Budget Debate

I move, That all the words after “That” be deleted and be replaced with “this House has no confidence in the Government because it cannot manage the economy properly, has no plan to tackle to the cost of living crisis, and New Zealand is going backwards.”

Well, that speech and this Budget is just another example of this Government gaslighting the country, because Chris Hipkins and Grant Robertson are trying to tell Kiwis that they’re doing a splendid job managing the economy and everything is just fine and being well managed. But I have to say it is not fine; New Zealanders know it’s not fine. I can tell you I know it’s not fine and deep down Chris Hipkins and Grant Robertson know it’s not fine either. Sadly, it isn’t fine and New Zealanders know it, and there’s 50 percent of Kiwis now who worry about money on a daily basis—they know it’s not fine. The 430,000 Kiwis who have debt arrears—they know that the economy’s not been well managed and things are not fine. Sadly, the 20,000 Kiwi families who actually are facing a loss of their houses because their mortgages—they can’t afford them anymore. They know things aren’t fine as well.

What they know today is that Budget 2023 doesn’t change their situation, because this was presented as the “no-frills Budget” but what we’ve got today is the “blow-out Budget”, because what we’ve seen is a continued addiction to spending: spending up to $137 billion—almost doubled since this Government came to power. We see a huge growth in debt to $97 billion by 2026. We are seeing massive Budget deficits, up $7.1 billion larger this year. And the implication of all of that is that we actually have Treasury—page 1 of the executive summary of the Budget—saying interest rates are going to remain higher for longer. Just think about the pain and suffering that causes for Kiwis who have a mortgage. Every single one of them doing it tougher, harder, for longer. Not a single cent of tax relief going to hard-working Kiwis; not nothing—not nothing.

So the Government said this is the “bread and butter Budget”, but it’s delivered on the backdrop of food prices up 28 percent, and the Prime Minister talks about bread and butter a lot, but bread is actually up 39 percent under Labour, and those sausage rolls that he likes to have selfies with, well, they’re actually up 36 percent under Labour.

So what we see in this Budget is no ideas—no ideas to drag New Zealand out of the economic hole, no ideas to tackle the underlying causes of inflation, and there are no ideas in here to stop single, young people shooting off overseas and joining the 25,000 other Kiwi citizens that have bought one-way tickets to Sydney or Melbourne or London. In fact, last night we saw a rather perverse thing happen. What we saw was Chris Hipkins has taken $10,000 of hard-working taxpayers’ money and he’s actually advertising in Australia to say how much easier it is to get ahead in Australia than it is here in New Zealand—unbelievable. I have to say, Prime Minister, your job is to fight to keep Kiwis here at home and to create a country that can deliver a better future for them here at home.

Now, this is the “blow-out Budget”, and it’s just spend more and expect Kiwis to pay for it—that’s what it is; that’s what we’ve come to expect. But I’m not surprised. You know, we’ve had a change of Prime Minister. He’s tried to adopt some new language and some new words, but the reality of it is just the same old Labour Government with the same tired, failed approach to running the economy. This is Grant Robertson’s sixth Budget but I sincerely hope, and for the sake of all New Zealanders, it has to be his last Budget because he is totally, utterly, completely addicted to spending. Every Budget he stands up and promises he’s going to deliver it this time—“This time I’ll get better; this time I’ll do better.” But every time he blows it out, and that’s because he’s addicted to spending and he’s an addict. As a result, he doesn’t want to admit that he’s got a problem.

The sad thing is that the new Prime Minister—his new boss—isn’t tough enough to tell him, “Hey, sunshine, we need to make an intervention here. That should get it sorted; get you back on track.” So it is very, very simple: the New Zealand people cannot afford another three years of this Labour Government.

Let’s talk about the economy, because the forecasts in this Budget make for incredibly grim reading. The books show us that there is more economic pain on the way, and that is thanks to this Government with no economic plan. Inflation is high, and the Government’s spending is going to make it worse. Interest rates, by their own admission, are going to be there for longer and stay higher for longer because of Grant Robertson’s and Chris Hipkins’ reckless addiction to spending. That will smash every single Kiwi with a mortgage up and down this country, and they’re going to feel that pain. The other thing that was obvious in the books is that unemployment is set to climb higher, and it’s higher thanks to this Government’s economic mismanagement.

Now, I want to be really clear. I want to explain to all New Zealanders, actually, how did we get here. How have Chris Hipkins and Grant Robertson so badly mismanaged this economy and got us into this mess? This is how it starts: it starts with record levels of Government spending—in fact, New Zealand was the second-highest in the development world in Government spending. Then they coupled that with extraordinary monetary policy. We were the fifth-highest country in the world printing cash. And then, just for good measure, they restricted immigration and shut the joint down and actually created domestic inflation. So what happened was New Zealand got flooded with money, it popped asset prices, and it embedded domestic inflation. That high inflation now means that we have to deal with high interest rates. It means that we deal with a shrinking economy and slowing growth for longer. That’s what’s happening here. That’s the pattern of economic history. Those are the lessons of economics that are well known.

I have to say, up and down this country, I go everywhere, every week, and I see New Zealanders that are doing it incredibly tough. They can gaslight as much as they want, and say that everything’s going to be fine and it’s all well managed; it’s not. I’ve sat across the table from families that are in budgeting services, and they are under immense stress and anxiety within that family, trying to work out how they reconcile their own Budget to pay for a big jump up in their mortgage costs. I’ve talked to Kiwis who have had to sit down with their kids and stop the music lessons and stop the swimming lessons, because they can’t afford it anymore because they’ve got to meet those mortgage repayments. I’ve actually gone and sat and talked with Kiwis who actually walk the supermarket aisles, looking for what they can buy, the basics that they want to be able to buy with the fixed budgets that they have, and they can’t, and so they go off to a food bank because that’s the only place they can get some support. Well, I want to say to all those Kiwis: you’ve got two people to blame on this; you’ve got to blame Chris Hipkins and you’ve got to blame Grant Robertson for creating that pain and suffering for you.

I want to tell you that it didn’t need to be like this. This Budget needed to deliver a plan for New Zealanders to grow the economy, and it didn’t. This Budget needed to deliver a plan to deal with the underlying drivers of inflation and not just more band-aids, but it didn’t. Because we know that a strong economy is the way in which we get to lift incomes, it’s how we get to borrow with the cost of living, and it’s how we get to afford the public services that we so desperately deserve, that’s why we care about this stuff. That’s why we care about good, strong economic management, because that’s what it enables us to do for this country. All we get is Labour’s plans to spend billions of dollars more in an inflationary bonfire. Let me be clear: Labour has blown the Budget, they have blown the books, and we are going to be suffering with more pain.

So let’s talk a little bit about spending, because, as I said, the addiction to spending is even more intense than it’s ever been before. I have to say, I thought it was quite outrageous, quite incredible that this week our Prime Minister couldn’t front up and actually explain how much his Government is spending—he didn’t know, and, frankly, didn’t think it was probably that important. I reckon all that is is just massive disrespect to taxpayers—massively disrespectful—because he doesn’t care, he doesn’t understand the numbers, and he just thinks it’s his money, he’ll just keep taking it, and actually treating them like a bottomless ATM machine.

Let’s work through those numbers, because we now have debt set to climb to $95 billion. Do you know what the interest bill on that is each day? It’s $22 million—$22 million that we don’t get to spend on something else. We’ve got Government spending ballooning out to $137 billion. How much do you reckon that costs each Kiwi family? It costs $23,000—$23,000 more each year because of Government spending. There is $61 billion more in spending, and absolutely nothing to show for it.

And what have we seen from this Government? We’ve just got a culture of excuses and we’ve got a culture of addiction to spending; $1.8 billion on consultants, yet Chris Hipkins told them “Don’t spend on consultants”, but they kept doing it anyway; $200 million on a failed polytechnic merger, 80 percent of the staff want to leave, 10 percent less enrolments and looking for more money with more deficits; $100 million on Government advertising; $500 million for very big companies on climate subsidies; almost $500 million on a health bureaucracy that should be going to the front line; $50 million on that bike bridge—that was special, wasn’t it? Wasn’t that just special? The bike bridge was very special! Willie spent $16 million on the Radio New Zealand - TVNZ merger, and we all know how that ended. And we’ve got 200 comms staff now at Health New Zealand and more at the ministry. Frankly, I’d sooner have more nurses. I’d sooner have 200 nurses, not 200 comms staff. And we’ve got a tenfold increase of comms staff at Michael Wood’s New Zealand Transport Agency. And then we’ve got the beauty, the $30 billion on light rail that just keeps sitting out there, coming one day—coming one day.

So let’s be clear: they have blown the budget. Grant Robertson spent billions of dollars. He’s blown out the books. We’ve got massive deficits. We’ve got years of deficits ahead of us based off this. He’s blown out the credit card and debt is spiralling up to $95 billion. And I have to say, Chris Hipkins doesn’t get it. After six years in Government he doesn’t get that every dollar the Government spends has to be earned by someone. It has to be earned by a Kiwi who’s building a business in very tough conditions at the moment. It has to be earned by a Kiwi who’s working hour after hour after hour just to put food on the table. And it has to be earned by Kiwis who get up and go to work, who get the kids to school, who make the school lunches, and, actually, want to get ahead. They pay the taxes and he spends it and he wastes it.

But rather than confront their own, you know, addiction to spending, what do they do? They look to blame others. And so they blame COVID—they blame COVID. And this year, they’re going to be spending tens of billions of dollars more than we had during the COVID period. Unbelievable—quite unbelievable. And they make any excuse to avoid actually facing up to their addiction.

Now, we heard a little bit of trying to be financially responsible in that speech. You know, Grant Robertson, at the end, he gave a good sort of pitch to say he’s being very responsible. You know, it just goes on and on. It’s quite incredible. But it was a grovelling speech. It’s a bit like saying, “I want the Diet Coke to go with the Double Quarter Pounder meal”; you know what I mean? “I feel better, you know, because I’m trying to do that”. But that’s what’s happened here. But, again, he’s like an addict who says, “I don’t have a problem, I’m going to be better this time, I promise”, you know? And we’ve had six of these things now, and he keeps saying, “I’ll get better” each and every time but it hasn’t been the case.

Now, let’s talk about tax, because it is incredible that under Labour it’s always a time to spend up but it’s never a time for tax relief for the good, hard-working people of New Zealand. They’re happy inflation-adjusting benefits, they’re happy inflation-adjusting the minimum wage, they’re happy inflation-adjusting superannuation payments and departmental budgets. But they refuse to inflation adjust tax thresholds for hard-working Kiwis getting up and going to work each day. And I’ll tell you why they won’t do it; it’s because they’ve got a culture of entitlement at the heart of this Government, right? They think they are entitled to your money. They think they are entitled to waste it. And as we’ve seen over the last few months with all the shenanigans and all the comings and goings, they think they are entitled to rule, and that’s just not the case.

So sun, wind, rain, or shine, Chris Hipkins and Grant Robertson keep coming up with excuses about why Kiwis don’t get their own money back, why they can’t spend it as they see fit. And that’s because they’ve got an addiction to spending—a billion dollars more each and every week is what they’re spending, $100 million extra in tax is what they’re raising each and every day, and they have carried on failing to address the drivers of the cost of living crisis, failing to do anything to grow the economy and failing to deliver meaningful tax relief for New Zealanders.

And I want you to be under no illusions, because if they get back in later this year they are going to hit Kiwis with more taxes, you know, because the addiction to spending doesn’t go away; you’ve got to go find the money to pay for it. And Chris Hipkins supported David Parker. David Parker noodles away on his Piketty projects. He’s the great man who gave us that genius idea of the KiwiSaver tax. Remember that one? Yep. So he’s down there in the basement somewhere, and he’s noodling away, and he’s dreaming up new ways for new taxes. Because they need it, right? They need it. They need to keep new taxes so they can fund that addiction that they’ve got going on.

That’s why you won’t hear Chris Hipkins rule out a capital gains tax, will you? You won’t hear him rule out a wealth tax. He’s still got David working away on it. You won’t hear him ruling out an inheritance tax. But I want New Zealanders to be under no illusion: it’s coming—it’s coming. If they get back in, they’re going there, rest assured. They have to go there because they’ve got such an addiction to spending; they’ve got so many deficits and so much more debt to pay off. I want to say to all Kiwis: if you’ve got a farm, watch out; if you’ve got a KiwiSaver account, watch out. I want to say to you: if you’re doing the right thing, trying to build up a nest egg for the future, watch out because they’re coming for you—they are coming for you, no doubt about it.

This Government, I think, is the “Gaslighting Government”. They are literally a gaslighting Government. They have the audacity to stand up and tell you how it’s all fine—“Actually, everything’s just great!”—and yet we know the reality is so, so different. They will look you in the eye and say everything is great. Remember Chris Hipkins said, “The healthcare system? It’s got so much better in the last three years—so much better.” I want to tell you that Kiwis know it: just saying it’s so doesn’t make it so. That’s not how it works. It can’t work that way, and it’s just time for this Government to start delivering.

We’ve talked a lot about the amount of spending that this Government is doing—that’s one thing—but they also need to be laser-focused on the quality of the spending that they’re delivering and the value for money that they’re delivering to the New Zealand taxpayer, because, putting aside the sheer amount of money they’re spending, that’s where I actually think this Government has failed. It has failed to deliver outcomes and to get things done for the New Zealand people. They talk about all the activity, but they never talk about achievement. They’re two different concepts—they are two different concepts. One is inputs and one is outputs. When you’re spending a billion dollars a week, we have so little to show for it.

Let’s just talk about education, because that track record is atrocious. I’ve got to say: who was the Minister of Education for the last five years? Who did that job? Oh, Chris Hipkins did that job! And now they’re spending $6 billion every single year, and they’ve got nothing to show for it. Here we are in a developed country and 53 percent of our kids do not go to school regularly. We have 100,000 chronically absent from school. Half of our kids arrive at high school not on expectations as to where they should be academically. We had half of our 15-year-olds fail the most basic maths, reading, and writing tests—that they need to succeed in the world. We had the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study reading score come through just yesterday: an all-time low—all-time low—and now we have New Zealand out of the top 10 countries in the developed world on maths, reading, and science. I think that’s just shocking.

So what do you need to do? You need to focus on the basics. You need to make sure you teach your kids an hour of maths, an hour of reading, and an hour of writing every single day in primary and intermediate school. That’s where your education priorities should be. That’s called “getting outcomes”. That shouldn’t be controversial, I would have thought—I wouldn’t have thought that would be controversial—but the reality is that Labour doesn’t support it. They’re not going to give it a chance, they’re not focused on the basics, and they have no ideas on education.

Let’s talk a little bit about health, in the time that we have, because that is another story: $12.4 billion more on the health system, and yet we have absolutely nothing to show for it. Just think about it: child immunisation rates have fallen off a cliff; surgery waiting times are at record highs; cancer treatment delays are at record highs; specialist waiting times are at record highs; and we’ve got emergency department (ED) waiting times at record highs. Once Ayesha Verrall sorts out the data, we still know that we’ve actually got record highs. Every single health performance measure in this country has gone backwards. It is utterly, utterly unacceptable, and we have spent so much money. What happened to the $2 billion on mental health—$2 billion on mental health? We have an individual spending 94 hours in an ED, waiting to get access to mental health services. The only area I think Health New Zealand has excelled in is that they have got a lot of communications staff, and there is no shortage of communications staff at Health New Zealand. Your surgery won’t happen on time but, if you look on the website, it looks just lovely! No ideas from Labour.

Now, what is obvious from this Budget is that this is a Government that has run out of ideas. It’s run out of energy, and you’ve only got to look at the Ministers opposite us to see that they’re dead inside. They should be getting Grant Robertson cost of living payment from last year! That’s how they are. But, I have to say, despite all the challenges, I remain incredibly optimistic about the future of this great country of ours. We have a great country. We’ve had some big challenges. They have to deal with a really unsupportive Government, but New Zealanders are extraordinary. They are determined and creative and innovative and hard-working people who want to get ahead, and we want Kiwis who get up and milk cows and go to work and get their kids to school and want the best for their family. We want to back them, and we are going to back them, because we have incredible Kiwis who want to go out in the world, and they want to beat the world. And that’s fantastic.

Under a National Government, we’re going to celebrate success, not tax it. We’re not going to tax it; we’re going to celebrate it. We are going to restore the promise of New Zealand, because the promise of New Zealand was very simple: it didn’t matter where you came from; it was about where you were going. That’s the deal. The other deal was that if you’re prepared to work hard, in the best country on earth, you can get ahead and you can do well for you and your family. We have a common-sense plan to do that. National is going to fix the economy so that we can deliver better health and education, and we can restore law and order. National is going to get New Zealand back on track.

Budget day is a day for details, a day for plans, a day for vision. We just heard none of those things from the Leader of the Opposition. The biggest blowout that we have seen today was the release of hot air from the Leader of the Opposition opposite. It is no wonder his own colleagues have started to refer to him as “Captain Cliché”, because after three years to come up with a credible plan for what National would do for New Zealanders, we heard nothing today from the Leader of the Opposition about what a National Government would stand for, about what a National Government would do. All we heard, as we have heard for the last three years, is more running down of the New Zealand economy, more running down of New Zealanders—how out of touch can you get?

This is a great day for New Zealanders. It is a great Budget for Kiwi families. In a cost of living crisis, New Zealanders know that they can trust this Government to have their backs and to work to ease the pressure that they face, because that is exactly what we have done today. We know that families are under the pump at the moment; they are feeling the pressure. We know that household budgets are stretched, and the answer to that needed to be a Budget that is going to support families not just now but also in the future, one that lays the foundations for a better future for New Zealand, because that is what this Budget does. This Budget, unashamedly, is about balance. It is a proudly Labour Budget, about making targeted and affordable investments in the cost of living, in providing relief for New Zealanders who are needing that, and it is also about making sure that the future can be better.

When I became Prime Minister in January, I said that we would get back to basics, and that is what we have been doing. I said that we would prioritise bread and butter issues like the cost of living and investing in the public services that New Zealanders rely on every day, and that is what this Budget does. I said that we would be focused on infrastructure, because this is the Government of infrastructure. You might hear others talking about it, but they don’t deliver. This is the Government that is delivering when it comes to infrastructure. This is a Government focused on creating the conditions for a growing economy.

I heard the message from New Zealanders that they thought that in some areas we were doing too much, too fast, and that they wanted to see us focus on the basic issues that are affecting them right here and right now, and that is what we have been doing. The first step of that was a reprioritisation exercise, making sure that the Government’s energy, its resources, and funding are focused on the issues that are most important to New Zealanders right now. That meant focusing on the issues that are about supporting working families, supporting people in need, supporting our businesses, and building the infrastructure that we need, and that is what we have focused on.

We have saved $4 billion in this Budget to reinvest in those most important priorities, to focus on the things that matter. We’ve continued to deliver for families, for students, for older New Zealanders. We’ve freed up more money and more resource so that we can focus on making sure businesses have access to the skilled labour that they need. We have continued to boost funding for the public services that New Zealanders rely on every day, and, of course, I am very proud of the work that we have done in the past few months to progress our international trade agenda, including through bringing into force the free-trade agreement with the United Kingdom—something that is going to be a boon for New Zealand exporters.

We’ve continued to work on improving the pay and conditions of New Zealand workers, because on this side of the House, we believe that if you work hard, you should be able to get ahead and that that is not the preserve only of those on the highest incomes; that should go to those who are on the lowest incomes as well. We don’t call them “bottom feeders”, on this side of the House; we call them Kiwi workers. They deserve a Government that’s got their backs, and that’s what they have.

This is a Government that is focused on ensuring that New Zealanders get the support they need and that our Kiwi kids get the best start in life possible, and I am so proud of the work that this Government has been doing in that area. I’m also proud of the work that we have been doing to support older New Zealanders. We have increased superannuation—one of the biggest increases to superannuation that our older New Zealanders have seen in quite some time. There have been minimum wage increases to make sure that the Kiwis who go out to work every day and flog their guts out actually get rewarded for that and can actually make ends meet. We are making sure that our benefits are keeping up with the rising cost of living, and we’re providing support for students. These are all things we have invested in in this year’s Budget. We’ve supported over a million Kiwis with the winter energy payment—thank you, Grant Robertson, for that.

We are building 3,000 new classrooms because we are not content to have kids learning in hallways and gymnasiums and libraries, which is the situation we inherited from the last Government, and we are very close to putting 1,800 extra police on the beat since we became the Government, because under the last Government the ratio of police to New Zealanders went backwards. We have been focused on keeping our community safer by putting more cops on the beat because, again, those members might talk a big game when it comes to law and order, but they just don’t deliver. And I make no apology for the fact that under this Government, our teachers, our nurses, our doctors, our firefighters, our police, our social workers, and our front-line public servants have been receiving the pay increases that they deserve, which stands in stark contrast to the nine years prior to the time that we became the Government.

I want a country where if you work hard, you can get ahead. I want to live in a New Zealand where the circumstances into which you were born do not dictate the opportunities that you have in life or hold you back. I want a country where parents who work hard can provide a better life for their children, a better life than the one that they might have had, through their hard work. I want to live in a New Zealand where effort and contribution are recognised and celebrated and rewarded, and where all New Zealanders get a share in the future prosperity of this country.

I want to live in a country that is proud to care for the most vulnerable among us, and that is what our Government is delivering. But I also want New Zealand to be a country that is optimistic about the future, that is outward looking, and that is confident and ready to take on the world, and that is what this Government is committed to delivering. We are not running down the country; we are proud of New Zealand. We are proud to be Kiwis and we are proud to represent New Zealand on the world stage with optimism and with confidence because we know that that is what is going to deliver a better deal and a better economy for New Zealanders.

I spoke about the work we did after I became Prime Minister around reprioritisation, and today’s Budget is the second step in that plan. It is the Budget that sets out our new focus and new direction, one that supports Kiwi families today and builds for tomorrow. The cost of living package in this Budget will make a real difference for millions of New Zealanders, and it will make lives better. One of best investments we can make as a country is the investment we make in our children, our tamariki, and I am so proud of the work that we are doing in early childhood education. Through this Budget, 40,000 additional Kiwi kids will be eligible for 20 hours a week of free early childhood education. It was a Labour Government that introduced 20 hours a week of free early childhood education, and it is a Labour Government that is expanding it.

We are committed to addressing issues around the cost of healthcare and making sure that cost is not a barrier to Kiwis living healthy lives. The work that we are doing in this Budget to scrap the $5 prescription co-charge will deliver for New Zealanders. It will help to keep people out of the health system when they don’t need to be there. It will help those New Zealanders who aren’t collecting their prescriptions because they can’t afford to have them, and those are many of the same Kiwis that end up in our health system avoidably because cost is a barrier. The work to scrap the co-payment is in stark contrast with the last Government, who increased it. When the times got tough—when the going got tough, they decided to clobber New Zealanders who needed healthcare by increasing co-payments for prescriptions.

Our Government recognises that when times are tough, making sure Kiwis can access the healthcare they need is one of the most important things that a Government can do, and that is exactly what we are doing. Reportedly, 135,000 New Zealanders went without collecting their prescriptions because they couldn’t afford to collect them. This Budget delivers for them. It delivers for elderly New Zealanders who rely on those prescriptions. It makes sure that Kiwis can access the healthcare that they need. Costs should not be a barrier to healthcare.

But, furthermore, there is more around the cost of living. Making sure that Kiwis can get around is also a very important priority for this Government. This year’s Budget extends free public transport for five- to 12-year-olds indefinitely so that our children can get around on free public transport, and it extends half-price public transport for 13- to 25-year-olds, which is a real boon for our students getting around and a real saving to Kiwi families who are wanting to support their kids through their educational journey. It will make a very big difference: 1.6 million New Zealanders are now eligible for free or half-price public transport. To put that into context, for the average Kiwi family with two kids using public transport each week, they will be saving $30 a week. That is going to make a difference.

Since coming into Government, we have provided cheaper public transport fares for 2.7 million New Zealanders. We’re working to reduce their power bills too, with the Warmer Kiwi Homes retrofits: 100,000 more homes are warmer and drier because of the investments that we are making in this year’s Budget.

We know that after the last 18 months, it’s been tough for New Zealand families. Treasury is now forecasting yearly economic growth of 3.2 percent, and they are suggesting that we could avoid a recession altogether. That’s not by accident; it’s by careful economic management, and I want to acknowledge the work of our finance Minister, Grant Robertson, and his careful stewardship of our finances.

Most importantly, the Treasury are forecasting that our inflation rate will get back to within the 1 to 3 percent target rate by the end of next year. That will help New Zealand families to get ahead. One of the most important things that we can do in this Budget is to make sure that we keep the inflation rate pointing downwards, and that is what this Budget has been focused on doing.

But Budgets need to be about more than just the here and now; they’ve got to also be about investing for the future. Even in a cost of living crisis, we need to be building for tomorrow, and planning to come out the other side of the economic challenge that we have experienced. This Budget sets aside an additional $6 billion to build community resilience, and haven’t the events of the recent six months shown just how important that is. We want to build back better. We want to build back more resilient, and that is what we will do.

We inherited a housing crisis when we became the Government, and if there’s one thing you know about a housing crisis, it’s you don’t hock off the limited affordable rental houses you have; you build some more. That is what this Government is doing, and that work is continuing with the extra 3,000 public homes that we are investing in, in this year’s Budget.

I make no apology for the fact that we are spending an extra $1 billion on our health workforce. The people who go out there and deal with some of our most vulnerable New Zealanders every day—they deserve it. Our Budget is backing our exporters, and it’s backing new and emerging sectors of our economy—our game developers, our digital and tech sectors—because we know those are where the jobs of the future are going to be.

In the 20 minutes of hot air that we just heard, nowhere did we hear any suggestion of where the National Party think the jobs of the future are going to come from. Not one new idea about creating a higher-value economy or how we could grow the economy, or how we could grow incomes—nothing from them about it. But we did hear about that in the Budget because that is what the Budget is going to help to deliver for New Zealand.

This is a positive and pragmatic Budget. We’re looking at programmes that work and we’re making sure that they continue. A programme I am very proud of is the Apprenticeship Boost programme. After the global financial crisis, what did we see happen with apprenticeships under the last National Government? We saw them reducing the number of people in apprenticeships.

If we want to know why we’ve got critical skills shortages in areas like building and construction now, it was because of the under-investment of the last Government. We will not allow those mistakes to be repeated. Apprenticeship Boost is keeping our apprentices in work and it is resulting in more people taking up apprenticeships. That is going to be good for our future as a country, and we are focused on making sure that we are increasing the opportunities for our exporters. This Government doesn’t just talk a big game when it comes to international trade, we actually deliver. If you look at the trade agreements signed by this Government versus the trade agreements signed by that Government—the last Government—I will back this Government every day of the week.

But, more importantly, when we go abroad, we’re there to talk up New Zealand, not talk New Zealand down. We don’t go around the world complaining Kiwi businesses are too soft; we go around the world promoting Kiwi businesses because we are backing Kiwi businesses to create jobs and to help New Zealanders to get ahead.

We know that there are serious issues facing New Zealand, and what have we heard from the Opposition about what they might do and what their plans are? Well, so far, the biggest issue that seems to be confronting the National Party is that they think that they should start issuing tax receipts for New Zealanders. Well, I hope the National Party kept their receipt the last time they traded in their leader, because I think there’s a few backbenchers who are going to be looking for a refund, because after that woeful contribution that we just heard, I can tell that Nicola Willis is out of the House already, because she’s back in the boardrooms around Auckland touting her future prospects.

The “coalition of cuts” opposite has no positive and optimistic plan for the future of New Zealand. We know what would happen under a National Government. They haven’t really said much, but we can read it in the tea leaves and we can read it in their statement: Apprenticeship Boost—gone; Fees Free for those future workers like our future teachers, nurses, doctors—that would be gone under National; progress on climate change—gone; winter energy payments—finished; free and healthy school lunches—gone under National; school funding—reduced. As for workers’ pay and conditions, we know that they would be on the chopping block as well. Money for rail—chopped; State houses—sold off, because that’s what they did last time; the 10 days of sick leave introduced under this Government—back on the chopping block under a National Government.

I’ll tell you there’s one thing New Zealanders can be certain of under a National-ACT Government: one of the things that is absolutely clear is that both of those parties want to cut superannuation. They have both made it clear that they have plans to reduce eligibility for superannuation in New Zealand; they are united on that. The only question is: how deep are they going to cut it?

The ACT Party—for all of their faults, at least they have a plan, which is more than the National Party have. So it’s the team without a plan or the team with a plan. It’s probably the ACT Party’s plan that’s going to hold sway, and New Zealanders should be very, very worried about that, because the only thing that the ACT Party want to do, if David Seymour was Minister of Finance, which he seems to be lining up for—he’s nodding his head—is cut, cut, and cut. That is what a National-ACT Government would stand for.

But enough about them. Let’s finish on a positive note, and that is that I want to thank Grant Robertson for the work that he has done to support Kiwi families and to support Kiwi businesses. We know that the global economic conditions that we have faced in this Government have been tough. We know that there have been some tough choices in this Budget, and we know that Grant Robertson—as he always has, over the last six Budgets—has handled those well. He has given us a balanced approach to managing the New Zealand economy, one that is delivering for New Zealanders and one that will help to create a brighter future for New Zealand, not by ignoring the future, but by making sure that we are investing in it.

This is a Budget for the times. It is a no-frills Budget that’s delivering for New Zealanders. Well done, Grant Robertson; I am proud of the Budget that you have delivered.

Just confirming that the question now is that the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition be agreed to.

Well, I certainly rise in support of that question, and I just want to give a tip to the Labour backbenchers. You could see, in a Stalin-esque way, that they weren’t sure when to stop clapping. Let me clue them in: 14 October is when the show stops, after that performance by your excuse for a Prime Minister, Labour Party.

I say to that Prime Minister that it’s quite extraordinary how he forgets who he is and who’s been in Government for the last six years. There was a period there where he said, “I want a New Zealand where people can get ahead, where it’s fair, and where everyone has dignity.” Well, actually, we all want that. The difference is Chris Hipkins is the one who’s been in Government with Grant Robertson for the last six years, creating the problems that we have today.

The Labour Party likes to say, “Why can’t everyone just be positive? We’re doing our best. It’s a good job.” Well, maybe he should have a look at what New Zealanders are saying. Since June last year, every single reputable public opinion poll has the majority of New Zealanders saying that this country is going in the wrong direction, and, in the latest Curia poll, by two to one. So when this Government from Labour says, “Let’s be positive.” what they’re saying is that “We have never been more out of touch as a Labour Government.”, and that is why 14 October is judgment day and 15 October will be retirement day for all of those Labour backbenchers who don’t know when to clap.

This Budget should be named the “blow-out Budget”, because really, just for a moment—just for a moment—I almost believed Grant Robertson when he said he was going to be responsible and get spending under control. I thought that Grant Robertson, after he said he was going to spend $4 billion, will at least try and be a little bit responsible so that we can get inflation under control, so that mortgage rates can come down, and so that life can be more affordable. Surely, Grant Robertson would try and be a little bit more responsible. But, oh no, this is a reckless, irresponsible “blow-out Budget”, with $7.5 billion worth of deficit spending next year that will put all of this Government’s attempts to help with the cost of living in the shade.

The ACT Party predicts that with this massive blowout of borrowed money, mortgage rates will hit 10 percent next year on the floating rates, and that’s going to put pressure not just on people that have mortgages but on businesses and people that buy from them and on tenants who rent off landlords that also have mortgages. Adrian Orr will have been saying things in his office at the Reserve Bank that I’m not allowed to say in this House when he realises how irresponsible Grant Robertson is with his spending.

The problem with Grant Robertson is that he just doesn’t listen even to Chris Hipkins, because Chris Hipkins knows the problem. He said that it isn’t right for people to be tightening their belts if the Government won’t do the same. Well, we’re now going to see people up and down this country tightening their belts, trying to make their household budgets balance, because Grant Robertson can’t tighten his. His deficit spending is going to shoot inflation and mortgage rates through the roof, and he’ll come back and say, “Oh, but the Treasury says inflation will go down.” This is the same Treasury that two years ago said inflation would be 1.8 percent. This is the same Treasury that said last year that it would be 5.2 percent, and it’s now 6.7 percent. So when Treasury says that inflation next year will be 6.3 percent, it’s going to be higher, and when they say the official cash rate is going to be 5.5 or 6 percent, it’s going to be higher. This is all the symptom of a Government that has run out of excuses.

Excuses are the one thing that Grant Robertson has more than anything of. He’s got even more excuses than he’s got deficit dollars to spend. You see, Grant Robertson blamed COVID. Well, I’m sorry; it’s officially over—the world moved on over a year ago now. Then he blamed Vladimir Putin, and I can understand that as a political tactic, because he’s an extremely bad man. But the facts are that the oil price is now lower than it was before Putin started his war, so that excuse is gone. And then, perhaps most shamefully, he tried to use the victims of the floods and cyclones as an excuse for his endless addiction to spending other people’s money. Well, I’m sorry, but in this Budget, there’s $7 billion of borrowing and only $1 billion of extra spending for the cyclone and the floods; in fact, it’s not even that. There’s about $900 million of new spending to help people who in many cases have lost everything and still have no certainty about what that rebuild will look like.

So this is a Government that’s running out of other people’s money, it’s running out of excuses, it’s running out of options, and it’s going to do a huge amount of damage in the process. One day, people will write the history of Grant Robertson, and he’s no Caesar. What they will write is: “He came, he borrowed, he bankrupted all of us.” That’s what Grant Robertson will be remembered for.

There are reasons why people think that this country is going in the wrong direction by a ratio of two to one, and the reasons are all about us. I apologise to many people in the country, but I’m an Aucklander. I watch the news in my city, and every day it’s like a competition for a more grotesque crime. We saw it just yesterday. Somebody was brutally beaten on Quay Street outside the Ports of Auckland where the ships dock and tourists have their entrée to our country—disgraceful. A day before that, a 15-year-old teenage girl was shot in a road-rage incident on an Auckland motorway—you can’t make this stuff up. Sometimes I wonder if we’re talking about Māngere or Manukau or Mount Albert or Mogadishu when we hear about the crime in our country, and yet what is there in this Budget from this Labour Government to make the streets safer? It’s almost as though it’s not happening. They wonder why they’re saying, “Be positive, everybody.”, and yet the people look at them and ask, “What planet is this Labour Government on?” “Planet Out-of-Touch” is the planet that they’re on.

What about healthcare? This is the problem with Labour’s spending addiction. I wouldn’t mind the fact that they’re spending 61 percent more this year than they were spending five years ago when they came into Government, I wouldn’t mind the fact that their total spending will be up 80 percent in six years, I wouldn’t mind the fact they have borrowed over $100 billion in five years, and I wouldn’t mind the fact that they are taxing more than ever, if only they were getting some results. But where are those results?

Well, we’ve just heard it’s not in making the streets safer—victimisation is up in nearly every category—and think about what that means for New Zealanders. Think about the people who I regard as some of the greatest New Zealanders, who work long hours for little pay in dairies and convenience stores. They often have their family living behind or above their store. They are there after hours when it’s dark, and they don’t know where the next robbery or ram raid is going to hit. They don’t know if it’s going to be their place. They don’t know if any support will come, so they are starting to fight back. That’s what the lawlessness looks like—it looks like we are seeing vigilante justice. The other day in Auckland, I saw a group of people who actually locked a criminal inside their liquor store because the Government has given up on locking them into prisons. That’s what happens when the Government gives up upholding the law—people take the law into their own hands.

But what about health? You know, there’s been a 68 percent increase in healthcare expenditure in five years. That’s the basic facts—$18 billion in 2017, $28 billion now—and this is post-COVID. We can’t blame everything on COVID, remember—that’s the new rule for this debate. We don’t want to hear Labour blaming something that happened two years ago. You know, they used to blame the previous Government—they’re always blaming something that happened that’s no longer relevant. But $18 billion five years ago, now $28 billion in healthcare expenditure—a 68 percent increase in expenditure on healthcare.

If you were the Minister of Health in 2017 and someone had said, “We’re going to give you a 68 percent increase in budget in five years—another $10 billion to play with—do you think maybe you could get the hospital waiting lists a little shorter? Do you think you could get some more people to want to be GPs? Do you think you could get nurses happy in the workplace again?” I mean, with just $10 billion a year, would that do it—a 68 percent increase in expenditure? I think any sane Minister of Health would say, “Oh yes, I think that will be enough.” Well, they got the $10 billion a year, they got the 68 percent increase in expenditure, and what did they do? They decided to blow up the healthcare system and restructure it in the middle of a pandemic. They decided to rebuild our healthcare system around the ideology of identity politics, instead of the practicality of getting the operations done and the patients seen and the workforce happy in their jobs again. The result of that is a 68 percent increase in healthcare expenditure, and nobody is happy.

What about education? Well, sadly, it’s a similar story. We’ve seen the education budget go from $14 billion to $18 billion, a 38 percent increase in healthcare expenditure, and yet we have fewer kids going to school and learning less when they do. Once again, we have a Government that has put the ideology of identity politics well ahead of the practicality of transferring valuable academic knowledge to the next generation.

Now, it might surprise members to know, but I’m a bit of an old leftie when it comes to these things. I simply believe that people in this society, or in any free and fair society around the world, should have a place where their kids can go where they will be safe from bullying and violence, and where an adult they regard as respected and knowledgeable will transfer valuable academic knowledge that will equip them to navigate their future. That’s what I believe. That’s what the ACT Party believes. It’s one of the reasons the ACT Party was founded out of Labour, and yet where is the Labour Party on this question? They don’t even know how many kids went to school, and when they get there, they’re filled with ideological gobbledegook—anything but the facts of life and academia and reading and writing and arithmetic, which will actually get them able to navigate the 21st century.

In fact, it’s so bad that in the last 20 years, we have been overtaken by Russia at 10-year-olds’ reading scores. Just think about that for a moment: children growing up under a corrupt, megalomaniacal dictator called Vladimir Putin are getting better reading lessons than children growing up under John Key and Jacinda Ardern. That is how bad things are in education, and yet we do not have a commitment from this Government in this Budget to actually get back to teaching kids valuable academic knowledge without the ideological gobbledegook. In fact, we’ve got a commitment to more ideological gobbledegook, and the results for those kids that don’t get the valuable academic knowledge they need for their future are absolutely devastating.

Then there’s the cost of living. People don’t like to talk about the cost of living because they’re embarrassed that they work hard and they often lack the dignity to be able to make ends meet each week. People in that circumstance—they still tell me things occasionally. They say, “You know what? My front two tyres failed the warrant. It’s 200 bucks a corner. Now, I’ve got to balance my household budget for the next 12 weeks”—the next six pay days—“until I get back on an even keel, and I hope nothing happens like that again.”

Then there are people who are worried about the uncertainty. A young couple who bought a small house together when they had children have now decided that they’ve saved and paid off enough of their mortgage. They’ve got some equity. They’re thinking about buying a bigger house that has a bedroom for each of their kids, and they’re thinking maybe, at a stretch, they could keep their older, smaller unit and maybe use that as an investment for their retirement. Do you think they’re going to be doing that now, after this reckless and irresponsible inflationary Budget that will push up mortgage rates, when they’ve got a Labour Party that’s now going to campaign on introducing capital taxes that will whack them if their investment works out? Of course they’re not.

Then you hear from people in small business—restaurateurs—who say, “All our prices are up. We can’t afford to pay our staff any more. They can’t afford to drive to work. I’ve been slipping them petrol vouchers under the table so that they can afford to get in to work and do the job to keep my business running, where if I raise my prices any more, I lose my customers.” That is the inflationary cost of living crisis that is really a productivity crisis that has left New Zealanders, by two to one, saying that this country is going in the wrong direction.

But there is actually an alternative, and it doesn’t come from the National Party. It doesn’t come from telling people that if you vote for us, then we will send you a tax receipt in the mail—like it’s 1997—to tell you how much you have been paying in tax. People already know they’re paying too much tax, and the ACT Party is proud that we have published a fully costed alternative Budget that would cut out Government waste, invest in the areas that matter, and get this country flying again.

This alternative Budget reduces expenditure by $38 billion over four years, and we do that without touching a single front-line service—not one cop, not one teacher, not one nurse, not one doctor. In fact, as I come to it, we will pay some of them even more, and how do we do that? Well, it’s pretty simple. We’re going to reduce expenditure by $8 billion a year, but we’re doing that in the context of a Government that has increased its expenditure by $49 billion. We are offering to take about $1 in $5 of this Government’s extra spending and give it back to you in tax cuts, because I just so happen to believe that a Government as wasteful as this one could spend $1 less than $5 and give it back to the people who are struggling at home. That’s what our alternative Budget does.

But actually, it doesn’t give all of that extra dollar back; it invests some of it in critical areas. You see, there are some areas where the Government doesn’t spend enough. It’s too hard to get into a GP—we don’t have enough of them. Young graduates aren’t choosing the GP specialisation. We have GPs giving up and retiring, or not working the full week. We have GPs moving to Australia, where they get paid more, and, as a result of that, the average Aussie shares their GP with 574 other Australians and the average Kiwi shares their GP with 820 other Kiwis. So if you wonder why it’s hard to get in, we don’t have enough of them. That’s why the ACT Party would increase GP capitation fees by 13 percent so that it’s more attractive to be a GP and so that fewer will quit, more will train, fewer will leave, and more will come to be GPs in this country, and you might have a chance of actually getting seen—and, yes, that will save money throughout the secondary and tertiary healthcare systems.

In this country, we have taken defence for granted for far too long. We don’t live in Helen Clark’s benign strategic environment, and that’s why ACT’s alternative Budget would increase defence expenditure to 2 percent of GDP so that we can play our part and pull our weight in a fully interoperable ANZAC defence force to send a credible message to the rest of the world to back out of the South Pacific.

The biggest public policy failure in the last 30 years has been the failure to fund the infrastructure to build the homes so that the next generation can truly feel like they have a place in this country—not Australia—unlike our Prime Minister, who celebrates New Zealanders being able to move to Aussie and get a passport in another country. This alternative Budget would take $1.2 billion a year and give it to councils to fund the infrastructure so the next generation can build their homes.

When it comes to that, almost—how do you even describe it? You know what the streets of Auckland are like: it’s like that scene in The Lion King when Simba returns and the hyenas are running it. We’ve got to get serious about justice. We’ve got to stop the tag-and-release policy, where youth offenders just go in and out and in and out of prison. We need to start locking people up who have no other option and rehabilitating them, and not letting them out until they do. For that reason, in ACT’s alternative Budget, we take corrections for youth out of Oranga Tamariki, put them into the corrections system, and put some of these youth offenders—perhaps for the first time in their life—in a place where they have the mental health support, the physical safety, the nutrition, and the education. But we also make it clear that they’ve done wrong and they can’t leave until they’ve been rehabilitated.

We’d do the same thing for adult prisoners. Labour’s experiment of letting 2,000 or 3,000 people out of prison to see what happens to crime is complete. The jury is in: New Zealand becomes lawless and it’s not safe for many people to go about their lives. We will end that experiment and fund the imprisonment rates that we had in 2017, then start rehabilitating people, and not letting them out to see how much crime there is.

With all of that, we are able to cut taxes so someone—say, a nurse on 70 grand—would keep another $2,300 a year. That is what a responsible Budget would look like: back in surplus, cutting waste, funding the basics, and cutting taxes where possible.

There is a real choice for New Zealand, and it’s not between Chris and Chris, because it turns out that’s not much of a choice at all. The real choice is one of real change: to give your party vote to the ACT Party and choose a future for New Zealand where we truly become a prosperous, First World nation and an island paradise, which has always been New Zealand’s dream and ACT’s vision for our country. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

All right, the boys have had a little bit of a go. The Green Party will vote to pass this Budget. It includes some really important steps that will make a huge difference to people’s lives.

As a result of this Budget, people are going to find it so much easier to get on a bus or train. Thousands of families won’t be forced to pay through the roof to get their tamariki into early childhood education (ECE), and I do send a mihi to Minister Tinetti, and I understand how much of a difference that is going to make for so many people. I know that the ECE sector are going to be particularly happy about that. Households will get the help they need to make their homes warmer and healthier, and lower their power bills.

We are stoked that this Budget delivers a number of policies that the Green Party have campaigned on for over 10 years. Nine years ago, we promised to extend the 20 hours’ ECE subsidy to cover two-year-olds, and this has happened. Greens have campaigned for 10 years to deliver more affordable public transport, and now, in Government, this is a reality—yay! [Applause] Thank you, my colleagues.

Warmer Kiwi homes is also a longstanding Green commitment that dates back to 2009, when the previous Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons won an agreement from the Government to insulate up to 180,000 homes. It was only when we got into Government in 2017 that we could scale this up to really make a difference. The key message from this Budget is that if Labour wants to keep working with us, we have plenty more ideas we can share.

The Budget also builds on the foundations that the Green Party has laid out over the last four years to take climate action in every part of Aotearoa, with another $1.4 billion towards cutting climate pollution. This is huge—[Applause]—yeah, please, pakipaki mai. This is huge, and it is on top of a $2.9 billion package in Budget 2022, and $865 million before that. But we absolutely need so much more. Overnight, some of the world’s leading scientists have confirmed that globally, we are now more likely than not to warm the planet by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. This is the globally agreed limit for what we can safely deal with. Every fraction of a single degree matters. A 1.6-degree world is a lot less bad than a 1.7-degree world, but we simply cannot find out what 2 degrees of warming looks like, and that is up to all of us together. Every single tonne of climate pollution that is stopped matters. We are in a climate emergency, and it is time for everyone to act like it.

When I look across this Budget, I am struck not just by the impact the Green Party has had on people’s lives but by the breadth of issues on which we are making a difference. Is it enough? Not even close. So let me be clear: while we are pleased with large parts of this Budget, we know it still falls a long way short of what is needed. There is so much more that we could have done in this Budget now—not future ones, but now.

This was the Budget that could have reduced the outrageous and immoral level of income and wealth inequality we have in this country. It could have been the Budget that confronted climate change with the urgency and the scale that it demands, a Budget that made sure everyone in Aotearoa has what they need to have—kai on the table, a safe place to call home, and to be able to live a good life—a Budget that invested in action to protect our rivers, land, forests, beaches, and oceans, a Budget that can make sure that secondary teachers’ pay is in line with the rising costs of living, and a Budget that upholds Tiriti justice, returning resources directly back to iwi and hapū so that tangata whenua can finally have the autonomy and authority over our whenua and wellbeing that we were promised. It could have been a Budget that taxed the mega-rich to pay for it. Everything we need to make life better for people in Aotearoa exists, but what’s missing is the political willpower to use it.

Budgets are a political choice. These choices are meant to reflect the underlying values of the Government of the day. The reason we have a Budget is to allocate resources where they are needed so we can build the kinds of communities and society that are good for all people to live in, to create the conditions we need to support each other, to care for native wildlife, to cut climate pollution, and to make sure the richest few contribute more to cover the good things we all need. The Budget is one of the best chances the Government has to make clear to the people why it is in power and what it wants to do.

Today’s Budget will be talked about at length in the media, in our workplaces, around the dinner table, and amongst friends. In every case, it should be judged on the difference it will make to people’s lives. For many people, the struggle to put food on the table and to pay the bills is the concern that rises above all others. It’s the worry that keeps people up at night and the first thought people have when they wake up in the morning, and understandably so.

Inflation hits lower-income families the hardest—those whānau who spend the majority of their income covering the essentials like food and rent. One of the major drivers of inflation is corporate greed. Massive companies have cynically used global crises to push up their profits, and with it they have brought us more expensive groceries and higher energy bills. So while corporations like banks and supermarkets juice their profits, thousands of people are forced to struggle to get by: to put kai on the table, to pay the bills, and to heat their homes.

As I stand here, I feel the huge responsibility that is upon me and the Green Party to rewrite the rules around care, contribution, and connection; nurses and teachers being paid what they deserve; warm, affordable homes; thriving native wildlife; resilient communities with places for people to connect; fast, reliable buses and trains; and clean air to breathe. When thousands of our friends, our neighbours, and our whānau cannot afford to make ends meet, when we are facing more extreme weather super-powered by a fossil fuel industry whose political power has caused climate change, then we have a fundamental choice to make. We cannot allow the very rich to get even richer while everyone else struggles to get by. We can collect the resources we need from those most able to pay, and use that money to improve the lives of millions of people who have unjustifiably been missing out for generations.

Successive Governments have repeatedly denied their ability to fix major problems. They tell us that their hands are tied. Balancing the Budget has become an end in itself, so much so that it seems to be higher up the list of priorities of most political parties than actually helping people put kai on the table. The time to change that is right now. It’s simply not good enough for politicians to continue to rely on tired and disproven arguments about restraining spending.

Aotearoa is a wealthy country. We have what we need—there are no excuses for children going hungry. Putting a low spending to GDP ratio ahead of meeting the needs of everyone in our beautiful whenua is deeply flawed, it is economic nonsense, and, worst of all, it shows a lack of vision for building an inclusive Aotearoa that does work for everyone.

Ending poverty, ensuring everyone has a home and a high-quality health and education system, protecting our environment—as with any Budget, the only constraints a Government faces are those it places on itself. Right now, the biggest constraint of all is the money available and the tools we are not using to access it. This isn’t because the money is not there; it’s because Government after Government has actively decided not to use it.

It is simple: we must change Budget and tax rules so we can pay for the things that really matter to us. The money we need to support each other is already there. Some people have way more than enough, and others have been suffering through successive Government rules. There is no economic reason for these self-imposed revenue constraints. It’s a political choice—that’s it—and it’s a choice that comes with a cost. The rich get richer as they accumulate more and more unearned, tax-free wealth, while the rest of us struggle to get by, waiting for a bus that never comes, waiting for care from an over-worked nurse, or waiting for a decent, affordable home.

So if people want an answer to the question of why there is not more in this Budget to pay for the things we need, then look no further than the ongoing failure to fix the tax system. Cabinet has the tools it needs; it just needs more Green MPs to share our homework a lot more. At a time—[Applause] Oh, you’re so cute, my colleagues—I love it.

At a time of climate crisis and a time of massive wealth and income inequality, now is the time to completely change how we do things. Through political choice, wealth in this country is severely, severely out of balance. Right now, a tiny group of 311 people hold in their hands more wealth than nearly half of the entire population altogether. So this is a mega-rich group of families with a combined wealth of $85 billion, and yet they pay less than half the effective tax rate of a nurse. To put this into context, Government spending in 2022 on health, education, and welfare, including superannuation, was around $90 billion—only just above the combined wealth of these mere 311 individuals.

These individuals have, on average, wealth of $276 million each—$276 million each. The average house price in Aotearoa is $1 million, say, so that means 311 people own the equivalent of 276 houses each. That is immoral and unacceptable. Do you know how long it would take for the average nurse to earn that amount of money: 3,680 years. They talk to us about who works hard for their money—if that was the only definition, all nurses would be billionaires.

To stand by in the face of such a grotesque level of income and wealth inequality is stupid. Not only is it so obviously unfair; it is also counterproductive. It is starving our health, education, transport, and social services.

Make no mistake, we got here by political choices—a choice to favour a tiny group of people at the top of expense and at the expense of the rest of us. The fact that there are 311 people with enough money in their bank accounts or tied up in their tax-free property portfolios to lift every single family—

💬 Matt Doocey: You’re giving them free prescriptions.

—in this country out of poverty—

💬 Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Oh look, the rich are triggered.

—overnight, we could all make this decision. Oh my, I’m shocked that the rich are triggered! I did not expect that. This Budget did not change those rules. It’s politicians who need to be triggered. We made these rules and we can change them, and the rest of you aren’t moving.

This House watches over one of the most egregious concentrations of wealth that I can think of. We must muster the collective political courage to do something about it. Well, the Green Party is up to it. We’re up for it.

The time is now to be bold. We need urgent action to cut climate pollution and build resilient communities where everyone has what they need to thrive; not just a few. We want to make sure everyone has what they need to have kai on the table and a safe place to call home, and to live a good life, not just a struggling, surviving one, but an actual, decent life. We need to stop large corporations trashing our environment. We need to restore our rivers, our oceans, our forests, and wildlife to health—to ora—for the benefit of everyone—

💬 Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Our seabed.

—and we need to allocate enough resources in our Budgets to do these things—yes, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, including our beautiful moana and seabeds. The only way we can do that is by rewriting the rules to make sure the richest few people in Aotearoa provide more to cover the things we all collectively value. Ko tēnei te wā, kua tae te wā. [This is the time; the time has come.]

Today’s Budget makes it clear: if people want a Government that will build an Aotearoa that works for everyone and asks the most privileged members of our community to make it happen, the we need more Green MPs to influence the direction of the next Government.

Let me be up front about what needs to be put on the table and pushed for in any post-negotiations: a tax on the richest few that will raise money that we can use to build a climate-friendly, wiser, and more just, prepared Aotearoa that we can all be proud of, and an Aotearoa where everyone has a warm, affordable place to call home and kai on the table; where housing is treated as a human right and not just a get-rich scheme for the already wealthy; where people have the choice to walk or cycle or get on fast, frequent, affordable buses or trains to meet their friends, to get to the shops, to go to school, or to get to the park; where everyone has access to the healthcare they need whenever they need it, wherever they need it; where our nurses and teachers are all paid what they deserve; where all of our students can succeed without having to skip meals to make ends meet, like boosting student allowances to livable levels and making them available to all; where we have restored our awa, our moana, our ngahere, and our wildlife to health for the benefit of everyone; where Te Tiriti and mana Māori motuhake is honoured and embedded in everything we do and every decision we make; and where land is rightfully returned to tangata whenua so that we may have tino rangatiratanga over our whenua and resources.

I cannot say how the world will look for our mokopuna and mokopuna to come, but what I do know is that it will reflect the decisions we make today. The time is now to get those decisions right. No reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Otirā tēnā tātou e te Whare. Well, it is yet another Budget year, where we all wait with bated breath to see who got the lollies from the lolly scramble. Three years of so-called “Wellbeing Budgets”, and the wellbeing of our people here in Aotearoa couldn’t be worse off. Let me start by saying that if we bought too much into the framing of the cost of living crisis so carefully orchestrated by my mates here on the right, the fact of the matter is that we have been living in poverty for a long, long time. Tangata whenua have been relegated as paupers on their own whenua, and it’s getting worse day by day.

It’s not until the wealthy are struggling to maintain their lifestyle that this House suddenly deems we have a cost of living crisis. It is a privilege to even discuss a cost of living crisis. Tangata whenua have never been afforded the privilege of experiencing a cost of living crisis, because they are still bearing the brunt of the cost of poverty—poverty orchestrated by and reinforced by the very parties that sit beside me and in front of me. This Budget chooses to prioritise the wellbeing of the rich over the wellbeing of the poor by ignoring the big elephant in the room: wealth tax.

Now, usually we will get up in this speech and do the courteous thing by thanking the Minister of Finance and thanking the Government for their work and being grateful for what we have been given. You know, nobody likes an ungrateful person, particularly an ungrateful native who has just been given some extra bucks. But I’m not going to do that today, because it’s not enough, and it will never be enough until this Government and successive Governments, in turn, meet their contractual obligations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Until such time as a Tiriti-centric Aotearoa is in full operation, reflected not only in the equal share of power and resource but in the return of our whenua, we will never be happy with any Budget that any Government proposes. So instead, today, for the slight increase to Māori we see in this year’s Budget, I pay tribute to the fierce advocates who made it happen: Merepeka Raukawa-Tait, the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency—tēnā koutou—Herewini Parata, and Te Matatini ngā kapa katoa e te motu—tēnā koutou.

I just want to make reference and remind my Māori Labour caucus colleagues, thank you for going into the Māori Party manifesto, because it is there on page 17: allocate $19 million to Te Matatini. That comes in here. Now, we need you to go to page—well, you may as well do pages 1 to 20, and make sure that we get all of what our people deserve.

We are proud to have fought alongside you and delivered the largest ever increase in funding for Te Matatini, but we must ask: what happens after two years—why isn’t this baseline annual funding? Every year, successive Governments put forward a Budget that bamboozles the hell out of this nation. It bamboozles everyone into confusion and submission. Governments throw a few million dollars to Māori kaupapa to keep the natives quiet. They throw a few more millions into what is said to be Māori money, knowing full well it goes into a universal bucket. The intentional bamboozling leads Māori to believe they are climbing up the ladder when, in fact, the gap is growing wider and wider.

Governments know all too well that their Budgets for Māori don’t even scratch the sides of equity and equality. The small crumbs that are thrown our way is only playing bare minimum catch-ups for over 180 years’ worth of theft and oppression. This is why we are calling this a Budget for the rich. The “Sheriff of Nottingham Budget”: tax the poor and give to the rich. Through the conditioning of colonisation, us natives are expected time and time again to be grateful, and to smile and nod for the hands that feed us for the extra crumbs we receive—the narrative we will no longer accept, nor will we tolerate it.

Prior to 1840, 100 percent of these lands belonged to Māori, and 100 percent of the resource and power belonged to Māori. Today, we have less than 5 percent of our lands. Today, this Government offers 0.47 percent of the entire Budget, and you want us to be grateful? The epitome of our saying “Kei runga te kōrero; kei raro te rahurahu” [“Pleasantries on the surface to contradicted by unfavourable action below”]. Not only have not only have you consistently failed to uphold your obligation under the contract of the Treaty of Waitangi; you have you have consistently left your own people behind.

But let me move on to our solutions. Te Paati Māori envisions the promise of an Aotearoa hou, an Aotearoa hou that makes you feel like you would when you come on to our marae. We will welcome you. We will feed you. We will house you. We will connect you. We will educate you. We will care for you. We will heal you. We will love you.

Today, one-in-five tamariki Māori are living in poverty. This means that their whānau can’t afford a safe home, or essentials like regular, healthy food, doctors visits, or to pay their power bills. Food prices have gone up 12 percent in the last year, the biggest annual increase since 1989—poverty on steroids. While there are many things that can be done, the most important is ensuring people have more money. Our Aotearoa hou will look like everyone having the dignity to be able to put good, healthy kai on the table to feed their babies and their whānau. Our Aotearoa hou will look like higher incomes, ensuring an annual increase in the minimum wage to keep up with the living wage rate, removing sanctions and lifting benefits in line with inflation, extending the Working for Families tax credit to all whānau, removing GST off kai, and regulating price hikes from the supermarket duopoly.

Over 60,000 Māori are homeless because they can’t afford houses. Tangata whenua should never be homeless in their own homeland, yet the Government knows there are over 191,000 empty homes. That’s three times the supply to meet the demand, and we’ve spent more than $4 billion a year on housing subsidies and we’re not getting better outcomes. Aotearoa hou looks like every whānau in Aotearoa having a warm, secure, and affordable home—not just a house but a home. Aotearoa hou looks like putting a 2 percent tax on these empty homes.

We have a broken tax system in this country, which has fuelled extreme wealth inequity that is only getting worse. The richest 2 percent own 50 percent of the wealth in this country. Ordinary people and poor communities are subsidising the lifestyle of the rich. While the average person in Aotearoa is paying 20.2 percent in tax, the wealthy are only paying 9.4 percent. Estimates show that $7 billion per year is being stolen from Aotearoa taxpayers in tax evasion and tax avoidance enabled by a tax system that allows the rich to evade tax, further placing the burden on wage and salary earners.

Aotearoa hou looks like shifting the tax burden from the poor to the rich. It looks like a capital gains tax that if implemented in 2017, we would have made $200 billion in tax revenue. Just think about that for a moment: $200 billion. That is nearly two times the annual amount of revenue the Crown currently receives. Just think about what that could mean for improving the oranga of our people in an Aotearoa hou.

In their recent pre-Budget announcement, the Government celebrated that since they came into power in 2017, they have invested $4.7 billion in the defence budget, more than double what the previous National Government spent. Instead of investing in what matters—the oranga of our people and the oranga of our whenua—this Government is investing in weapons of war to prop up a global military industrial complex and imperial power games of Washington, London, Ottawa, and Canberra. Our Aotearoa hou looks like the $4.7 billion spent on defence could have been spent on ensuring everyone could afford the doctors visits and the dentists visits; on investing into marae and papakāinga and protecting them flooding and storms; on shifting that $4.7 billion to housing the homeless, lifting incomes, and enabling people to put kai on the table and pay their power bills.

Our Aotearoa hou will have a transformative defence and foreign affairs policy for Aotearoa, which asserts the mana Māori motuhake and tino rangatiratanga of tangata whenua. An Aotearoa hou looks like continuing to fund the Defence Force in the Pacific, for Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. With the events of the last few weeks, we’ve seen just how important it is that our Defence Force is focused on responding to threats to our own people. An Aotearoa hou is a military-neutral Aotearoa.

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges Aotearoa and Te Ao Māori will ever face. This Government continues to allow the granting of permits to drill, block offers of petroleum, gas exploration permits, and offshore seabed mining. The Labour climate scorecard is poor. As Aotearoa lives through the worst effects of climate change we have ever seen, this Budget delivers nothing but crumbs. We cannot overcome this crisis through electric cars alone.

There is nothing in this Budget to support the transition in our biggest-polluting industry: agriculture. Where is the funding to support a transition into regenerative and organic farming? An Aotearoa hou looks like futureproofing our communities, protecting our pepeha, and protecting the whakapapa of Papatūānuku. Our Aotearoa hou looks like whānau being able to swim and drink from their local awa without being worried about getting sick, gather kaimoana from their local pātaka without worry, and not have to deal with flooding week after week.

An Aotearoa hou looks like taking climate change seriously. It means investing in clean energy and restoring our taiao, protecting and preparing communities for climate adaptation, transitioning to regenerative and organic agriculture, and banning seabed mining. [Applause] Thank you, thank you. Our Aotearoa hou is what is needed right now, Mr Speaker, and that’s a different Mr Speaker—“The real Mr Speaker, please stand up!”

It is a place that is equal, equitable, fair, and just for all. It ensures the protection of the whakapapa of Papatūānuku. It ensures the mana of Te Tiriti o Waitangi at the centre of our country’s constitutional transformation, where tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti stand united, with honour and dignity.

Nā reira, come to the gateway of our marae, so we can welcome you all home to our Aotearoa hou. Kia ora tātou. [Applause] Thank you, thank you.

I move, That the debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to.

Debate interrupted.