Anderton Jim: Budget Statement — Budget Debate 
Anderton Jim: Budget Statement — Budget Debate 
[Volume:663;Page:11062] 
Hon JIM ANDERTON (Leader—Progressive) 
: 
 What is the Government saying with today’s Budget to families on low incomes? Let them eat cake—that is what it is saying. It says not to worry about an increase in GST and rising food prices because the rich eat more than the poor so they will pay more in GST. Is that meant to make low-income families feel better? They might not be able to afford to buy food but just think of the GST they are saving by not eating! The rich have a choice if they want to spend more money and pay more GST; they can choose whether to upgrade the Mercedes or to buy another boat. Those on lower incomes cannot choose whether to eat. What is John Key saying to New Zealand families struggling to pay the bills and to make ends meet on low incomes? He tells them to stop being envious. Well I say to Mr Key that they will not be envious; they will be angry like I am. 
Are New Zealand families more or less equal after this Budget? They are less equal and shame on the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance and on all those who support those Ministers. After today’s Budget the wealthiest New Zealanders will take home thousands of extra dollars a week compared with those on average incomes. People like Telecom’s chief executive officer who earned $7 million last year will get a tax cut of $6608 per week. State sector chief executive officers who earn more than $600000 in some cases will get a tax cut of nearly $500 a week. However if one earns $50000 after one pays more in GST at the supermarket alone one will take home about $5 a week. The chances are that that $5 will be wiped out by inflation any time soon. Is a chief executive officer who got a $1000 a week pay rise last year really the highest priority for a $700-a-week tax cut this year? 
New Zealand is now on a par with the United Kingdom which has one of the most entrenched income gaps between rich and poor in the world. Our ancestors came to this country to get away from that kind of inequality. John Key is determined to bring it back from his speculating years overseas. Others might be taken in by the Prime Minister’s rags-to-riches story but not me. I remember that he helped to make a pot of money speculating against the New Zealand dollar in the 1980s at a cost to New Zealand of $700 million. Guess what! At the same time New Zealand’s increasing rate of income inequality became one of the worst in the OECD. Over the same period Australia closed the income gap between rich and poor. Mr Key wants us to emulate Australia but he goes in exactly the opposite direction. 
Income inequality widened again under National Governments in the 1990s—I will not mention the Governments in the 1980s—and it started to get better during the period of the Labour-led Governments in the 1999-2008 period. Mr Key misled the House yesterday when he said that income gaps between rich and poor “became worse under the previous Labour Government”. I say to Mr Key that they actually became better and they are set to become worse under this National Government. I will table the facts after this speech to prove just that. Here they are: under a Labour-Progressive Government between 2001 and 2008 everyone became richer even Mr Key but those on low and middle incomes increased their wealth the most thanks to the Working for Families tax break. We closed the gap; National will again widen it. 
The Prime Minister also said yesterday that it was a terrible injustice that 10 percent of the wealthiest New Zealanders pay 44 percent of the tax. He used to invite New Zealanders to go to Australia to pay less. But what is the truth of that? In Australia the top 10 percent do not pay 44 percent of the tax; they pay 46 percent of the tax. Should we all go to Australia and pay some more tax? Where does Mr Key come from? Does he read anything? It turns out that most countries do exactly that: those who earn more pay more tax because they earn a higher share of income. That is what is called a progressive fair tax system. I do not think that Mr Key has ever heard of it. 
John Key is no Robin Hood. I saw  
Robin Hood 
 the other night; John Key looks more like the Sheriff of Nottingham to me and this is the Sheriff of Nottingham’s Budget. Will the average New Zealander be better off after this Budget from the “Sheriff”? No because they will not be getting the lion’s share of the tax cut; the top 10 percent of income earners will. Can members guess who got the lion’s share from the last round of tax cuts by the National Government? The same top tax earners. Has the penny dropped yet? If people are not on a high income this Government is not interested and will not help. Some might have voted for them in 2008 but in 2011 they can make this National-led Government a one-term Government—the first one since 1975—and I say good riddance to them. If New Zealanders are on an average income and have aspirations to do better they can forget it. This Budget puts reinforced glass into the glass ceiling. This Government is showing its true colours today. It does not want our people to prosper; it wants them to know their place. It does not want them to be envious; it does not want them to worry about buying any food because they will be saving some GST for goodness’ sake! This Government is out of touch with the way in which poorer and low-income people live in this country. 
Will more children be lifted out of poverty after today’s Budget? The answer is no. A recent Unicef survey of the well-being of children put New Zealand almost last—24th out of 25 countries. It measured immunisation levels infant deaths and early death from injury and illness. The Ministers have laughed at Greece over recent times. It is collapsing the streets are on fire and the people protest. But do members know what? It is way ahead of New Zealand when it comes to looking after its kids—way ahead. A respected professor of epidemiology in New Zealand said recently that “ … in New Zealand social injustice” which means income inequality “is killing and maiming our kids on a grand scale.” What do we mean by that? We top the scales for OECD rates of whooping cough rheumatic fever pneumonia and other diseases in children. 
I ask whether these tax cuts to the richest New Zealanders help any of that. The answer is that they do not; they make it worse because the Government denudes itself of income to do it. We spend less than the OECD average on child health and the only thing that will change as a result of this Budget is that this appalling situation will get worse. Twenty-eight percent of our children still live in poverty. The Government that I was proud to be associated with lifted 100000 kids out of poverty and we were heading in the right direction. This Budget goes in exactly the opposite direction. I was disgusted to hear the backbenchers in National clap for the Budget. They do not understand what they are doing. It is absolutely disgraceful. This rate started to decline under the last Labour-Progressive Government for the first time in decades. As I said Working for Families lifted 100000 children out of poverty. 
Senior people in the medical profession know what the problem is. Two professors of child health wrote to me yesterday—and I think they wrote to all other parliamentarians—saying that they were absolutely embarrassed by the fact that things have got worse for kids on their watch. They were begging the Government not to make them worse this time but they will be deeply disappointed. I was touched by that letter. 
How do we get rid of poverty? We increase people’s incomes. We give people decent wages and jobs. Will there be more jobs after today? Will there what! There is nothing in this Budget to create new jobs. Where on earth does the Minister of Finance gets his figures from? How many jobs were created by the Prime Minister’s great cycleway from the north to Bluff? The answer is none—not one single job. How many jobs have been created by the amount of money invested in research science and technology which we provided $2 billion for through Fast Forward? The answer is not one cent in the 18 months since this Government was elected. 
This country does not have a tax problem as we have one of the most modest income rates for low to middle-income earners in the world; it has a wage problem. There is nothing in this Budget to fix that at all. If John Key thinks that cutting the top tax rate will stop young doctors and entrepreneurs from going overseas he is dreaming. Australia’s top tax rate in 45c in the dollar and we have already discovered that the top 10 percent pay more tax there than they do here. Yet is that a disincentive? John Key should ask himself why he left the country to go into the world of international speculation. Did he leave to avoid our high taxes? I do not think so. I think he left to get more money. He succeeded and I say: “Good on him.” But tax cuts for the wealthy will not increase the wage or incomes of ordinary New Zealanders. Will the economy grow as a result of this Budget from the “Sheriff” today? No. There is nothing in this Budget for increased exports. The Government is dreaming if it thinks otherwise. 
I will wind up. This Budget has not turned out to be a smiley Robin Hood Budget; it has turned out to be a nasty Sheriff of Nottingham Budget. This Parliament should be ashamed to have received it today.