the Labour Government was going out of office, this economy had already gone into recession before National took the Treasury benches. The only reason this Government had to borrow more was to maintain important services for New Zealand after the Labour Government allowed the economy to go into recession. If Labour members want to stand in this House and want to talk about borrowing, then they should start to look at themselves in the mirror, because they let the economy go into recession before we came into Government.

They also want to talk a lot about ACC at the moment. Let us put some facts back on the table. When the Labour Government left office, it left a $4.8 billion shortfall in the ACC accounts. This Government had to clean up their mess. This Government had to step in and take action. But if the argument from the Labour Party is that the Government should always listen to the advice from the ACC board about what to do with levies, let us look at what would have been the case in 2010. In 2010 the Government increased the earners levy by 30c. If we had listened to the Labour Party and taken the advice of the ACC board, which recommended a $1.10 increase in the earners levy, then New Zealanders would have faced an earners levy increase almost four times what this Government actually increased it by.

When it comes to the motor vehicle levy, which we had to increase by $47, if we followed the Labour Party’s advice, which is to always listen to the ACC board, we would have been putting it up by $100—more than double what it actually went up by. If we had listened to what the Labour Party wanted on ACC after it left a big black hole in those accounts, then New Zealanders would have seen huge costs mounting up alongside them. That would have been unacceptable. So I do not believe the Labour Party has any credibility when it comes to ACC. It should stop preaching about that.

This Budget Policy Statement follows on from a number of Budget Policy Statements and a number of Budgets delivered by this Government that are leading to high growth, more jobs, and better health and education services for New Zealanders. I think New Zealanders look at Governments and ask how they are going to help to create economic settings to create more jobs in the economy. We are delivering economic settings that lead to more jobs. We are delivering more jobs in the economy.

Northland happens to be a topic of conversation right now in this Parliament and around the country. Well, 7,500 New Zealanders in Northland right now have gained jobs in the last year. Jobs are an issue that we are happy to talk about at any time, because in New Zealand more people are employed—7,500 more employed in Northland. When the statistics department sent out the press releases about growth in regions, earlier today, Northland was one of the stand-out examples of growth taking place in the regions. There was 7.8 percent growth in Northland in the last year. When the Labour Party gets up and talks about Northland going backwards and when the new lapdog for the Labour Party, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, gets up and talks about Northland going backwards, they are absolutely wrong. It is one of the fastest-growing regions in the country. We are proud of that. We are proud of the fact that we are able to talk about that story in the by-election that is coming forward. The economy has improved a huge amount, and New Zealanders are seeing the benefits of that.

I also want to talk about transport briefly, as we consider the Budget Policy Statement and how this Government spends money on behalf of New Zealanders. Transport is such a vital aspect of what the Government can do to provide better infrastructure for New Zealanders. We are proud of the fact that up in Northland the Pūhoi to Wellsford roading project, a vital link for Northland, is going to be going ahead under our watch. Just yesterday we announced further funding, for example, for the Waikato Expressway. An extra $1 million is going towards that project.

I am an Auckland MP. I am proud of the fact that we are working to accelerate about $10 billion worth of projects in the Budget for Auckland. Those vital transport links help to create jobs. They help business to move goods and services, they help employees get to work, and they help everyday New Zealanders. On the transport matter, and particularly when we are talking about Auckland, as a local MP I just want to make a point with regard to transport projects in Auckland. The Auckland-Manukau Eastern Transport Initiative is an initiative that the Prime Minister outlined in a speech he made a couple of years ago about transport priorities as the No. 2 project that the Government is working on in Auckland. We are working to put together a package that will allow us to assist the Auckland Council to speed up the construction of that project. Right now the Auckland Transport Agency is looking to make some devastating changes to that project. As local MPs I, Maurice Williamson, and other MPs who would see their electorates benefit from that project will be working hard to fight against what the Auckland Transport Agency and the Auckland Council are doing on that. As a priority for Auckland and a priority for this Government, transport is right up there, and we are proud of that fact.

I know that the Labour Party members do not like listening to speeches on the Budget Policy Statement in this House after it has been delivered by our Minister of Finance and our Government. That is because they do not have a record that stacks up to scrutiny when it comes to their promises. Let us just remember every time they talk about debt, every time they talk about deficits, that the Labour Party promised $28 billion of extra spending under any Budget it delivered. [Interruption] Mr Parker, who is squawking at the moment, was the finance spokesperson for—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!

Well, he is.

💬 Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I want to check that on the basis of that response to my interjections, my earlier interjections will be recorded, as they ought to be, in Hansard. Could you please rule on that, Mr Assistant Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): If it is the normal practice for interjections like that to cause the recording of the comments, they will be recorded. It was clear that there was an out-of-order response from Jamie-Lee Ross.

I apologise if I have hurt someone’s feelings. In terms of the interjections from Mr Parker, who is going on at the moment and has been going on about debt, as have other members of the Labour Party, when they come to talking about debt they should think about the extra spending they were promising at the last election of $28 billion, combined with the Green Party and New Zealand First left-wing block—[Interruption] Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

No, your time has expired.

Memorable Budgets? Honestly, there are not that many. Labour has sometimes created significant and politically enduring solutions to address the major challenges that we face as a nation. Budget 2001 was memorable for the creation of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund to address the long-term need to pre-fund this looming public superannuation bill that we face as a nation as our population ages and as our baby boomers start retiring. Budget 2006 was memorable for the creation of KiwiSaver, another politically enduring solution to help address the country’s saving crisis. Working for Families, which was announced in Budget 2004, stopped the rapid rise of inequality that New Zealand experienced after the National Government, but it did not actually fix the dire rates of child poverty that were created by National in the early years.

This National Government is still yet to pass a truly memorable Budget. For a memorable National Budget you would really have to go back to Ruth Richardson’s “mother of all Budgets” in 1991, but, of course, that was memorable for all the wrong reasons. Similarly noteworthy for all the wrong reasons was National’s tax cut package in 2010—we got the completely revised history of that from the speaker just before me, Jami-Lee Ross—which delivered tax cuts to the rich in the midst of a deep recession. Unlike KiwiSaver and the Superannuation Fund, those short-term tax cuts simply will not endure past the next change of Government.

A memorable Budget for National would be one that puts at the front and centre solutions to the biggest challenges we are facing today, and those are climate change and inequality. A memorable Budget for National would show the courage to believe that we can live better and fairer, and free from the fear of each other and the threat of climate change, which will turn our livelihoods upside down if we do not change direction.

Budgets lie at the heart of why all MPs are here. We are elected to help address the very big issues that we all face, the ones that we do not have the resources to address on our own. We are elected in good faith to strive to work across political lines to find these enduring political solutions that will last long after we each leave this place. On principle, we are elected here to protect the weak from the strong, to protect those without the resources to protect themselves.

So what are the big issues of our time that we must address as elected representatives? There are many challenges that we face, like creating good jobs that pay decent wages; like building warm, affordable housing; like providing the best education for our kids, and even better health care; like cleaning up our polluted rivers and freeing our cities from congestion and air pollution; and like protecting the species we love such as kiwi, kōkako, Māui’s dophin, and kauri from imminent and irreversible loss. But I say that climate change and inequality are the two issues that stand above all these and are contained by them.

Climate change and persistent inequality are the two issues that genuinely threaten to tear at the very fabric of our community. We can and we must spend money on measures to turn round the risk of predation that kiwi face on the mainland. But what is it for if the entire ecosystem on which they depend is destroyed by catastrophic climate change? Private companies, as we see, can provide temporary charity relief by funding milk in schools, but what for if we never address the long-term legacy of what it means to grow up in poverty? Educational underachievement, poor health, poor job prospects, the likelihood of time spent in prison, and an early death are the consequences of poverty. That early death is indeed a consequence of long-term poverty in this country.

National has continued to downplay these issues. It has been slow to serve the wider interests of all New Zealanders but very quick to serve the interests of those who keep them in power. Just 48 hours after the last election John Key sat down with John Campbell on the telly and told us that he wanted to lead a Government that would govern for all New Zealanders. He went on to say he wanted “to leave the country in better shape than I found it.”, and that “Just passing everything by the barest of majorities isn’t the right way to govern a country, and I certainly don’t think it will deliver a potential fourth term in Government.”

In that spirit of non-partisan sentiment, I would like to invite National to consider working across the party lines to deliver at least one truly memorable Budget this term. We can help National to deliver on its promise of future tax cuts to lower and middle income families with a Budget that helps address rising inequality, while securing our future long-term economic prosperity, by protecting the environment from which all of our country’s wealth derives. We can help the Government. Yes, we can.

We can help the Government deliver its programme of lower and middle income tax savings and lower debt by passing a carbon tax. A carbon tax can turn our climate crisis into an opportunity. A carbon tax can form the heart of a plan to protect our climate and leave New Zealand families better off. A carbon tax can ensure that New Zealand shows leadership on climate change and delivers prosperity along the way. In the run-up to the last election the Green Party announced a modest tax on carbon pollution, recycling all of the revenue raised from this carbon tax back to families and to business through a $2,000 income tax - free band and a 1 percent company tax rate cut. There was no hysteria following the launch of our policy, except, of course, a little bit in this House from this side over here. This is because a tax is now widely considered to be smart, reasonable, and non-partisan; a way to address climate change by putting an effective price on carbon. It makes sense to everyone to make polluters pay.

This was the promise of the emissions trading scheme, but the emissions trading scheme has not delivered. The emissions trading scheme is a tool that is neither transparent nor just. Practically speaking, it has not delivered the kinds of reductions in carbon emissions that we all know we need to make in order to make our climate safe. Emissions have gone up in New Zealand since the emissions trading scheme came into force, not down as was promised. Carbon polluters are not paying the true cost of the damage they are doing to our environment. Independent economists at Business and Economic Research Ltd analysed our proposal for a carbon tax and concluded that New Zealand families would be better off as a result of our proposed tax changes.

The Greens do not have the resources of the Government to deliver the best form of carbon tax possible, but we are willing to work with National and with other political parties to make this happen. We currently live in a world where the Government is subsidising the world’s biggest polluters—oil, gas, and coal companies—to look for more fossil fuels, while our kids go hungry to school, then go home to crowded, damp homes, and get sick more often than they should and suffer serious illness as a result. Subsidising the pollution that is fuelling runaway climate change is not a smart way to run our economy or to secure our future prosperity. Similarly, doing nothing about rising inequality is neither smart nor just.

We can have a country where polluters pay and where our children thrive. A carbon tax is a win-win plan to protect the climate and benefit New Zealand families. We can futureproof our economy as we transition to a low carbon economy by building a significant tax cut for businesses into our plan. This is our hope and our vision for this Budget and for subsequent Budgets this term. We are very optimistic, as you know, and we are certainly ready to play our part in realising this vision, and we are seeking genuine cross-party work on a true vision for this country. Thank you.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to speak on the Budget Policy Statement 2015 on behalf of New Zealand First. There have been some interesting comments made around what is in this Budget and what is not in this Budget. Earlier, in the contribution by Mr Bennett, there was a comment made around a statement attributed to New Zealand First and to the Rt Hon Winston Peters around spending on a particular road of national significance. I would like to remind people that there are seven roads of national significance—not just one; seven—on which the Rt Hon Winston Peters was addressing his statements.

Now I would like to move on to the one road of national significance that is of a great deal of importance and the one road of national significance mentioned by Mr Bennett—that would be the Pūhoi to Wellsford road of national significance. I would like to direct Mr Bennett to my maiden speech on 8 February 2012 and the advocacy I gave there to remind the National Party MP for Rodney of his commitment to advocate for the continuation of that project. But not just that project—inside any Budget then or now—for the retention of access at Pūhoi, upon which he has remained silent. The people of Pūhoi had to themselves fight with Auckland Transport and with the New Zealand Transport Agency to make sure they would still be able to get to their homes off the end of the Northern Gateway.

I would direct Mr Bennett to my social media page, once I get to leave this House after the series of debates we are going to have, where I will put up the number of speeches I have made in this House taking to task any member of this House who calls that road a “Holiday Highway”. I live in that area. I know the importance of that area and this road to it, and so does New Zealand First. New Zealand First is highly aware that under previous Budgets and Budgets now, Warkworth is going to be a satellite town of Auckland. In the next 20 years it is expected to go from 10,000 dwellings to 30,000 dwellings—and the infrastructure that is required there to cater for it as a satellite town of Auckland.

We also know, however, and the reason why the review is mentioned is that not only were there seven roads of national significance but the other thing that is interesting and that is not mentioned inside any of these Budget documents is the fact that the people of Pūhoi and Warkworth and Snells Beach and Algies Bay and Kaipara pay a toll on the current Northern Gateway motorway. They will pay a toll under the projected project of the Pūhoi to Wellsford road. Yet, at the same time, Mr Jami-Lee Ross stands up in this Budget Policy Statement debate and says he will advocate and ask his Government to block Auckland Transport and the ability of Auckland Transport to make its own decisions around its own spending for all the areas of Auckland, of which Warkworth is one, of which Pūhoi is one, and of which Wellsford and Te Hana are some. He will block them to bring back that investment under any Budget—bring back that investment and centre it on the city. Therein lies the interesting thing.

I would direct anybody who would like to see the truth of statements made by New Zealand First to page 97 of our manifesto, where we guarantee the farmers who are in Auckland, we guarantee the farmers who are in Northland, and we guarantee the farmers throughout the whole of New Zealand that unlike the Budget cuts that have been made to road subsidies or the reallocation of Budgets that have been made to road subsidies for rural areas, we will make sure that every rural member, every farmer, and every producer inside those rural areas can get their produce to an appropriate form of transport on a road that has been well maintained. Page 97 has been there since prior to 2014. So I would direct Mr Bennett, if he would like to actually educate himself instead of taking a researcher’s note and then deciding he knows what he is talking about, to go and read the document.

That is the first thing. I would also like to talk about some of the other areas of this statement. I mean, it is very interesting inside the Budget Policy Statement report here, that there is to be a reduction in spending from Budget 2015 by half a billion dollars. I think it is interesting with the announcement of $68 million worth of spending around transport. Where will there be cuts for this half a billion dollar saving? Where will that come from? Will it be another situation where Hill Street was placed on the backburner because no member of the National Government has the decency to go up there and actually sit down and talk to the people of Warkworth who have been advocating year upon year upon year—for decades—for that intersection to be amended? Colin Greenslade, I acknowledge you.

Is that where these cuts are going to come from? Is the Hill Street intersection once again going to be delayed because this Government has promised $68 million on bridges, eight of which nobody actually identified prior to last week? Is that what is going to affect the people of Northland? Is that what is going to affect the people of Wellsford and Te Hana, which sit in the Northland electorate? There were some other interesting comments. The Finance and Expenditure Committee heard that special housing areas are picking up speed, and developers are getting the message that they need to act soon and start building houses. An interesting statement—an interesting statement. And, of course, it is the silver bullet for housing affordability, apparently, although the phrasing has changed now.

It is no longer “affordable housing”. It is being referred to by the Minister in this document as “low-value housing”. What does that change? Where has that change come from? It is supposed to be affordable, but now it has become low value. It starts to imply a lesser quality of house. Is that what we are aiming for? It starts to imply these things. Is that what we are aiming for? We found that a very interesting comment in the report.

One of the things that we would be interested to know if it was recorded here at all—and the questioning to the Minister did not uncover it—is about land banking. We are aware of land banking taking place. These special housing accord areas for Auckland have been clearly identified—the first, second, and third tranche actually have been identified and commented on. What we know is that there is land banking going on in some of those areas. So although that unitary plan has not been secured, large tracts of that land are being bought up and set aside. We would like to know what the Government intends to do about that and we would make the suggestion that it has some conversation about penalties if, after a certain period of time, these special housing accord areas are not built on, because once the city comes to its maximum yet again, housing prices will continue to rise.

There were a couple of other interesting pieces in here like the conversation around foreign investment that is actually recorded in the statement. So it was suggested by the Opposition members of the select committee, and it is recorded here in the select committee report, that there be a cross-party audit of foreign investment in New Zealand over the decade. It says: “Some of us propose a cross-party audit of foreign investment in New Zealand over the decade since the Overseas Investment Act came into force.” The Minister did not think it was necessary—not necessary, does not care, do not worry, never mind. That is what we are hearing about foreign investment and foreign ownership from this Government. Our question would be why the Minister made the statement that the Minister does not feel that it is necessary. There was an offer here for a cross-party audit. If there is no concern about what the Overseas Investment Office is doing, if there is no concern about how that Act is actually being applied, then there is no harm in doing a review. It has been over a decade since it has been in place. We review legislation consistently to make sure that it is timely, that it is up to date, that it deals with different things in the House.

Why is this Government so frightened of actually partaking in a cross-party audit? If you want to, make it independent then. What is the problem? What is so scary for the National Government that it does not want to review that piece of legislation? Before I finish my contribution, I think it is worthy of note that our Crown debt is now $59.9 billion. It is worthy to note that it has doubled since 2010. This Government talks again and again and again about it being somebody else’s fault—it is circumstance’s fault or it is the fault of Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain; or it is Greece’s fault or Spain’s fault or somebody else’s fault. But, at the end of the day, it is the Government’s watch. At the end of the day this is its debt, its watch. But the New Zealand taxpayer ends up having to pay for it over time. So although there is a hope and a prayer that we get into surplus, there is nothing in here that gives New Zealand First confidence that this Government actually knows what it is doing.

Thank you for the opportunity to talk on this Budget Policy Statement 2015. It is quite an advantage speaking at this point, I think, because you have the advantage of listening to others and being able to reflect on some of those points that were made.

I was interested to hear Mr Robertson speak earlier of our complacency, apparently, on this side of the House, and lacking ideas. But then, a couple of breaths later, he was talking about him and his team beginning to plan and develop their own policies, as if they did not have any in the first place. I have seen in the newspaper what their policies are as they develop—some of them being Māori sovereignty, which some of them do not agree with; some of them being to support Winston Peters, when others disagree with that. So there is an advantage in speaking later—and xenophobic comments made from the New Zealand First members, but I will come back to that fairly shortly.

💬 Tracey Martin: Oh, come on—name it. Name the xenophobic comment. Name it. Go on.

Your register of—Tracey, let me respond.

💬 Tracey Martin: A register of foreign investment, and that’s xenophobic.

There is a bit of a health and safety issue going on here—I have got a high-pitched noise in my ear.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I think there are—I know there are—rules about constant interjection, but I think if the member complains about high-pitched noises he should note that it is coming both from that side and from his left, Ms Barry.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. For me this whole Budget is around confidence—confidence in the economy. If we do not have confidence, we have nothing. I would like to refer you to a recent ANZ Business Outlook study that says 34 percent of firms are optimistic about the general economy. That is up from 30 percent.

Why do we have confidence? Because we have the correct policies and the correct structure in place. We have policies that are about lowering personal tax rates. Interest rates are lower for longer. That has created, as a result, 80,000 new jobs. When you have got 80,000 new jobs being created it is like a spinning wheel that starts spinning—small businesses gain further confidence to employ more people. And that is what is happening, because unemployment, we know, is falling. It has fallen from 5.7 percent. It is due to fall to 4.5 percent.

I will give you an example in my electorate of Wairarapa. In the forestry industry we have got contractors looking for workers—looking for workers. They cannot find them. I have got a guy who works for Forest Enterprises Ltd—he contracts to it. He wants to bring in more immigrant workers because there are no available skilled workers in the economy.

💬 Hon David Parker: That’s called a market.

Why? Because there is demand. There is demand for labour. That is called a market. That eventually drives wages up and eventually this guy is going to start—

💬 Hon David Parker: So why don’t you let the market work?

That is the way it works. That is what drives unemployment down. So this confidence has enabled this guy to look for more employees. He is charging the contractors—the guys who are paying him—more to do the work. The whole community is better off as a result of him having confidence in the economy.

One of the other things that is supporting the rural economy is the ultra-fast broadband roll-out. That continues to roll out. As we know, 75 percent of the population is being targeted to receive ultra-fast broadband. I am pleased to say that Dannevirke and Carterton are two targeted towns in my electorate that will soon receive ultra-fast broadband, Masterton having already received it.

Confidence is going to be the key in my short address. In the recent 5-year MYOB Business Monitor report New Zealand’s small and medium sized businesses are showing the highest revenue growth in more than 5 years—again, confidence.

What else has been demonstrated? We are seeing people coming back. We are seeing people coming back from Australia. We are seeing fewer New Zealanders leaving to go to Australia. So in the 4-year period ending in 2008 almost 110,000 people, net, left to go to Australia. That is a lot of people. That is three Westpac Stadiums, approximately, queuing up to take the opportunity to better themselves in Australia. In the 2014 calendar year there was a handful. There were 8,000—a mere 8,000 people did the same trip. That is because there is confidence in the economy, there is real hope, and there is real aspiration amongst our communities, whether they are in Auckland or Christchurch or whether they are in Masterton, Carterton, or Waipukurau.

Let us talk about Waipukurau. Waipukurau is feeling good because, with any sort of luck, given the Resource Management Act, it will be building, with the help of a $400 million fund, an irrigation project. Again, that brings confidence. People are already training up. They are getting their heavy truck driver’s licences and getting trained to take part in that expansion. There will be 30,000-odd hectares of land that will increase in productivity. That creates jobs. It enables seeds, potatoes, sheep, and beef to be grown and then processed in the nearby towns of Hastings and Napier, and exported, to contribute to the growing export dollar value that is taking place right here, right now.

What does not help is the xenophobic policies espoused by New Zealand First. Tracey Martin demonstrated that earlier by asking specifically what xenophobic policies New Zealand First had. The register is just that. The register of foreign owners is absolutely xenophobic. I will tell you the problem. I will give you an example. What happens when anyone from overseas buys shares that I own, perhaps, on the New Zealand Exchange? Let us say I own 100 shares and I sell them to a foreigner, and I go with that money and buy my house in Auckland. Am I going to be registered as a foreign owner of a house in Auckland? So you can see the complication and the regulatory layers that this party is willing to impose on the New Zealand public. It does not make any sense at all.

Another example of confidence is that the labour market statistics show the number of self-employed businesses grew by nearly 35,000 in the last calendar year. We have got 3.5 percent growth, and that only gives more confidence to more people to get involved in this economy. What puts people off is further bureaucracy. We have got the Rules Reduction Taskforce running around New Zealand at the moment, talking to communities, and councils in particular, looking for ideas on how to reduce compliance and bureaucracy.

The Inland Revenue Department today said in the Finance and Expenditure Committee that it is also going out to communities and surveying and communicating with those people, asking them for ideas on how to reduce compliance issues around tax. An example given was if you pay GST, and you have got a nil GST return, now you can do a couple of clicks and you are done. Those sorts of simple and ease-of-use projects across the Rules Reduction Taskforce and the Inland Revenue Department can only allow more people to work and focus on their business.

This Government is certainly focusing on ways to make it easy for small businesses to do business. What would make it really, really tricky for small businesses is a capital gains tax, which I am not sure is still Labour policy. I am not sure whether they have decided it is. But we will hear in due course. Thank you for the opportunity.

Jan Logie—it is a 5-minute call.

I rise to take a call on this Budget Policy Statement. I want today to speak about a country of two halves and a Government that seems to be speaking and listening to only one half. This is a Government that is masquerading as competent. Treasury’s announcement today that a deficit is likely for the 2014-15 financial year shows that the Government is failing to meet its key economic target, which it set itself. National has always emphasised, and it is in this Budget Policy Statement, that achieving a surplus is its No. 1 goal. But it looks like it will fail to achieve that goal, and instead we will have a $572 million deficit this financial year.

We are now seeing evidence that the Government is massaging the books in an attempt to return to surplus. It seems to have forgotten that the core purpose of Government is to do the best for all New Zealanders. Treasury documents released to the Green Party today under the Official Information Act suggest options for reducing or delaying spending, to help achieve a Budget surplus. These include keeping ACC levies artificially high, delaying Treaty of Waitangi settlements, slowing down the Christchurch rebuild, delaying overseas development assistance spending, slowing down the Justice Sector Fund and the Better Public Services programme, and delaying Ministry of Social Development spending. Again, we have evidence that this Government is, at the very least, considering sacrificing equality, justice, and fairness, for the sake of public relations, for the sake of achieving a surplus, and for the sake of reaching its No. 1 goal. That is too bad for the well-being of the entire country, or at least half the country.

I know some people, though, who still believe that the Government is doing the best it can with its limited resources, and that sometimes it just has to make tough calls. I do not get this perspective; I really struggle to understand it. It seems to me that that analysis forgets the tax cuts that cost us collectively over a billion dollars a year. It misses out on the ongoing refusal of this Government to even consider a capital gains tax as a way of addressing our housing crisis and increasing revenue, and the absolute refusal to consider a carbon tax, which again would help us to achieve our climate change goals and bring in revenue. It certainly forgets this Government’s ability to conjure up millions at short notice for Northland, and it misses the extraordinary $163 million budget overrun for implementing well-critiqued child support reforms in the Government’s last term. It misses the money lost to New Zealand from the Skycity debacle, and all the other times the Government has chosen to step in and help its mates on its side of the net while spending billions on sending people to Iraq as membership of a club.

The independent analysis of the Government’s books last year found that, on the counter side of that—what it is wasting money on—the Government is actually cutting money from the health, education, and environment sectors, to the tune of $3.837 billion over 3 years. The Government is forgetting its purpose, which is to serve everybody in this country, and it is serving a small group.

I want to bring this House’s attention to the fact that in New York this week, a New Zealand Minister stood up in front of the United Nations and said: “I reaffirm New Zealand’s strong commitment to the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women …”, although the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has refused to take action on closing the gender pay gap. We have been told by this Government that, basically, we should be satisfied with a 120-year wait for gender equality. That is not good enough. It is not serving all of this country.

Kia ora, e te Mana Whakawā. Nei rā te mihi atu ki a koe me te Whare. Last week I was in Christchurch where, in fact, just about the whole of Māoridom was, and I witnessed the power and the magnificence that is being Māori in the week of Te Matatini. Why is that so magnificent? Well, it is because there at Te Matatini all of the issues pertinent to the day are spoken about in haka and in waiata. In fact, our very own Prime Minister was the subject of many haka throughout that week. If you had the opportunity to watch Te Matatini you would have seen the issues pertaining to Māori articulated in beautiful song and beautiful waiata-ā-ringa. In fact, I think that all of the politicians of the day should spend time at Te Matatini to hear the voice of Māoridom.

We are not the only ones who speak with an independent voice on behalf of Māori. Māori speak for themselves, and we are very proud to support Māori self-determination and their aspirations. We have worked with the National Government in the relationship accord that we have, and it is actually quite a remarkable agreement. We are grateful for the opportunity to work with a Government that understands the need to ensure that the Māori voice is heard and that the aspirations of our people are upheld and included in things like the Budget. I would loudly and proudly crow about all of these things that we have been able to achieve with the National Government on the condition that we can have some more, thank you very much.

The Māori Party has pushed, and has been successful in addressing, a number of the issues that face Māori. One of those has been the establishment of the Ministerial Committee on Poverty, and through this committee we have been able to achieve a number of benefits for Māori and for the wider community. We have to remember that when we are able to achieve things for Māori, there is value added not just for our own people but for the whole of Aotearoa. We saw the need to support our whānau to be warm, healthy, and secure. Hence the investment in home insulation, reducing rheumatic fever, and a pilot programme of warrant of fitness testing on housing.

We have secured millions of dollars of direct investment in Māori communities, spread across a wide range of portfolios, targeting housing, employment, social development, education, disabilities, Māori language, social development, access to jobs through trade training cadetships, community development, and health, including securing funding for free GP visits and prescriptions. Despite what some parties may think, they do not have a monopoly on intellectual property, and though they might have an idea, they can do nothing about it if they are sitting in Opposition. So we are grateful to have, again, a working accord with the National Government to achieve the things that we put out on the table.

We have extended KickStart Breakfast to bring food into schools—into every school in the country if they ask for it. We have introduced the Māori history in schools. We have advocated for the recognition of cultural significance and, of course, the unique and life-changing approach that many of us know as Whānau Ora. We have seen how Whānau Ora has transformed lives. I have listened to young men talk about the transformation that they have had in their lives through Whānau Ora, through the opportunity to plan, to gain the dreams and visions that they have, and to build closer connectedness with their whānau. Whānau Ora changes lives.

We want to do more, though. We want to do more to work with iwi to see mana whenua being able to thrive and lift their economic potential in order to address disparities. We realise that some of the things we support might not be things you expect. For instance, we support the schooling initiative of kura hourua, with my good friend over here, Rāwiri, because we need to ensure that Māori have the potential and have the aspirations of educational achievement.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Whole names.

Oh, Mr Rāwiri Seymour, of the ACT Party—whole names.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Thank you.

We want to ensure that there is a choice for Māori, who have been underserved in our country to date. Therefore, we would like to support the Budget and we want to ensure that we continue to have gains in the coming year.

I understand it is the intention of the Hon Judith Collins to share her time with Mr Seymour. Therefore, there will be a 5-minute speech.

That is so appropriate because, according to Mrs Annette King, Mr Seymour and I are in discussions to do some sort of ACT Party thing, but it is not true. Anyway, keep it going, Mrs King. Mr Seymour is, I think, an outstanding member of Parliament and Epsom is very lucky to have him. As I have said to many people in the Epsom electorate, many of whom I know very well, they are so lucky to have such an outstanding member.

Look, it is such a privilege to be here in paradise, is it not? Just another day in paradise, in the best little country in the world. I wish everyone was as happy as me about it all. Obviously Mrs Fox, who has just resumed her seat, is happy about what she has been able to achieve so far, and she has not even been here that long, so I think that she is going to be achieving a lot over the years. What a difference from the Green member. Oh, misery—for goodness’ sake! Be grateful. This is New Zealand, one of the most wonderful countries, the country where—by the way, you know, talking about women’s rights in New Zealand, you were absolutely dead right, except tell me of one country in the world where women are better off. Go on, tell me. Go on, tell me of one. Australia? Yes, that is great—fantastic. All is going well.

But what I would say is that one of the best things for anybody in New Zealand is for people to be working—lots of people working. People with choices in their jobs, people getting educated, people who can look at their work, with the joy that I look at my work every day, and say: “Another day to have so much fun.” Is that not wonderful? That is what they need to do.

So we have got 80,000 more people employed in New Zealand—in paid work, in other words—than we had 1 year ago. How good is that? And it is not all down to the excellent work of ACC, although I have to say that that has got a lot to do with a lot of things. It has a lot to do with the fact that this Government is focused on what actually matters—what matters for Kiwis. Then when we look at the growth in New Zealand, we have had 3.2 percent economic growth over the year to September, which puts us, our little country, right at the top of the world. That is fantastic.

Remember when we came into Government in 2008 and we had all those New Zealanders leaving for Australia? All those New Zealanders left and now, guess what? They are all coming back, and some of the Aussies are coming back too. And guess what? There is growth here; it is not so good there. Well, we love the Australians. It is really important to us for them to do well because they are either our first or our second-biggest trading partner, depending on which month of the year it is. Having said that, we do not want to lose all our talent there, and thankfully some of us stayed behind. But I would say that New Zealand is a country that is blessed. We are blessed with an excellent education system that works for most Kiwi kids—not all Kiwi kids, but most Kiwi kids. I do not think we do enough for kids with disabilities, but, you know, I think that many people have heard me speak on that before.

I also think that we have a great health system, where if you need help, you can get help, and are we not grateful for that? What a fantastic system. We have also got a system of law and order where I think we are so much further ahead than many other countries. New Zealand is the first country—and we are probably the only country in the world, actually—to have community policing to the extent that we have it. Nowhere else in the world do we have the sorts of levels of trust and confidence in the police that we have in New Zealand. We have a judiciary that is not corrupt, and that is a fantastic thing.

We have a Government that cares about the people, that actually looks to help even the people who do not vote for it, actually, and that does things that we should be doing for the betterment of New Zealand. We have an Opposition that holds us to account, and that is a good thing, although occasionally it would be nice if it were not holding us quite so closely to account, but it is a good thing. We have so much to be grateful for, and we have got a lot more to do. We have got new bridges that are going to be built in Northland, and I think that that is a good thing. If you go up to Northland, what do you do? There are one-lane bridges everywhere. It is a good thing that we are taking it seriously. And, actually, crime is down in Northland. I mean, these are good things for people, but we also need to look at resources and at what we are using them for. We have got gold in Northland, we have got oil in Northland, and we have got all sorts of minerals and we could be doing more there, too. We have got to do it in a sustainable way that does not hurt the environment, but we do need to do it for the people of Northland. We need to get the jobs like we have in Taranaki. We need to get those sorts of attributes into Northland. We need to get people working. That is what we need to do. We are doing well, but we can do even better over this next year, and I believe we will. So I am very happy to be able to take this call to celebrate what we have in New Zealand and also to look forward to how we could do even better.

A few weeks ago I attended a citizenship ceremony in Auckland. I could talk about all of the facts and figures of the Budget Policy Statement and about the projections for our economy, and all of them are very good, but the most sincere endorsement of where this country is headed I saw in 431 souls from 57 different countries who were making the ultimate endorsement of New Zealand by taking on New Zealand citizenship and throwing their lot in with the good ship Aotearoa.

It is amazing that one of the things that we hear the most complaint about from some people around the House is actually one of the most positive things we have going for us—that is, people voting with their feet and increasingly coming to New Zealand. This is the result of the terrible Rogernomics experiment of the last 30 years: more and more people want to come and live more and more prosperous lives in the most beautiful country on earth.

It has been interesting to see the debate around this Budget Policy Statement unfold because the Opposition members are really in a bind. They want to criticise the Government for certain things but those things are also exactly the things that they would do so much more of. Take, for example, the criticism we heard of child support legislation—or, at least, the implementation of it by the Inland Revenue Department. Of course, what they are not saying is that for every little bit of difficulty we have had introducing that law, it would have been infinitely more complex and difficult to have a tax-free threshold, to have a capital gains tax, to start having supermarkets dividing up their floor space to decide which parts were GST-claimable and which parts were not—all of which were promised by the Opposition during the election. Today they come and criticise the Inland Revenue Department for not implementing relatively simple child support legislation, but how much worse would it have been had they had their way at the election? Well, they did not.

Another example is watching the indignation of a certain member about Solid Energy. He can criticise and criticise Solid Energy and its performance as much as he likes, but he forgets that, as he does this, he indicts the very ownership model that his party defends and says it would like to expand—

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: No, just your incompetence—your Government’s incompetence.

The conceited answer from the member, who has identified himself now, is that there is nothing wrong with the policy or the model; it is just that it would work better if good people like him were running it. I believe that is a fatal conceit and the truth is that what is missing from this Budget Policy Statement—

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I seek leave to table a time line, which is not publicly available, detailing in excess of—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): The member will resume his seat. It is not appropriate to interrupt a member’s speech in order to seek to table a document.

The truth is that this Government should actually be going further in the opposite direction to the one he would advocate. There is never a right time to sell a business with an uncertain future and the best time to sell is at any time—actually now. This is not a business that the Government should be in and there are a number of other State-owned enterprise businesses that the Government should be getting out of. Opposition members all tell us about the revenue stream that the taxpayer gets from these assets but they never talk about the risk. Well, the Government should not be in the business of accepting the risks inherent in commercial enterprises.

Another thing that is missing, I am afraid to say, is actually tax reform. I had somebody come to see me in my electorate office just the other day and it brought home the practicalities of having a number of different punitive tax rates. Every year—we heard this morning—$750 million gets left on the table by people paying too much tax. And I found out this morning that about just $8 million of that is low-income people getting their cheques from the Auckland Energy Consumer Trust, withheld at the top rate when they should be paying a lower rate. If this Government really believes in success, really believes in meritocracy, and really believes in a practical and easily applied tax system, then what it should be doing is moving top tax rates that have minimal fiscal impact but send a message to every New Zealander that “Your efforts do not really make a difference and if they do, we are going to take, not just more money in proportion to what you earn, but more of it off you.”

What I will finally close with is to say that what is really missing from this Budget Policy Statement is not a forecast for this year or next, but where we will be in decades to come if we do not adjust our long-term settings for policies such as superannuation affected by demographic change. I look forward to talking to more and more members around the House about what exactly we can do about that. Thank you.

It is a pleasure to rise and speak in this Budget Policy Statement debate. Well, was that the first 10-minute speech we have seen from the “New ACT Party”? Was that history in the making? Judith Collins and David Seymour together—what a team! But I think that David Seymour—just a bit of advice here—might have to fight to take the first part of the call so that he can establish his right to be the leader, with Judith as his deputy. Or maybe it is the other way round; I am not so sure. But look, I think that works quite well. You should explore it. You should explore that, Mr Seymour, because I think the National Party would be ever grateful and probably so would Judith Collins.

But what I want to actually get back to is that Judith Collins at the moment is still speaking as a National MP and her theme was pretty clear: “New Zealanders, be grateful.”, she said. Your life might be rubbish. You might be having a hard time getting a job. You might be having a terrible time feeding the kids. Your housing costs are going through the roof and your wages are not keeping up, let alone your incomes if you are on any other form of Government assistance, but the message from the National Party is “be grateful”. That is what it expects the New Zealand public to be over its Budget Policy Statement.

Well, I can tell you—I can tell you, Mr Assistant Speaker; yes, you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and the rest of the House—who are not feeling very grateful and they are the businesses and the workers up and down this country, in every nook and cranny of this country, in every industry and every sector, who know now that they have been overcharged to the tune of $350 million a year in ACC levies. And why? Well, even the Prime Minister admitted it yesterday. It is because Cabinet, the National Cabinet, ignored the advice it had got from ACC, from Treasury, from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, from all of its own officials, and it has hiked the levy rates up higher so that it can get to Budget surplus in 2014-15, like it promised the New Zealand public. So workers and companies and organisations and the Public Service—all of those organisations—are paying for the election promise of John Key and Bill English. They are paying through the nose to prop up the illusion of a Budget surplus.

Here on the Labour benches we believe in Budget surpluses, and we know how to deliver them, because we did those for 9 years in a row. We delivered Budget surpluses but we did not do it through that sort of jiggery-pokery. What we did was we had economic growth.

💬 David Seymour: Ha, ha!

I know. They laugh because they do not understand what economic growth is. Would it not be wonderful, would it not be brilliant, if that promise that Bill English and John Key gave to the electorate was brought about by economic growth rather than the slim Budget surplus that they are hoping to achieve this year—that they are struggling to achieve but are hoping to achieve? Would it not be better if that had come about by economic growth, when in fact it has been brought about by an overcharge in ACC levies? That is the truth of the matter.

The Government has failed to grow the economy, except in one instance. The Christchurch earthquakes—terrible as they were—did this Government a favour because currently the rebuild that is going on in Canterbury is the only sign of economic growth. A natural disaster plus the overcharge in ACC levies are the things that might just get this Government scraping through—might just get this Government scraping through into Budget surplus. Even after Cabinet had made a deliberate decision—[Bell rung] Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. This is a 10-minute call.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I am sorry. I was advised by the Opposition whip that this call was split between Mr Cosgrove and you. It has been changed—OK. You have another 6 minutes.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It did feel like an awfully fast 10 minutes—although 10 minutes of the “New ACT Party” seemed to drag somewhat, I have got to say, so it is getting a little bit hard to judge.

What we have learnt in the past few days is that, yes, the small businesses and the medium-sized businesses, and even the large corporations, and all the staff whom they employ up and down the country, have, in fact, been overcharged. We have put it to the Government that they have been overcharged to the tune of $350 million every year because the Government has failed to reduce ACC levies to the level that ACC has recommended. The Government has not contested that figure. I just want to say that again. The Government has had plenty of opportunity over the last 2 days to contest that figure, and it has not.

So what does that mean for ordinary New Zealanders, and what does it mean for our economy? Actually, if that $350 million was circulating in our local economy rather than sitting in the Government’s coffers, propping up the illusion of a Government surplus in the Government’s accounts—here is the irony. If it was back in the economy it would be helping to create that economic growth and it would be creating jobs. Infometrics, an independent group of analysts, has come up with a figure of 700 jobs. I think that is conservative, but it is an independent group so I am not going to criticise its work. Infometrics said that if we charged the correct levy for ACC instead of the trumped-up levy that this Government has come up with because it is trying to create the illusion of a Budget surplus, then there would be at least 700 more jobs created out of that. Businesses would have that money in their pockets and they would be able to invest in better technology and in their workforce, and they would be able to employ more staff.

The other economic stimulus is this—if that money was also back in the pockets of workers, instead of sitting in the Government’s accounts, it would be getting spent in the local economy. This is just, you know—

💬 David Seymour: It’s supply-side economics.

This is Finance 101, Mr Seymour. If workers actually had that money sitting in their accounts instead of it being paid out in levies, that money would be getting spent locally. That would stimulate the economy, and it would also create more jobs. It is a pretty simple equation. Even Kim Campbell from the Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern) gets this. When it was put to him as to whether the proposal coming from the Labour leader Andrew Little that the Government was in fact overcharging ACC levies was correct, he said that Andrew Little was dead right. That was the Employers and Manufacturers Association talking about the Labour leader Andrew Little and his assertion—our assertion—that there is an overcharge happening that is quite wrong in respect of the ACC levies on all of those businesses.

Kim Campbell said that Andrew Little was dead right. He knows, as all businesses do throughout New Zealand, that they are in fact being overcharged. They are being used as a cash cow to prop up the Government’s idea of trying to get to a surplus, no matter how slim. But it is an illusion and New Zealanders now know it for what it is.

If this Budget Policy Statement was to be of any use to New Zealanders it would recognise that fact. The Government would come clean—well, it kind of has, actually. It has said: “Yes, we are using it to prop up the Budget surplus.” It is being honest about it. What that tells us is that the Government has failed. It has failed to bring that surplus about by actually managing this country properly under its fiscal management.

I feel sorry for Nikki Kaye. She is the Minister for ACC. She must be so disappointed that instead of her finance Minister and her Government actually stimulating the economy and bringing about a surplus through economic growth, they have had to give up, say that they have failed, and instead have put their hands into the pockets of the Accident Compensation Corporation. They have had to go through the corporation and dip their fingers into the pockets of workers and employers up and down this country, simply to try to bring about a promise that they made in the election that they have not been able to bring about by growing the economy. They could not deliver on that election promise by fair means, so they are now doing it by foul.

What a wonderful day to be here, and it so good to see the Opposition members here. I know why they are here, and it is because we have reported a surplus today—$77 million for the 7 months to January this year. That is why they are all here—to celebrate this; to be part of this. Thank you for coming.

What I want to talk about is how we have got some people on the other side who do not understand how we achieve things like this. It was fascinating to listen to that speech just before by Sue Moroney. The whole issue around good economic growth has been just recently validated by Moody’s. Moody’s is an international, independent body that approves and reviews economic performance, and it has reaffirmed yet again that we have got a triple A rating.

Why are we getting these good reports? First of all, we are achieving strong economic growth—3.2 percent for the last year—and independent Treasury reports are forecasting that we are going to achieve similar rates over the next 3 years. That is even higher than the average rate that Labour was achieving when we had a world that was rocking along. We are achieving this in a world that is suffering from recession and from global recovery, and yet we can still outperform what was achieved by Labour.

We are also seeing interest rates at a 20-year low, and that is good for business. I know Sue Moroney referred to businesses before. What low interest rates mean is that people can invest in buying new plant for their businesses. They are spending it on capital expenditure. It is also good for our families. It means that our families can borrow money to buy and build new houses, which is exactly what we want to see achieved. We are seeing new jobs. My colleagues have talked about it—80,000 last year. That means that over the last 5 years 220,000 new jobs have been achieved in this economy, and with Treasury’s projection of 153,000 new jobs over the next 4 years, it means another 230,000 jobs. In essence, that is nearly 500,000 jobs over 10 years. That is a fantastic outcome and that is what is going to keep people in good living standards—by creating jobs that they can earn good money from, and where they can have the respect they can get from having a good job and looking after their families.

We have also increased incomes. We have seen a 15 percent increase in incomes over the last 5 years—higher than inflation, and, indeed, even with our modest salary rises, like most New Zealanders, we will be better off because we have tamed inflation at 0.8 percent. We have finally got that bogey under control. That means real increases for all our families and people working in New Zealand.

Then we can look at our public sector. We have finally wrestled under control the public sector, which was significantly expanded by the Labour Government. It reached 34 percent of GDP; we have now got it down to just over 30 percent. What does that mean? That means nearly $10 billion a year that we can invest in new things like health, infrastructure, and education—which brings me to health.

It is fascinating looking at what is happening in health. We have doubled spending in early childhood education in the last 6 years, from $800 million to $1.5 billion. We have increased the participation rates of children under 5 going to early childhood education centres by up to 96 percent. We are investing $600 million in new schools. We are seeing secondary school investment go up by 45 percent. We have got $20 million more invested in special needs—nearly half a billion that we spend on special needs. I know that is not enough, but it is a significant amount we are investing in looking after our people and our students who need special care in our schools. Finally, there are 12,000 more places in tertiary education. Those are all great achievements.

When I look at what is happening in my electorate of Hunua, on 2 February a brand new school opened—Ormiston Primary School; fantastic. This is a fantastic new school that is one of three in that area. They are top-notch schools, and they have wonderful creative environments. I went to Waiuku not long ago—only 3 weeks ago—where there is a fantastic headmaster and principal, and he showed me some of their results. Across the board, and particularly for Māori, the results were outstanding. There are significant improvements. That is what we are trying to achieve in education, because when those students come out of school we want to see them going into jobs. This is a part of the programmes that we are putting in place in our electorates to see that transition into good vocational training and into jobs, which is where people can get the self-respect I talked about.

Just reflecting for a moment on the infrastructure spend, we have spent $12 billion over the last 10 years and we are investing another $12 billion over the next 10 years. We are seeing such wonderful improvements. We are completing those roads that have been sitting around for generations. All those improvements around Auckland and the great announcement around the Waikato expressway, which will see a motorway linking Cambridge right through to Wellsford—those are the types of things that are going to free up our transport. The investment in rail that we have made and the bridges that we are building all are important components in creating a transport infrastructure that is linked.

We have also got our train services. There are all those things that we have invested in, in Auckland: the new electric train units and the new tracking. We are now seeing a fantastic pick-up in terms of people utilising the train services in Auckland. There are 13 million trips a year, together with 11 million trips that we are seeing in Wellington. That is about good public usage. We want to support public transport.

What does this mean? It means good stuff for the regions. There was an aspersion before that our regions were not benefiting, apart from Christchurch. Well, as my colleague Mr Jami-Lee Ross mentioned before, there is a 7.8 percent growth rate in Northland. Those are the types of regional statistics we want to read about.

This is a Government that has a plan, that is working hard, that is achieving results, and that is delivering great outcomes. This is not a Government that is seeking to put in place higher taxes, and that is a good thing, because we have got a fantastic tax system. When I thought with horror about what Labour was proposing with its five new taxes—a capital gains tax, an additional tax on high-income earners, a carbon tax, a regional fuel tax, and a water tax—I was musing on how that would affect all those small businesses that Labour is now proclaiming it wants to look after and support. Well, I can tell you, ladies and gentlemen, we are a party that understands small business. Many of us have worked in small businesses and have owned small businesses, and we know the difference between talk and actually achieving results.

So what are we doing about tax? Well, first of all we are reducing tax for families in need. Secondly, we are reducing tax on income for work and savings. We are raising the effective tax rate on property developments. We are also providing additional funding for the Inland Revenue Department to target those companies and individuals who are avoiding tax. It is interesting that in the Finance and Expenditure Committee meeting this morning, we reflected on the success of the Inland Revenue Department in achieving that. It has collected $750 million more in overdue debt owed to the department and another $1.2 billion on tax-avoidance schemes. This is an Inland Revenue Department focused on protecting and maintaining the integrity of our tax system. Finally, we are applying stricter rules to ensure that multinational companies cannot avoid their legitimate tax share for the New Zealand economy.

So this is what this Government is about. We are about increasing and improving the economy. When I reflect on the exports for New Zealand, they have increased significantly. Non-agricultural exports are up significantly. When you think about the total exports out of this country for the year 2014, at nearly $70 billion, I find it an absolute disservice when I hear Opposition members going on about how our firms are not working hard and how we are not achieving enough. We have significantly increased exports by $10 billion over the last 4 years. It is a good thing, and we should support our businesses. Thank you very much.