Imprest Supply Debate

I move, That the Appropriation (2017/18 Estimates) Bill be now read a third time and the Imprest Supply (Second for 2017/18) Bill be now read a second time. This Government is very proud of the work that it has been able to do on Budget 2017, and Budget 2017 is one that continues to deliver for New Zealanders, based on this Government’s strong economic plan.

The New Zealand economy grew 3 percent in the year to March, making us one of the top-performing OECD countries. In fact, last year we were the fifth - fastest-growing OECD economy. That is all good, but the important thing is what it means for New Zealanders, and the most important thing has been employment growth, which is very, very strong. In fact, we have now seen more than 180,000 new jobs created in the last 2 years under—[Interruption]—that is right; 180,000 new jobs in the last 2 years—with another 215,000 people to be in work by the middle of 2021. Unemployment has fallen to 4.8 percent. But, more importantly, the employment rate is growing, and the employment rate is now 76.2 percent, which is the second-highest rate in the whole of the developed world—the second-highest rate of employment in the whole of the developed world.

What that means is that we are rapidly approaching full employment in this country, which is interesting when we have the discussions around migration and we have those sorts of discussions, because all of the companies that are continuing to grow around this country are looking for skilled workers. We can train some, and we are. We have something like 43,000 apprentices currently in the New Zealand economy, including a record number in construction—11,000 apprentices in construction currently. And we will and can bring some of the remaining 29,000-odd 15- to 24-year-olds who are available for work into work through apprenticeships and some of the other programmes that we are doing, like the Regional Growth Programme, Project 1000 in Hawke’s Bay, and the Taitamariki 500 programme in Northland. These are intensive local programmes to bring people into work that arise out of this Budget.

The other important thing is that inflation remains low, so while the average wage is going up—it is now $59,000, nearly over the $60,000 mark—inflation is remaining low, and the gains are going into people’s wallets. In fact, the OECD said recently that New Zealand has one of the strongest real income growths of any developed country, including more than Australia and the US. [Interruption] Well, I invite the members opposite, who seem to disagree with this approach, to go and talk to the independent referees, the independent monitors, like the OECD and like the IMF, and like Moody’s, for example, which declared last week that the Government of New Zealand—I quite like this headline—is Aaa stable.

💬 Brett Hudson: Aaa stable.

Aaa stable: the Government of New Zealand, which, I have to say, is quite a contrast to the Opposition, which you could describe as many things but not as Aaa stable. That is certainly not what you could describe the Opposition as.

But I want to talk about productivity for a minute—

💬 Grant Robertson: Yes, do.

—because I happened to be alongside Mr Robertson speaking about productivity last night in Christchurch. He gave me some figures that I thought were a bit weird. You have always got to watch it with the member Mr Robertson—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!

—so I went away and had a look, and, actually, helpfully for the member, something for him to think about is that Treasury this month, in its Monthly Economic Indicators, which came out yesterday, put out a special topic: “Adjusting for level shifts in labour market data”. It was pointing out that, actually, the headline productivity statistics are wrong, because the household labour force survey was changed in June of last year. So when Mr Robertson pops up and starts talking about productivity shortly, I would recommend that he adjust the productivity measures for the level shifts in the labour market data caused by the change last year, otherwise he might find the public a bit cynical about his comments on productivity.

The good news, though, is that the Government’s stable, reliable platform and the growth of the economy give us the opportunity through this Budget to invest heavily in the future of New Zealanders. We have done that in three main areas. Firstly is a big investment in infrastructure. That has been talked about a lot, but over the next 4 years the Government will spend $32.5 billion on infrastructure in this country. You can see it all over this country; you just have to drive not too far north of here, for example, to see the highway being built at Transmission Gully, or you can go up the Hutt Valley to see the wonderful new interchange there at Haywards. In Auckland you can travel the Waterview tunnel, which the Labour Party seems to have forgotten exists—the Waterview tunnel between—

💬 Grant Robertson: We started it.

No, you did not start it, actually. That is an interesting point about that; I am glad the member raises it. When I was transport Minister in 2009, they came and said the Government’s plan—this is the Labour Government’s plan—was to build a tunnel that was two lanes in each direction. That is what the Labour Government settled on. It was going to be longer than this tunnel, and it was going to cost $2.3 billion. I said “That sounds a ridiculously large sum of money.”, and I sent them away with two targets. I said: “I want you to build it three lanes in each direction, and I want you to build it for a billion dollars less than you’re proposing.” So they came back with a shorter tunnel. You see, the previous Prime Minister did not want any part of it in her electorate above ground. She did not want that, so we shortened it, and we reduced the cost of that tunnel.

Despite adding an extra lane in each direction, $1.4 billion was the eventual cost of the tunnel. We did not get a billion dollars off; we got $900 million off, we got an extra lane in each direction, and Aucklanders are benefiting from that now. They are having the joy of driving between the city and the airport in 25 minutes. Eventually, we will need the rapid transit option. Of course, the rapid transit option as proposed at the moment is to take 43 minutes to the airport. Instead of 25, they are proposing that it will take 43 minutes. So I think we should send them back and say “Shorten that time up a little bit.”, and that will actually be useful.

But there is $32.5 billion in infrastructure and also a very big investment in public services—a very big investment in public services. There is a very big investment in public services, including the biggest investment in the health sector in 11 years—in 11 years. You have got things like the bowel screening, you have got things like, of course, the care and support workers—you have got some very big investments in the health sector. You have got big investments in the education sector—all the roll growth being met, and all the new schools, of course, coming in the infrastructure budget. We have said—in fact, the leadership, the Prime Minister, said—that we are not going to muck around. We are going to meet the demand of a growing country, and that is what we have in this Budget.

Then of course there is the bit that the Opposition really does not like, and that is the Family Incomes Package—the Family Incomes Package, where 1.3 million New Zealand families from 1 April next year will receive income of an additional $26 a week. It is an additional $26 a week on average, and some of them will get a lot more. Some of them in west Auckland and South Auckland will get well over $100 a week more because of the way the package works for them. The good news is that people on the median wage and on the average wage are not forgotten by this Government. Now, the Opposition is proposing to pay people who earn the same amount of money as you or me a $3,000 baby bonus. That is what it is proposing—a $3,000 baby bonus for me, which I have to say is unlikely at this point, and for people who earn what I am earning. I actually think we are far better to change the tax thresholds and let people spend the money. In fact, Mr Little actually used to support that, and he may well again support that, because he is now away from the leadership, so he will be able to speak his mind a little bit more. Perhaps he does support threshold changes, because Mr Robertson collared him and said he could not support threshold changes just after he had said that, actually, you do have to change the thresholds from time to time.

So this Government is delivering for New Zealanders, this Budget is delivering for New Zealanders, and most of all we are delivering the political stability for New Zealanders that is allowing the economy to grow, as against, say, the Opposition.

This Budget is a tale of missed opportunity. The Government can say that the economy is growing, at the high-level indicators, by around 3 percent, and that is absolutely true. But what Mr Joyce knows and what the Government knows is that on a per person basis, the economy is growing less than 1 percent a year, and that is the reality that this Government has to face.

💬 Brett Hudson: If you measure GDP worked on a Sunday afternoon.

Once upon a time—in fact, not that long ago, in the 2016 version of this legislation that we are debating today in 2017—the Prime Minister said that the most important indicator for living standards in New Zealand was GDP per capita. So it is all very well for Brett Hudson to yell across the House and say that that is not right, but, actually, it is what Bill English said, and GDP per capita still sits below 1 percent. What that means is that two-thirds of the growth in our economy, measured as it is by GDP, is actually coming from the fact that there are more people in New Zealand at the moment. The reality of that also comes through in terms of our productivity. The lost opportunity in this Budget is that the Government could have come forward with a series of initiatives to address the productivity problem New Zealand has. It is a long-running issue, and I am not putting the blame for it at the feet of any individual Government, but right now, in New Zealand today, one of the things we could be doing to be a better country is focus on what lies behind that poor productivity.

In the last year, output per hour per worker has dropped by 1.3 percent in New Zealand; across the Tasman, it has gone up. So the gap in terms of what we are producing is growing between New Zealand and Australia, and it is that productivity that drives higher wages. So when the Government sits there and cannot quite explain it—Bill English called it a puzzle as to why wages were not growing well. Well, the puzzle can be solved quite easily: we need a higher-value economy and we need more productive jobs. But a Government that relies for its economic strategy on population growth and people selling houses to one another is not going to get those high-paying jobs and is not going to get the productivity that we need. When we go looking in this Budget for the initiatives that are going to move the economy in this direction, they are, sadly, lacking.

Then we look at what the issues are that the Government thinks it is addressing here. Mr Joyce, in his speech just now, said to us that infrastructure was the big deal for them. Well, on this side of the House, we are not going to give the Government credit for waking up at the end of 9 years in office and saying it needs to put some money into infrastructure. The deficit has grown under National’s watch. It is the underfunding that has caused this, be that in housing or be that in transport. That is why we are in the position we are in now. For the Government to wake from its slumber a couple of months before the election and say it is going to put some money into infrastructure rings hollow, and that sits right throughout this Budget.

Of course the Minister can say there is a record amount of money going into health, but per person, looking at the type of population we have got now, this Budget once again falls short on health. Cumulatively over the last 6 years, the National Government has underfunded health by more than $2 billion, and every day in this Parliament we see the end result of underfunding health as this Budget does. Every day that we hear stories of people missing out on treatment, of hospitals being grossly underfunded, of nurses working back-to-back shifts, of doctors speaking out about the fact that they cannot provide the care that they need to—that is a direct result of that underfunding.

The same applies to education, because, once again, simply saying that you have put more money in does not assure New Zealanders of a quality education. It does not assure New Zealand parents that they will not be asked again and again for more and more in school donations, because, bottom line, per person, the funding is not keeping up in education either. It is the responsibility of the Government to deliver a Budget to this House that meets the needs, the basic needs, of New Zealanders, and this Budget is a missed opportunity in that regard.

The Minister of Finance reacted to some interjections from this side of the House about some of the OECD statistics he was raising. Well, here is one for the Minister, if he thinks the OECD is an independent referee: it has told New Zealand that we have the worst homelessness in the world—the worst homelessness in the world. If you go looking in this Budget to try to find the real solutions to that—the building of more houses, the understanding that Housing New Zealand should actually be a proper State housing provider—you will not find them.

When I look at this Budget, I say that it is a missed opportunity. What should have been in this Budget—what would have been in this Budget if it had been delivered by a Labour-led Government—would be a massive investment in the basics of a decent life. To start with, that means housing—a roof over the head of every New Zealander, and warm, dry, and safe housing. Billions of dollars should be spent in this Budget on the construction of affordable homes for first-home buyers. The market is broken. It is not working. It is not delivering the basic things that New Zealanders would expect of a housing market, so it is time for the Government to step up with a massive, State-run building programme. We call it KiwiBuild; I do not mind what the Government calls it, but it should be doing it in this Budget and it is not.

Yet again, we see health failing to get the money that it should, so the commitment from the Labour Party remains that it will, over the next 4 years, add $8 billion extra into the health budget. We are not going to sit around and wait until election time to decide that mental health is important; we are going to get on straight away with getting school-based health services and better community mental health services, and then doing that review of the mental health system. We are going to get on straight away to having a national cancer centre and a proper strategy that means it does not matter where you live—you will get the same basic access to healthcare.

In the education sector—there is another missed opportunity here to get us back to quality early childhood education, to get us back to schools where parents are not being asked more and more. We have said to New Zealanders that the deal is this: if a school says it will not ask for donations, it will get $150 per pupil extra from us. This should be a free education system. We do not want to see financial barriers placed in front of people achieving their potential. Every single member of this House knows that it is education that will unlock the potential of New Zealanders, that will allow our young people to achieve their dreams, and we must not place a single barrier in front of them. But this Budget lacks any vision when it comes to education. It is tied up in the knots of ideology of charter schools, when in fact we can actually deliver a world-class education to every New Zealand child with the schools that we have in New Zealand, if we fund them and resource them properly.

This Budget does not speak to what I believe is one of major challenges facing New Zealand today, and that is the issue of lifting children out of poverty. I heard the Minister; I saw the Minister’s Family Incomes Package. Of the seven parts of the Government’s Family Incomes Package, let us start with parts one and two, which we on this side of the House can agree with. Yes, we need to lift the accommodation supplement. It is a deeply flawed instrument, but right now, in the middle of a housing crisis, we have to acknowledge that people need more support. We cannot have people paying 50 percent of their income on rent. You are in housing stress if you are paying more than 30 percent of your income on rent, and we are seeing far too many New Zealanders in that state. We need to get in there and review that accommodation supplement, but right now we will accept it.

We need to lift Working for Families. We actually need to go back and undo what National did when it changed the abatement rates for Working for Families and cut families out of that scheme. But yes, we will accept that we need to lift Working for Families, and we want to do a bit more.

But the other five-sevenths of that families package is a poorly targeted tax-cuts system that delivers to members of this House $1,000 a year that we do not need. I am proud to stand for a families package that says that every family earning $62,000 or less will be better off under Labour’s package. That is because we are taking that money that is going to high-income earners—the $400 million that is going to the top 10 percent—and we are saying that that money can be better spent: focused on delivering to those families, focused on people who have children and have costs for children. I am proud of our Best Start policy because it recognises that every family, when it comes to having children, has increased costs.

This Budget is a tired Budget from a tired Government. The National Government is out of ideas, it is out of touch, and on 24 September it will be out of the Government.

The Appropriation (2017/18 Estimates) Bill enacts a fine Budget from a fine Minister of Finance. What it does is a few things all at the same time. People often say: “Oh, it’s very unusual that you can make a record investment in public services as well as invest in infrastructure at the same time, improving the resilience of our country to future shocks, and also make a significant investment in family incomes.”, but this Budget does all of those things.

I want to talk briefly about the Family Incomes Package. It was very interesting in the debate earlier in the House on the Family Incomes Package, because what the Government decided to do with this Budget is to allow New Zealanders to share in the dividends of growth. It gave New Zealanders a dividend, basically, for the hard work they have done over the last few years, because we did endure the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008, 2009, and beyond.

It is worth remembering that New Zealand entered recession before the worst effects of the GFC were even felt. Our tradable sector had been in recession for 5 years, from 2003 to 2008. We did endure rising unemployment back in 2008, 2009, and 2010, and we did endure tough times in that period. Then we had the Christchurch earthquakes of late 2010 and early 2011, which had an enormous buffeting effect on the Crown accounts. So New Zealanders have had to go through a degree of pain over the last few years, and what this Budget does is deliver the Family Incomes Package, which allows them to share in the benefits of growth. The Budget enacts a range of proposals, firstly by adjusting the bottom taxation rate at the bottom end of the scale, and it also makes changes to Working for Families in order to deliver the support to those who need it most.

The Budget projects that New Zealand’s economy will continue to grow at around 3 percent for the next few years. This will make us one of the top-performing OECD countries. Just a couple of days ago, Moody’s credit rating agency expected our economy to be one of the fastest-growing Aaa economies in the world.

The other thing this Budget brings—and what this appropriations bill enacts—is significant investment in infrastructure right around the country. What it does is it makes sure that our infrastructure needs keep up with a growing economy, a growing population, and growing demands on that infrastructure. Because that has been one of the stories of the last few years—that New Zealanders are coming home, staying in the country, and, for the first time in almost a generation, Australians are moving to New Zealand and wanting to make a better life for themselves here, and that has quite rightly put pressure on our infrastructure and put pressure on some of the services that New Zealanders take for granted.

The Government has responded, and by using some of the fiscal buffers that we have built up over the last few years we are in a position to make significant capital expenditure on things like roading and rail. Just on Sunday you saw some of the announcements in relation to that—in Auckland made by the Prime Minister in Papakura, and, indeed, in Wellington with the metro rail network.

The other thing I want to mention that is very important is making sure we build in resilience for the future, so that we make sure that when that next rainy day arrives, we are in a position in order to potentially borrow and potentially spend if we need to. Because we do live in uncertain times—we do. We have Britain exiting the European Union, which members in the House will be well aware of; we have a relatively new President in the United States with policies that are still being shaped up and still being formed, particularly when it comes to trade; and we still have quite slow growth rates in various parts of the European Union and various other parts of the world. So in this uncertain and unstable international environment it is worth making sure that we put aside money for a rainy day. What the Budget does is signal that the debt will start to be paid down over the next few years. We are on track to reduce Government debt to around 20 percent of GDP by 2021.

Sometimes people say that this Government has borrowed a huge amount of money. The constant refrain from Labour is “worse than Muldoon”, as David Clark likes to say. It is true that the Government, during the global financial crisis and during the Christchurch earthquakes, did borrow money as the bottom fell out of the world economy. That was the right thing to do to support our second-largest city but also to support New Zealanders during a very particularly tough time—to support vulnerable New Zealanders in need. There were plenty of people saying “cut welfare, cut entitlements, and cut superannuation” and the Government resisted those calls. But it is important that we do start to pay down the debt that we have built up, as I say, for that future shock, if indeed that shock comes.

The other point I want to mention in relation to the Budget is the important investment it makes in equipping New Zealand for a rapidly globalising 21st century economy. There are big investments in this Budget in delivering New Zealand’s Trade Agenda 2030—this very ambitious goal of making sure New Zealand signs free-trade agreements with as many countries around the world as will allow us to sign free-trade agreements with them. Our bread and butter on the world stage is trading with other countries. New Zealand firms and New Zealand individuals, often small businesses, are selling our goods on the world stage, and we need to make sure that the barriers that are sometimes put in place by other economies and other countries are as minimal as possible. The only way to do that is by the hard slog of our world-class trade negotiators driven out of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, but also New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, which helps New Zealand firms make their way on the world stage.

I have seen first hand the really important work that New Zealand Trade and Enterprise does in all sorts of countries around the world, helping New Zealand businesses and individuals sell our products. This Budget makes a record investment in those very important parts of New Zealand’s future. New Zealanders, as we know, are shaping globalisation to their own advantage. We are adopting the opportunities and seizing the opportunities provided by a rapidly globalising world that is lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, but it is also providing enormous opportunities for our businesses and our exporters.

Relevant to that are the very important investments that this Budget makes in the innovation space. What we need to do, as an economy and as a country, to seize those opportunities is make sure that we remain agile and innovative and nimble, and that we have innovation spreading throughout the economy. Quite rightly, New Zealand is sometimes criticised for a lack of innovation in our export base. It is tied, really, to a lack of diversity in our exports. I think that this Government will be able to look back on the last 9 years, as we approach the election, with some degree of pride at the diversification of our economy that has occurred during that time.

When the bottom fell out of the dairy industry a couple of years ago that did affect the value of the dairy industry, but, overall, our exports went up, actually, because we have got a rapidly growing wine sector, other horticultural products, and, indeed, ICT, and the other parts of the technology sector, which are growing very rapidly, spurred and developed by some of the Government’s policies, including Callaghan Innovation, R & D grants, and some of the growth grants that are available.

The Innovate New Zealand package—that was actually developed in the last Budget but has continued to be funded in this Budget—continues those very important investments. The good news is that the proportion of New Zealand firms and businesses undertaking research and development is growing, and the proportion of it as a percentage of GDP is growing for the first time, frankly, in quite a long time. That figure is growing. We have got a target of getting it to 1 percent of GDP. I will not lie to the House and say that that is going to be an easy task; it is not. We are someway off that. It is an ambitious goal, but with the right policy settings in place it is something that we can most definitely strive hard to achieve. What this Budget does is make record investments in that.

This is a confident Budget for a confident country and a confident Government and one that we can be very proud of as we head into the very important day of 23 September.

Tēnā koe e Te Mangai o Te Whare, ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. I rise to speak at the third reading of the Appropriation (2017/18 Estimates) Bill. What we are really talking about here is whether or not we have confidence in the Government’s Budget. This is ultimately a confidence and supply issue. In this speech I am going to talk about the ways in which this Budget takes us farther down the route towards—and I think it is an accurate term—private affluence and public squalor. This is a Budget that is founded on providing an election bribe to convince voters to return this Government, paid for by means of under-investing in our public services. In this speech I particularly want to draw attention to a sector that we hardly ever talk about. It is the arts and culture sector. It has been decimated in this Budget.

Let me give an overview of this Budget. The Green Party voted for a very small increase in support for the poorest households. We supported additional funding for families and for accommodation supplements because under this Government there are so many people in New Zealand struggling. We did not vote for the tax cuts, which deliver for higher-income earners but not proportionately for the rest of New Zealand’s population. These tax cuts have been bought as a result of severe under-investment in public services.

Victoria University and the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research did an analysis of what this Budget means for spending on some key public services, and they mapped between now and 2020-21, which is 3 years’ time. They said, firstly, that education will be cut by 7.9 percent in real terms. That means that our current situation, where teaching assistants and teaching staff are already deeply underpaid—they will continue to be underpaid. It means that we will have teacher shortages in areas like Auckland, so children will not have a chance to have a decent education. It means that special-needs children, particularly, will not get the attention and the assistance that they deserve in our education system.

Health spending will be cut by 7.5 percent in real terms. What that means is that we will continue the underfunding of mental health that sees New Zealand record the highest suicide rate for teens in the world. It means that we will continue to underfund services, which Dr Phil Bagshaw of Otago and his team have estimated means that 29 percent of people will have unmet needs for accessing GPs and primary health services. It means that 9 percent of people who need operations will have unmet needs. That means pain and suffering for people who have to wait for cataract surgery or for knee surgery or for any number of conditions. That is what this Budget means. It means half a billion dollars a year of underfunding, according to Infometrics.

Core Government services will be cut by 15.1 percent in real terms. What does that mean? Well, it means that we cut funding in ways that will damage people in our society. The OECD estimates, for example, that child poverty costs us $8 billion. It is hidden from this Budget, but that is the cost of underfunding our ripped safety net. It means underfunding emergency houses—that we are putting people up temporarily in motels. It means that we have the worst homelessness in the world. It means shortages of housing in Auckland, so that we have the most unaffordable city in the world. These are the costs of this Budget. It is the underfunding of public services that is an absolute scandal, in this Budget. It means 20 percent of children living in cold houses and getting sick. It means failure on climate change, on conservation, and on rivers—60 percent of our monitored rivers are unswimmable. It means that the only increase of substance that we have here is $1 billion in prisons—what is that a success indicator for?

This is 9 years of this Government. It is an economy that is built on speculation, on immigration, on dirty money, and on commodities.

In arts and culture, as a particular sector—and we do not talk enough about arts and culture in this House—Creative New Zealand estimates that 89 percent of New Zealanders engage each year in arts and culture. We are the country of Lorde, of Flight of the Conchords, of Eleanor Catton, of Taika Waititi, and of Peter Jackson. This is who we are as a society. Culture should be a source of pride. We should support it. Creative New Zealand estimates that the arts and culture sector is worth 131,000 jobs in New Zealand and $17.5 billion in GDP.

And what has happened to it? Well, there are cuts of 25.6 percent between now and 2020-21. That is 25.6 percent. That is a decimation of our budget. It is slashing our screen production grants to zero. It is reducing our regional culture and heritage. It means a 9 percent cut in real terms for Creative New Zealand and all of the arts and culture organisations, and a 9 percent cut in public broadcasting for Radio New Zealand. Radio New Zealand got a small increase this year, but there is a flat budget from now on for broadcasting for Radio New Zealand. It means a 9 percent real-terms cut in promotion of arts and film, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, New Zealand ballet, New Zealand music, museums and Te Papa, heritage, and thousands of community arts organisations and projects. These are all suffering real-term cuts from this Government.

That is the kind of under-investment in our public services, which are so valuable to New Zealanders, that is funding these tax cuts for the higher-income earners in New Zealand. It is an absolute disgrace. This Budget takes money out of the public services that New Zealanders really value and gives it as tax cuts to the rich.

This Budget is about priorities. Those priorities are not the environment or climate change. Those priorities are not health, education, or housing. They are not restoring our ripped safety net, which leaves so many people in poverty. And this Budget is certainly not about supporting our arts and culture sector. This Budget, in terms of priorities, is about this Government trying to get elected again by giving a tax bribe to the higher-income individuals in our society. It is the creation of private affluence alongside public squalor in this country.

We should not go down this route. We should not continue to underfund our valuable public services; otherwise, we will end up as a more polluted, a more divided, a more unfair, and a more unequal society. That is not in our interests. That is not who New Zealand is. We are different from that. We are better than that as a society.

This Budget is a failure of vision after 9 years of this Government. It is a failure to properly invest in the things that are important in our society. We can do better than this. We have no confidence in this Budget and we have no confidence in this Government. We need to change this Government. Thank you.

I am very happy and proud to be able to stand in support of this Budget. To think that the previous speaker, Barry Coates, would read out a list of such a magnitude of cuts and deprivations is unbelievable. I think of the achievements that have been achieved for everyday New Zealanders. I think that, yes, there is $1.3 million for families in this Budget—on average $26 more a week. But, looking beyond that, the Minister of Finance, the Hon Steven Joyce, who has been a fantastic architect and brought together so many elements and moving parts, has produced a complex Budget that delivers right across the board for New Zealanders. He has stated that in West Auckland and South Auckland—and I lived in West Auckland for 25 years; I know what it is like there—there will be families who will receive $100 a week more because of the cost of living there, because of the care of this Government to enable some of those low-income families to have enough to make ends meet.

All we get is scoffing and a list of incorrect facts that come from the other side of the House. You know, we heard it from the second speaker in today’s debate, Grant Robertson, who was saying that we are seeing cuts in health spending—$1.6 billion, the most money spent on health ever in this country, in this Budget. That is up by $4.3 billion per year since we came into Government. Claims that health funding has been cut are incorrect, and it is deceptive to say so, because this year New Zealand is forecast to spend 6.26 percent of its GDP on health. Under Labour, the percentage of the economy spent on health was under 6 percent. And so, to say that this year there have been cuts and there is less and there is deprivation in health spending—the facts just do not say that at all.

So I do not know why we have this sort of information coming out. They are certainly alternative facts. I hear this afternoon about the lack of investment in education. I have information here on this card in respect of Māori students. What we need to understand when it comes to Māori students, and particularly young Māori males, is that they have the highest level of taking their lives of any demographic in our country.

💬 Ron Mark: What have you done about it?

So there is grave concern for that group of people. Listen to this: year 12 NCEA level 2 achievement by Māori students in 2008 was 52 percent. This year it is 75 percent. That is what we are doing about it, Mr Mark. We are ensuring that young Māori people are becoming engaged and have a future and a hope and a possibility to gain an apprenticeship and have the possibility to move forward in their lives. That is a lot more than what you would have done—52 percent to 75 percent talks about excellent educational achievement.

I remember talking to one of the principals of our secondary schools, who said this to me: “If we can get Māori young boys into year 13, they will surpass the achievement of the rest of the boys in that cohort.” And he knows that getting them through years 11 and 12 is really pivotal, and this is what we are achieving. You know, we need to thank the work of the Hon Hekia Parata and what she has done to drive achievement. She has been unrelenting in her goal to see young people in this country succeed and be able to get ahead.

We have seen a 61 percent increase in these young Māori men and women gaining Bachelor’s degrees since 2008. What a phenomenal achievement, and this speaks of the investment that this Government is making, and continues to make, in this Budget: in education, in health, but also in infrastructure.

I am really pleased to come from a region where it is very can-do, and Andrew Little knows that. He also comes from Taranaki. It is a very can-do region. We have put up for a long time with a very difficult highway north out of our region up into the Waikato region and up into Auckland, but I am pleased to say that our accelerated regional roading package is investing $135 million of infrastructure improvement in that highway. We do not have a railway north; we have a highway north only because of the very difficult and the very challenging topography, and just the soil types—it is very difficult, it is unstable, and we need to have a secure and a resilient route. We are improving that as part of our investment going forward—$135 million to improve State Highway 3. There has been $24 million spent on the northern outlet in New Plymouth. Those are two roading projects that mean a lot to the people of Taranaki. They really do. The work that is being done around the Normanby overbridge, and bypassing that—an $18 million investment. That is such an important infrastructure investment for the people of South Taranaki, which no doubt the Hon Chester Borrows would like to talk about.

These things all speak of a Government that has managed the fiscal position of this country exceedingly well, so it is able to invest into the future. Look at him—scorning and smiling away through his squint. But listen: these are the facts. This is what is happening in New Zealand. It is improving the state of New Zealanders. We are seeing some great growth. That is why Moody’s says that New Zealand is going to be one of the very best countries it will look to see in the years coming ahead. There is $32 billion of infrastructure investments over the next 4 years in schools, roads, and hospitals, and all of the work that was done in terms of the investment into Canterbury, Christchurch, that held us back from those surpluses for 1 or 2 years: $18 billion was spent down there through the Government’s investment.

All of those things are very important. They come from a Government that works very, very carefully, that manages its spending, while all the time working hard to improve the services for New Zealand, whether that is in education, health, transportation, or right across the board. I am hesitant to say that Taranaki is the second most affordable region in the country, because some of you might want to come and live there. It is a great place to live, and just what you were saying in terms of the emptiness of investment into arts and culture—you know, we are very proud of the Len Lye Centre that this Government has invested in. You know, it has made quite a difference in terms of the attraction that it has for the visitor industry.

In fact, in the last quarter of 2016, the last quarter of last year, because there was a bit of an investigation around free parking on a Saturday, the New Plymouth District Council did a survey to find out how many cars were coming into the CBD, particularly at that end of town. It counted the number of vehicles over a whole 3-month period on a Saturday in New Plymouth, up around the Len Lye Centre. Do you know what they found out? Sixty-eight percent of the cars at that end of town came from out of the region—68 percent; that is huge. They were all driving there for a great weekend in New Plymouth, to go to the Len Lye Centre, to enjoy the cafes and the gardens and the parks and the coastal walkway—to enjoy all of those things and spend their good money.

You know, I have talked to retailers, particularly down that end of town, and they say that that has turned around their businesses. That is because it is not just investment into arts, culture, and heritage; it is actually an investment into the economy. You know, we have had all of that fantastic infrastructure built by Taranaki companies. They have won awards around the world. Those investments enhance our reputation internationally and also enhance our capability regionally. The regions are another great story about what this Government is doing.

Winston Peters went around the regions for a 2-week tour, and since he came back he has not asked one question on the regions. Do you know why? It is because he cannot find too many grumbling people out there, because regional New Zealand is doing better under this Government than any before. I commend this legislation to the House. Thank you.

It is always good to have a good laugh when we kick-start the week off, and that speech provided us with plenty of reason to laugh over on this side. What that speaker, Jonathan Young, does not understand is that throughout New Zealand what we are seeing, and we are seeing it very clearly in this Budget, is that this Budget is a Budget that deals with the haves and does not deal with the have-nots. It is a Budget that is going to be renowned and recognised for being focused on the haves as opposed to the have-nots, being focused on the need-nots over the needy, and it is a Budget about “will not”, as opposed to “will”.

I have got one simple message for every speaker in the National Government ranks: speeches like that are not going to cut any ice over the next 5, 6, or 7 weeks. The truth will be shown on 23 September as exactly what the people of New Zealand, and, in particular, the regions, think of that last speech, which I will post.

The fact of the matter is that this Government seems to think that it will be judged by the amount of money it is throwing around. This side of the House continually strives to tell the Government that it is not about the dollar figure; it is about the dollar figure in real terms and the real buying power, and what the Budget looks like when one factors that in. There is no point in telling people out there, be it in Masterton or Taranaki or down in Selwyn, “Oh, the Government has put in more money—over 4 years—and therefore we are doing great; we are wonderful.”, because if that was the case, then we would not have all these deficits, would we? We have got deficits in KiwiSaver because of the money the Government has not put in. We have got a social deficit that is reflected in the homelessness in this country on such a level that we have not seen in our entire history—never. Not under Robbie Muldoon, Keith Holyoake, Richard Seddon, Norm Kirk, or Mike Moore—go back as far as you like.

💬 Hon Tim Macindoe: Mike Moore? Six weeks?

Well, says he in a declining seat of his own, where his vote is going to drop and his polls are already showing that. I wish they would stop the leaking over there; it is getting all our paperwork wet in New Zealand First.

The balance of payments deficit, shrinking businesses—the speaker who just spoke is talking about the regions booming. Well, clearly, he has not been into the Wairarapa, because if you go to Infometrics—get away from the Government’s spin; get away from what we might say, “we” being her Majesty’s loyal Opposition. Go to Infometrics. What is it saying about growth in Dannevirke, in the Tararua district—1 percent. Jeepers, that sounds just like what the Rt Hon Winston Peters has been saying now for 3 years—and I have got to say 3 long years, because 3 years with this Government has been exceedingly long. It almost feels like 30.

Compliance overload—well, that is up. If the Government wants to talk about the things in the Budget that are up, the things in the economy that are up, it should talk about compliance overload, but it does not really want to talk about that because that leads us to talk about small business, which is shrinking. Go and have a look at the number of businesses in Dannevirke over the last 12 months, 2 years, or 3 years. For the Government’s information—if, for a start, it had a decent MP, it would know that it is going backwards. This Government does not do anything to address this. This Government is distinctly deficient in promoting, supporting, developing, and enhancing the export sector, in particular the value-add. Do you want evidence of that? Look out the window at the Wellington port, the piles of logs. Nothing in the Budget incentivises New Zealanders in the forestry sector to keep that timber here, to process it here, to create more jobs here, to add value here, and get more money for that export back here. No, what it actually does is it promotes the sale of that asset to foreigners and the repatriation of the profits therefrom back to the same country to which they are exporting the raw material.

💬 Brett Hudson: Always the nationalisation—always expropriation of assets with you, Ron.

What’s-his-name over there, he is chirping away like a galah. He looks like something off The Muppet Show. He can ignore this, but he is going to get the very clear message on 23 September. We stand to be judged on these statements right now.

Look at health. There is no sense crying about health; go and look at the budgets of the district health boards—deficits. Go and look at Canterbury’s—deficits and climbing. There is no point saying we put more money in if the buying power and the value of that money has shrunk and it is not keeping pace with the demand of an increased population, which, by the way, is coming from—

💬 Brett Hudson: Higher than inflation, so you’re wrong there too.

No, the Government can say all it likes, spin it all it likes. If it thinks the population increase is due to Kiwis staying here and not leaving—bull. No one believes that. Everyone knows the net figure—the net figure—is at record heights. End of story—record heights.

So we talk about the boom and—between Labour and National, we are getting tired of hearing about Auckland, let me assure you that, but we understand that is where National and Labour want to get their votes from. That is where their thinking is—deeply entrenched in metropolitan New Zealand and those lifestyles, ignoring the provinces that generate the wealth, ignoring the regions that generate the wealth. Is there anything in there to incentivise them, to help them to overcome this plethora of “ninny State” legislation such as the occupational safety and health legislation? Not a jot—nothing—but, hey, it will be judged on 23 September.

Where else are we looking at—oh, there is a growth area for this Government in the Budget: corrections. It is building another prison. It is building another prison—well, there are some more jobs. We can employ some more of our whanaunga to turn the keys, locking people up. Well, what that actually says is that the other numbers that are also up, like crime; serious fraud; corruption, particularly in immigration; bribery; and fraud, particularly in the export education sector under this Government—I guess we will have another prison to lock these people up, if they ever get caught and if they ever get prosecuted.

We know, from the other side of this Budget, that police resourcing has fallen behind once again. The Police asked—and here is the grab. The Minister, Paula Bennett, goes on TV and tells everybody that police have got all the resources they need and it is up to the police commissioner to allocate them where he thinks fit.

Well, what did this Government say to the Commissioner of Police when he put forward a business case for extra officers, and the Government cut it? It did not approve it. Did the Government say: “Oh, we think you’re lying, commissioner. We think you’re making it up. We think you’re just padding out the numbers.”? No, I actually think that is what the Government did say, but what the police commissioner said was: “This is the level of resourcing we need to do our job, to stop the flood of P coming into the country, to get down on the organised criminals, the gangs, and to actually get some prosecutions, so we don’t have to wait for the P to wash up on the beach in Northland, you know.” I guess that is the sort of policing we are open to now, under National. We will just wait for the P to wash up on the beach, and then we will claim that it is a great success of the Government.

What a load of rubbish. It is a success—the success in that P bust is exactly the same success behind anybody achieving anything in the regions. They are getting on and doing it, despite the Government. They are making the best of a bloody bad situation. They cannot wait for the election, and they are looking for a Government that is responsive to their needs, and a Government that sees that the infrastructure overload on provincial New Zealand is such that they need help, and not the pathetic amount that this Budget throws in, by the way. They want a Government that actually understands that for police officers—men and women—to be effective in their job they need to be resourced.

What an astonishing story that Nicholas Jones published today in the New Zealand Herald. This Government is failing to resource the police so that police can crack down on the sexploitation of our young and our vulnerable on the internet. If there is one thing that finally says this Government is out of touch when it comes to resourcing our police so they can do their job, that is surely it.

Budgets are a numerical expression of a vision statement of a Government. What we have here in front of us in the Appropriation (2017/18 Estimates) Bill and Budget 2017 exposes a visionless Government that is out of ideas and stuck in the past. This is not a Government that is brimming with ideas to take us to an exciting and optimistic future, to take us into the 21st century. Instead, what we have is a Budget that simultaneously manages to express visionless cruelty and bland managerialism rather than leadership. That is what this Government is delivering to the people of New Zealand.

What this Budget delivers is $400 million in tax cuts to the top 10 percent of earners. We heard at the time of the tabling of the Budget, the debates that came after that, the weeks that have ensued, the rapid spinning on the head of a pin of National Government members, and we have heard here today in this debate, that this is New Zealanders’ share in the dividends of growth. This is a Government that has exposed itself for wanting to give a disproportionate share of that dividend to the highest income earners.

This is not a vision for New Zealand that Labour can get behind. We want to see our families flourishing. That is why we put together an alternative families package that sees 70 percent of our families better off. We want to see our health system and our education system funded so they can take us into the 21st century. We want to see that New Zealanders can get into housing and have affordable housing. These are things that we want to see.

We also want to see a Government that is making protecting our environment a priority. This is not a Government that is either doing enough to protect our environment or doing enough to combat climate change. Budget 2017-18 delivered $4 million in the fight against the globe’s most pressing issues; this is $4 million additional funding to address climate change. This is what this Government is delivering to New Zealand. What it is not delivering is the additional funding that is required to meet the unmet need in the health sector, and particularly in the mental health sector.

The Government will say that it has never spent more on health than it has in this Budget. That is correct, but there have never been more people. Until this Government starts having an honest conversation about per capita growth in our economy and per capita spending, then we are not having the conversation that is required in this country. It is why there are thousands of New Zealanders who are not getting the healthcare they require. It is why thousands of families are having to reach very deeply into their own hip pockets for those stationery bills that the schools sent home—up to $200 for some of the stationery bills that parents in the Wigram electorate showed me they were being asked to pay at the beginning of this year. Parents are being asked to fund some things that any of us would reasonably expect a school could fund out of its operations budget.

The freeze on operations funding to our schools has meant that they simply cannot pay for the things that are required. I am not talking about fancy extras here, either. I am talking about parents being asked to pay for the photocopy paper for the classroom, to pay for the whiteboard markers, and to pay for the tissues that children require in the classroom. I never recall my parents being sent a chalk bill when I was at school and, frankly, I am perplexed as to why it is that parents are being asked to fund this kind of thing now. So—if I can get over this coughing—one of the things that we simply have to do is we have to have an alternative vision. That is exactly what Labour’s fiscal plan has delivered.

The sixth Labour Government is going to be about putting people first and restoring fairness. This simply has to be what we see as a priority. We have come up with a detailed plan that shows how we can do that. We have come up with a detailed plan that shows how more of our families can be better off, how more of our families will have additional money in their pockets, how more of our families will not be having to go without to fund tax cuts for the top 10 percent of workers.

We have also come up with a plan that can address those deficits that I have identified in health, in education, and in housing. What is more, we can do it while still paying down debt. This is a fully costed plan that we have come up with that shows that we will do it. We have also said that we will stand up for New Zealanders. We will be there, and we will be a Government that backs our people. Yes, we will crack down on speculators by banning overseas speculators from buying existing houses. We will tighten the tax rules around that.

What will we do with that additional income from that additional tax revenue? We will use that money to make more of our homes warmer, healthier, and drier. We are not content to leave hundreds of thousands of homes uninsulated, like this Government is when it winds up its insulation package in the not very distant future. We will keep investing in insulating our homes, because the job is not done. But it does not matter how much insulation a home has. Unless there is an efficient and affordable and sustainable way to heat that house, it is not going to be warm. We have said we will make that funding available for those homes, as well.

We realise that even with good insulation and efficient and affordable forms of heating in a home, for someone on the pension or someone on the main benefit, winter power bills can still be a struggle. We are going to help people with their winter power bills, because we know we are a richer country when we are not having to pick up the health tab for people who cannot afford to heat their homes adequately. When I look around, when I meet with people in my electorate, I know what a difference that $700 or $450 a year is going to make to people.

It is not just the small things that we have observed that we know are going to make life better. We are going to be a Government that actually has a 21st century plan for infrastructure. We saw Jacinda announce on Sunday a light rail plan for Auckland. Well, we have a vision that sees commuter rail in Christchurch, also. We have a city that has grown and is reshaped in all different directions as we have recovered from our earthquake, and we are not content, as this Government is, to fund simply building back the 20th century. We want to look ahead and see what we require for the future, and commuter rail has to be part of that picture for us and we are absolutely committed to that.

We will back our young people. We are not going to call them pretty damn hopeless and consign them to a scrap heap. We will really back our young people by reducing New Zealand’s unemployment, getting apprenticeships up and running, and working with young people to make sure they are ready for the workforce and to be part of an exciting future that should be there for all New Zealanders, and not cast to the side.

There is a real choice for people with this election. Unlike National’s cynical tax bribe of $400 million to the top 10 percent of earners, Labour is sketching out a plan for a future. It is full of ideas. It is full of doing things differently. It is not just about the bland managerialism that we are seeing from the Government at the end of three terms. This is a Government that does not have ideas and certainly is not thinking about the future. It is not a Government that is addressing the most pressing issues of our time. It is a Government that is not even willing to think about what we have to do to address climate change in any meaningful way. It is not a Government that is thinking about what the health sector for the 21st century looks like. It is not a Government that is producing the kind of exciting education policy that my colleague Chris Hipkins is. It is not a Government that is looking out for its people, and that is what the sixth Labour Government will do.

I am a little baffled by the speech that was given by the member who just sat down, Dr Megan Woods. I know she was coughing, so I hope she is feeling a lot better. One of the things she said that baffled me was this whole idea that Labour is innovative and into the future and looking to the future—that Labour has brand new ideas and that it has actually got a brand new leader. It has just got a brand new leader, and she took some time to come up with this brand-spanking-new, big-hit policy announcement, and came up with a policy that was from, like, 10 years ago—one of Labour’s big hits that the electorate denounced and said it was not going to take. It was rejected by the electorate. Labour members have come back with this brand new idea, they claim, and they are innovative, they say.

It is a great pleasure to take a call in the third reading of the debate on the Appropriation Bill. The Estimates process is in fact a really important one. I would like to acknowledge all of my colleagues who have spoken on this topic here and through the select committee process, which actually lasted quite a few months.

I believe that this year’s Budget is one of the greatest yet, and is one of the reasons why the Opposition is very upset. I think Dr Megan Woods talked about how only the top 10 percent is benefiting. Really? I thought it was 1.3 million New Zealanders, who are, in fact, going to be taking home $26 in their pocket. They are going to be better off—1.3 million New Zealanders. Is that considered the top 10 percent of New Zealand taxpayers? I think we need to do better, obviously, on numeracy. Obviously, it did not work for the Labour members.

I am really very proud of the fact that I have chaired the Commerce Committee during the 51st Parliament to back innovation, economic development, and engagement with our telecommunications sector. I am very proud to be a National member. It is in fact a great honour to speak on the important work that the committee has undertaken. I think one of the things I was really proud of was that we were able to rewrite a piece of legislation as a select committee. That is something that does not often happen, but it was with the approval of the Minister that we did it, and I thank all of my members who helped the committee through that process, especially the secretariat, who work really, really hard.

At the Commerce Committee we heard a number of Ministers during the Estimates review process. I would like to thank them and the advisers and the officials for the information and the way that we engaged with them. Often I am very proud of the speed at which New Zealand has done the ultra-fast broadband network. I know a lot of people say that it is not fast enough, and often we all complain about that. I remember that a while ago—it was actually visitors from overseas who had in fact come to New Zealand. They were from my birth country, Korea. As everyone knows, Korea is really advanced in terms of technology and ultra-fast broadband. Download speeds over there are actually massive. When its president visited New Zealand, the media pack came to New Zealand, and they could not actually send video back to Korea. That was many years ago, back in 2009.

But since then, New Zealand has rolled out ultra-fast broadband networks, and, thanks to the great work of our previous communications Minister, Amy Adams, and now the Hon Simon Bridges, the second phase of the ultra-fast broadband roll-out is expected to reach 151 new towns and communities across New Zealand. By its completion in 2024, we will ensure that up to 85 percent of New Zealanders can access fibre and achieve better connectivity for their homes and workplaces. I note the important role that Crown Fibre Holdings, now to be renamed Crown Infrastructure Partners, has had in the roll-out, and that further work is under way to support increases to the roll-out speed and tightened time frames for the implementation.

I think Mr Ron Mark talked earlier about the fact that some New Zealand businesses are sold to overseas entities. I would just like to remind the honourable member that overseas investment is not necessarily a bad thing. You know, I get really tired of members who try to say that speculators happen to have my skin colour and who suggest that overseas investment happens only from countries that have my coloured skin. I recently had an opportunity to visit Invercargill. I went and visited my colleague Sarah Dowie, and one of the reasons I did that was that there is a great Korean company that has invested in Southland. It invested $130 million. It rescued a New Zealand company—actually, it was invested in by an American company; I guess nobody talks about American companies. But it was failing. It was failing badly. It was losing money, and the Korean company decided to invest in New Zealand and actually invested a lot of money into it.

I went to visit that company. It does not sell logs; it actually brings in logs. It pulps them. It makes boards for furniture-making. It does not send them back to Korea; it actually exports them to Japan and America and brings in a lot of export dollars for New Zealand. Its annual wage bill is $13 million. That does not go back to the country where they invest from; it is actually invested back into New Zealanders who are working for that company in New Zealand, who earn that wage. Also, there are the surrounding businesses, like the truck drivers who actually supply the company with the logs; the restaurants that are in Southland, in Invercargill; and the local shops that supply all of the workers. So it is the community that actually benefits as a result of the great big investment that happened, which happens to have come from an overseas country, and I celebrate that. I think it is actually a fantastic thing that it does that.

Talking about trade, we in this House have often talked about the great work that both Governments have done in terms of the free-trade agreements (FTAs) that we have actually signed. I am a very firm believer in that, and the National Government has actually worked really, really hard to make sure that our trading partners know we value them and that we expand those trading nations we deal with. One of the greatest things that I heard after the Korean FTA—I mean, it is not something you talk about often, but Korean people like deer velvet. I was talking to a deer velvet industry representative who said that within 6 months of the FTA between New Zealand and South Korea being ratified—within 6 months of the FTA being ratified—the exports of deer velvet actually doubled. That was not even a year; it was only 6 months. Their exports doubled, and that is a huge benefit for New Zealanders who are working in that field. The primary industry sector should benefit. I know that—I was actually talking to the Hon Anne Tolley with regard to the growth in the export of squash that is produced in her region.

Earlier, my colleague Jonathan Young mentioned the great work that the Hon Hekia Parata has done for our children as the Minister of Education. I would just like to honour her, actually, and say thank you to her. As Jonathan Young has mentioned, year 12 National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 achievement by Māori students is actually up 75 percent from 52 percent back in 2008. From 52 to 75 percent—that is a humungous jump, and it is all thanks to this National-led Government and the great work that the Hon Hekia Parata has done. I have always said this: I have seen the passion in her eyes, the twinkle, whenever she talks about the achievement of our children, and I would like to say that she has done a fantastic job.

Also, the other thing that I am very proud of this Government delivering is the free GP visits for all children under the age of 13. I think that is a fantastic thing. As a mother, as a parent, when children sometimes get sick, that is often the most stressful—that the Government is actually delivering free medical care for children under 13 is one of the best things that this Government has ever delivered.

They say a week is a long time in politics—in fact, the phrase was coined by a former British Prime Minister—and a week must have felt like a very long time in politics for the National MPs, who have never appeared more despondent and lifeless than they have over the past week. The contrast could not be greater. While the National MPs are busy staring at their feet dreading the forthcoming election, we on this side of the House are feeling upbeat and excited about the forthcoming general election. We cannot wait to get to the polling booth, because we are excited about the future and we are very much looking forward to the election campaign and the choice that New Zealanders will have to make.

The person who let the mask slip the most last week was the Hon Gerry Brownlee, when he decided to attack the media for being too sympathetic to Jacinda Ardern. He went out there and he said that Paddy Gower was a cheerleader because he had described Jacinda Ardern—he had told the truth about her—as positive, energetic, and in command, which, of course, she is, and Gerry Brownlee cannot handle the fact that someone is saying something nice about somebody other than him.

But I think that really highlights just how far out of touch the current National Government has become and it is another illustration of why it is time for change in New Zealand. This year’s Budget, which we are giving the final reading to today, is yet another example of that. The contrast is very clear: National, which has run out of ideas, simply wants to try to buy votes by giving people back a little bit of their money in the form of tax cuts. Labour is the only party in this House that is saying that health, education, and housing are more important than tax cuts. We have voted against tax cuts from the very beginning because we do not believe it is responsible for a Government to be cutting that vital funding when our social services are so in need.

It is only the Labour Party that has a plan to address the housing crisis—a real and concrete plan to address the housing crisis—and a plan for how to pay for it: by cracking down on overseas speculators, by building 100,000 affordable homes for first-home buyers through KiwiBuild, and by increasing State housing. Let us remember that State housing has been at its most affordable in New Zealand’s history when the State has played an active role in building State houses, and not only will we make sure that we build more State houses but we will ensure that all rental accommodation is warm and dry for those New Zealanders who cannot afford to buy their own home. This Government does not address any of those issues in this year’s Budget, and that is another reason why New Zealanders will be voting for change in the coming general election.

Only the Labour Party is willing to pump an additional $4 billion over the next 4 years into our education system, which is crying out for extra investment under this Government. While the Government boasts about the fact that it is spending more on this than ever before—more on early childhood education than ever before, more on schools than ever before, more on tertiary education than ever before—what they do not say is that is because there are more people in the system than ever before. There are more New Zealanders than there have ever been before, and when, actually, you look at it on a per-child basis, early childhood education has been cut every year that this National Government has been in office. When it is calculated on a per-child basis—

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: That is not true—about 60,000 students a year. Rubbish!

I say to the former Minister of Education over there that shrieking is not going to change the fact that under her watch, every year that she was the Minister, early childhood education was cut. The funding for early childhood education was cut. In the school sector funding was pretty much flat-lining for the entire time that that Minister was in office—flat-lining, flat-lining during the tenure of this National Government. We are saying that the education sector needs additional investment. It is one of the most important investments that we can make in New Zealand’s history, and that is why the Labour Party is saying that education is more important than tax cuts.

So let us look at what those tax cuts are going to deliver. What has Steven Joyce promised New Zealanders—the man my colleague Kelvin Davis described as being as authentic as a $3 bill? His tax cut package gives the wealthiest New Zealanders an extra $35 dollars a week, while the lowest paid get just over $5 a week. Someone on the average wage, apparently, gets $11 a week, but wait—there is a catch. They then take $10 a week back off the person on the average wage if they happen to live alone. They penalise single people by removing the single income-earner tax credit. So, basically, that $11 shrinks down to $1, which, of course, is why we are describing this move as the “One Dollar Bill Budget” from Prime Minister Bill English.

I found a picture of a $1 bill to symbolise this year’s Budget, because for many hard-working New Zealanders that is what they get; they get an extra $1 as a result of Bill English’s and Steven Joyce’s Budget. One-dollar bills, coincidentally, were phased out in New Zealand in 1990, the year that Bill English became a member of Parliament, when he made his transition from Treasury to being a parliamentarian. Anybody who says that somebody at the age of 30 does not have enough real-world experience to be a member of Parliament or perhaps Prime Minister of New Zealand should look at our current Prime Minister, who fits that description exactly. They should think very carefully about whether they think that that is a criticism that they should be levelling at others, because it is certainly one that I have heard coming from the National benches in the past few days, and, by implication, those members are simply criticising their current leader.

The Labour Party has been clear about its priorities for investing more in education. There are huge and emerging challenges in the education system—in the early childhood system, the schooling system, and the tertiary education system—that this Government simply is not addressing. One of the big ones is the looming teacher supply crisis. We know that we have a huge proportion of the teaching profession in New Zealand who will be retiring in the next decade. Schools in Auckland, in particular, are already saying that they cannot recruit teachers and fill vacancies in Auckland and other parts of the country where it is becoming too expensive to live. That problem is only going to get worse over the next decade as increasing numbers of baby-boomer teachers near the retirement age move out of the classroom, and schools will struggle to be able to fill those vacancies. The Labour Party has put forward a comprehensive plan to deal with this looming teacher supply crisis. We are the only party so far to have done so.

The National Government has failed to address the issue of school overcrowding and the fact that our school facilities are very, very rundown. Some schools are doing pretty well. They tend to be the schools in areas of population growth, which also, coincidentally, happen to be the wealthier-income areas, while schools in poorer communities are being left to rot into the ground. We have a plan to bring all of our school facilities up to scratch by 2030 at the latest, and the current Government is simply refusing to give a time frame—

💬 Hon Nikki Kaye: How much did you spend on it in the last Labour Government? You left us with rotting schools.

—on upgrading the schools that do desperately require work. The current Minister of Education chirps in. What year—this is a simple question, and I am happy to yield the remainder of my time, if she wants to give an answer. By what year will the National Government ensure that all school facilities are upgraded to a modern standard?

💬 Hon Nikki Kaye: Well, we have been upgrading them.

But what year—what year?

💬 Hon Nikki Kaye: We have been upgrading them.

There is no year. We have said that by 2030, all schools will be upgraded to a modern standard. They will no longer have cold, mouldy, leaky classrooms, and the current Government will not give that kind of commitment because it knows that the capital budgets that it is allocating will not be sufficient to bring schools up to scratch even within a decade—even within a decade. An entire generation of young people will pass through our school system with the shoddy buildings that this National Government will have left us with before it would even think about getting all of the schools up to scratch. That is not good enough. We have said that within 13 years—by 2030—we will have that problem addressed. We will make sure that schools are up to date.

We will also make sure the financial pressures that parents are facing are dealt with. Early childhood education fees have risen, on average, 25 percent under this National Government. We will deal with that by ensuring early childhood education services are properly funded. The so-called voluntary donations that parents are asked to pay by schools have increased by 50 percent under this Government. We will make sure that those voluntary donations are done away with by ensuring that schools get the funding that they need to deliver the curriculum. In tertiary education, the Labour Party will deliver 3 years of free post-school education for those who are leaving school and going on to further study, because we know that that is an investment in our future.

Labour is prioritising increasing social spending on health, education, and housing over tax cuts. We know that that is what New Zealanders want to see. They have a real alternative at this year’s election, and it is the Labour Party.

I am not sure about viewers at home, but I am a little bit confused by that last presentation by the member who has just taken his seat, Chris Hipkins. That was meant to be from a party that is relentlessly positive, and I was sitting there optimistically looking for something positive, not only relentless. Look, it is a very confusing time, actually, to be in this House. We have a Labour Party that has changed its faces, if you will, but not the substance of its arguments, and a Green Party, which is meant to be about aroha, love, and many other things, ripping itself apart.

I mention that because, in contrast, we can maintain a stable, strong Government here, which is incredibly proud of the Budget that it has put forward. It is a Budget that recognises where New Zealand has been, where New Zealand is, and where it is going. Why I bring those three up is that we know that New Zealand has been through a very difficult time over recent years, through the great financial crisis to the Canterbury earthquakes—

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Through 9 years of a National Government—that’s what’s been difficult about recent years.

—and the like. We have worked through that, and also—as has been helpfully pointed out—9 years of a Labour Government, which left us in quite a bind. So we have fixed things up over the course of these 9 years with, importantly, the support of New Zealanders. Obviously, as a Government, there is much that we can do—but it is actually working alongside New Zealanders, from those who run the large to the small businesses to those who work in the various sectors, be it education or health. Right across all of those sectors, we have worked together as a nation to restore the Government’s books to an excellent position, and we are in such a position that the Government in this Budget has been able to announce an array of new services, new funding, and new support.

With regard to the previous speaker, look, education is not my forte—my wife, who is a teacher, will tell you that—but, actually, we have just heard this relentlessly negative presentation by the Labour spokesperson on education around, well, education and, supposedly, this woeful funding. Well, right in front of me, in fact, is the Minister of Education and sitting down the back of the Chamber is a former Minister of Education. If they were speaking here today, they would tell you of the enormous amount of good work and effort that is going into the education system through, obviously, their leadership and that of their associates but, actually, by the teachers, the principals, the teacher-aides, and others on the ground. The enormous amount of funding that is going into new classrooms and, in fact, fixing up classrooms as well—those classrooms that the Labour Party talks about at length, which it neglected year after year. It has been this Government and these Ministers who are now making the efforts.

Speaking of my own electorate in Tāmaki, it has only been in recent days that even more classrooms were announced. I should probably rephrase that in some way, because just about every year that I have been in Parliament, in Budget after Budget, new classrooms have been introduced. In the recent array of Budget announcements, three of my schools have more classrooms. Stonefields School, one of the most amazing modern learning environments—in fact, I encourage anyone in the House to go and visit—has new classrooms. St Thomas’s School, a really excellent school in Kohimārama developing for an ever-growing roll, has more classrooms. The most wonderful school in Meadowbank—in fact, it is hard to explain verbally, I would have to say, but imagine, effectively, an intermediate school and a primary school that straddle a valley. It is the most bucolic area, if you will, in the middle of a city. It is well worth a visit. It has been given new funding for education and new funding for classrooms. So I find it very difficult to reconcile, as a constituent MP, these suggestions that there are no moneys.

I look to the innovations around the partnership schools. What a marvellous addition to education there. I think of the likes of the Villa Education Trust. It is an amazing, amazing result that this trust is developing, not for the sake of the school itself but for the students. I am really looking forward to this campaign to hear the deputy leader and the leader of the Labour Party argue this out because, of course, they have conflicting points of view on this. I will be interested in what the wider Māori caucus has to say on this, but I will not put a certain member on the spot here.

That will be a fascinating tension, but I, for one, see real value in having these partnership schools. In fact, I see it as part of diversity, really—which is a word that gets bandied about a lot in this House, usually by those who do not really believe in it—and, actually, in the education system, why not have some diversity? We have integrated schools, we have special schools, we have private schools, and we have State schools, and we heard—I was sitting on the Education and Science Committee at the time—particularly from the Māori and Pasifika communities that they want this. They want this, and I am very proud to see that we continue as a Government to support those.

Look, as most people know, my particular interest at the moment—primarily through chairing the Health Committee—is health. There is a record $16.8 billion being spent—the highest health spend ever. I keep reiterating that in this House because there is mischief being made by minor parties, like the Labour Party, that the spending has actually been cut. You cannot increase spending by I think it is about $3.9 billion—you will have to correct me on the figures; I am talking off the cuff—which is an enormous increase, and then say it is a decrease. I have said many, many times that when Labour comes out and says there is $1.7 billion missing or $2.5 billion missing, that is not an actual fact. That is purely what it believes should be spent. It is a utopian view, and I continue to be surprised that those members limit themselves to only a $1.7 billion underspend.

This Government is incredibly proud of its record in health. Anyone who works in the health sector knows that health always is and always will be challenging, and one of the areas that often comes up is around mental health. I think what the Government is doing in that space is actually quite incredible and quite comprehensive. Really importantly, in this Budget there is around about $224 million set aside for mental health. It is partly supporting existing services, but about $100 million of that has been ring-fenced to work across agencies.

Why I mention that cross-agency funding is because of something we heard from the Mental Health Commissioner last week before the Health Committee. He was speaking very clearly of the need to work across agencies. I am not sure what input he had, but we have seen the Minister of Health and others front-foot that early by seeing a particular amount of money—like I said, $100 million—put aside in that space.

Look, there is more funding to district health boards (DHBs). Over $40 million - plus a year, I believe, is going into the likes of the Auckland District Health Board. That is just indicative. It is right across the country. DHBs are where the tyre hits the road for most health spending, be it primary, secondary, or tertiary care. This is the Government that has continued to deliver more and more operations. The demand keeps growing and so the challenges will keep growing, not only to the DHBs but to the Government as well, to work out how to fund these.

The other area, of course, in health is always around pharmacological products—so drugs—into the community. There have been about two announcements around this particular appropriation of more funding into Pharmac. It is going to be a continuing challenge, I would suggest, and I think this Government is up for it, of how to embrace a slow change, now, with drugs between those that manage care and those that cure. Why I am putting that up is that I think that one of the great drugs that have recently been funded is around hepatitis C. I think it was about 2 years ago on the Health Committee that we heard a number of people speaking to the need for a fresh approach here. Particularly, again, it was that the older drug products actually just managed the condition. Now there are actually drugs out there that cure it, and about 50,000 New Zealanders are going to benefit from this Government providing more money to Pharmac to ensure that those new drugs are available.

It is one of many that have been announced, of course—we will remember a few months back the whole discussion around pembrolizumab, the likes of Keytruda and Opdivo, working particularly against melanoma. I mention that we are funding that drug now, but, as you may appreciate, Mr Assistant Speaker, there is the call that that drug be looked at for other conditions—lung cancer comes to mind, and actually, while I am standing on my feet, I acknowledge the likes of Philip Hope and the Lung Foundation for the advocacy they are providing.

This is a Government that is responding. We heard that the ambulances needed to be double-crewed; we have found the money for that. All ambulances moving forward will be double-crewed. We have heard, particularly from those within the disability community, that they want more support, and actually, through the work of the Minister for Disability Issues, Nicky Wagner, there is more money available there, particularly in pilot programmes that enable disabled people to take much more control of their lives and, I think really importantly, of the governmental moneys that they are receiving. I think that is an incredibly positive situation.

I actually stepped right past—shame on me—one of the biggest announcements in health, which is, of course, $2 billion for the pay equity settlement for the carers. It is terrible for me to forget, because, actually, I had a whole lot of people from the retirement and rest home industry from my electorate in my office yesterday. What a difference that has made for those people who have been, in effect, underpaid, who have seen from 1 July an incredible increase in their wages. That in and of itself is a win, but fundamentally and importantly there is also a whole training mechanism now. I think that also plays into something for the Government. It is not simply about throwing money at people and dusting off one’s hands; it is how we create a pathway that enables people to become more and more independent and to move up the chain. So there is great news in health; I am pleased to take this call.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker, tēnā koutou e Te Whare. It is my privilege to speak in this debate, the last speaker for the Greens on what, hopefully, will be the final Budget of the National Government. When I look at the Budget that this Government has delivered, I would say that what we have here is a lost opportunity. We have a vision where all our people, especially our children, have warm, safe, dry homes to live in; where families have enough to get by on—to live on, not just to provide shelter, and currently most families are spending a huge amount of their income on providing that shelter. So not just to provide the shelter, pay the rent or the mortgage; not just to buy the bare essentials to get by, like food and clothing; and not be in the situation of having to choose between feeding the kids and paying the power bill: we have a vision where our families have enough to live on. We have a vision where kids go to school with full bellies, with shoes, with raincoats; where they go to well-funded schools, where they are ready to learn; and where the teachers are not exhausted from the underfunding and overwork that they are facing, and where they are paid adequately, too.

We have a vision where our water is treated like the taonga that it is, where we can trust that what comes out of our tap will not poison us, where we can swim in our rivers without getting sick. We have a vision. We have a vision where not only our children but also our protected species are thriving; where we can arrest the decline of our endangered birds, like our takahē, our kiwi, and our kōkako; and where our treasured places, our wild places, are protected, and are protected from exploration by mining companies that are greedily wanting to suck the minerals out of the ground and destroy it for all of us.

We have a vision where our country stands up and takes our place globally, where we say to the rest of the world, “Yes, we will increase our refugee quota. We won’t have just 750 quota refugees that we will accept in this country.”, like we have since 1987. I know that it is going up to 1,000 next year, but we could do so much better than that. We have a vision where we could have 5,000 refugees, 4,000 of them as quota refugees and another 1,000 supported by ordinary Kiwi families. We could do that, and that would bring us up to just what Australia is doing per capita. I do not know about you, but I actually hate being beaten by the Australians in anything.

We also think that taking our place globally means that we would do more to meet our targets about reducing our emissions. We absolutely signed up to reduce them, but we have relied on sleight of hand to try to meet those targets. We have been buying credits, spending about $10 million a year to make us look better in the eyes of the world, when we could actually be doing real things. We have a plan where we could keep that $10 million. We have a plan for an investment infrastructure fund. We have a plan where we could invest to reduce our emissions. Instead of enriching other countries, where they are using that money to really become carbon neutral, we could do that here, and what a difference that would make to our economy. It is such a smart way of spending the money that we gather as a nation.

Instead, Budget 2017 lacks vision. This Government has delivered the usual election bribe of tax cuts to the wealthy, while our people, our public services, and our environment lack investment. The Government’s insistence on sleight-of-hand tactics is a false economy. Rather than address the fact that there are 215,000 children living in poverty in this country—and that costs us about $8 billion; that is what child poverty costs all of us—rather than invest in those children, this Government gives tax cuts to the wealthy, to the people who do not actually really need it. This Government has lacked investment in building homes, homes for the 41,000 homeless people in this country, and it is shameful that there are that many people who do not have homes in this country. Instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on temporary solutions like putting families up in motels, we could have been investing in our people by building social housing, the social housing that they desperately need. That is definitely what we need. Meanwhile, in Manurewa, where my colleague Marama Davidson comes from, two rough sleepers lost their lives in the last month because this Government has not invested in its people.

This Government shows no compassion. This Government has ensured that Housing New Zealand does not house New Zealanders; it actually makes it more difficult for them. The free market is broken. It does not work for the most vulnerable people in our communities, and it never has. Those who are vulnerable remain vulnerable. Where is the investment? I would say that investing in private prisons, which this Government seeks to do under this Budget, is not the right investment. That is not housing. Well, I suppose it is a type of housing, but it is a false economy, and it is an irresponsible Government that does that. I believe that we should be judged as a Parliament on how we treat our most vulnerable.

I apologise for interrupting the member, but in accordance with the determination of the Business Committee, I call on Catherine Delahunty to make her valedictory statement.

Debate interrupted.