Anderton Jim: Budget Debate 
Anderton Jim: Budget Debate 
[Volume:647;Page:16376] 
Hon JIM ANDERTON (Leader—Progressive) 
: 
 I cannot help but reflect on dogs and deals in terms of asset sales but the National Party actually sold the railways for less than the wooden sleepers were worth on the open market so we do not need any lessons in that. 
The Progressive Party is proud to vote for this Budget. The Budget puts significantly more into the pockets of most families. The Budget delivers better health-care and builds a stronger economy. The Budget cuts taxes not spending at a time when the economy is slowing. I remember that when the going got tough for National it cut superannuation it cut benefits and it cut social services. But this Government has built them and will continue to build them all even though the economy is in a slow-growth mode. This Budget carefully provides for better incomes across all of New Zealand; it does not herd the biggest tax cuts towards those who need them the least. Anyone in this House who claims he or she needs a big tax cut must be kidding. The Budget is fair and it is caring and a caring New Zealand is what the Progressives are here to support. When it comes to assessing whether the Budget is good for New Zealand we are a lot more concerned about caring for people than about simply providing tax cuts to those who are on good incomes. 
Although far too many New Zealanders have been left behind for far too long this Government has done a lot to reduce poverty. In the last 3 or 4 years more children have been lifted out of poverty than at any other time since the Great Depression. Income-related rents cheaper doctors’ visits and cheaper prescriptions have helped low-income households in ways that they have not been assisted for many years. Nothing has done more however to lift families out of poverty than the creation of 1000 additional jobs every single week that this Government has been in office for the last 8½ years and I am proud of that. We need to hear more about the people however who are still being left behind. Thousands of families are struggling with increased petrol costs and rising food prices. There are thousands who are struggling to make ends meet and we have to show that we care about them of course. So it is time we started to test more policies against the standard of the way in which a caring country takes care of its most vulnerable citizens. 
It takes some strength to speak out for people and to care for them. In all the talk about tax rates climate change and other important issues how much of that strength have we heard? Let us give one example here. In the very near future I am going to announce a decision about Hector’s dolphins. It is clear that no matter what decision I make there will not be a popularity contest for the announcement. It is an important issue and I get an awful lot of letters about it. People organise marches at Parliament they send postcards by the thousand that fill my mailbag they paint dolphins on walls and they run campaigns—and I say good on them. 
But how many people do that for children? How many people care about the people in New Zealand who are really struggling? Let us imagine the situation if we got sick and could work and could not get accident compensation. How would we make ends meet? I do not read many editorials about that. Editorials as well as press releases from the National Party have been filled with calls for more tax cuts. This Budget has delivered on that. It went as far as anyone could sensibly go in my opinion. I hope we can hear now however a lot more about those people whose incomes are below the average wage. There are far more of them of course than there are of those with incomes above it. 
But if we want to care for people we have to strengthen the economy. I am pleased that this Budget makes a commitment to a historic initiative to strengthen our economy by strengthening research and innovation in our pastoral and food sectors. I want to make this point in congratulating the Minister of Finance: what was in it for the Minister of Finance and the Labour part of the Labour-led Government in giving an initiative like that its support through the provision of $700 million up front $300 million on top of that and $1000 million more attracted by the private sector when that constituency with all due respect is hardly a core element of Labour’s support? I have to say it was important that we did so and I give credit to the Minister of Finance and my Labour colleagues for supporting it. This is a landmark decision for New Zealand. It is the largest initiative in scientific research and development for any sector in this economy in the whole history of New Zealand. 
What did the National Party do when it saw that far-sighted investment in the future? It opposed it. The party that claims it represents the rural sector opposed the most significant investment in research and development in the country’s history. So I invited the National members to a full briefing. I thought I had got things wrong and that if the National members could not understand the initiative there was something wrong there. So I said I would get all the officials who had been beavering away on it for a couple of years to explain it to them. They said that would be fine so we rang to make an appointment. We were told not to ring them; they would ring us. The National members did not want to know. They did not want to know the answers to questions that they clearly did not understand because if they understood them they might have to support the initiative which they had already opposed. Having opposed it stupidly they could not let the facts get in the way of their prejudice. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: That’s leadership. 
Hon JIM ANDERTON 
: That is leadership. 
Well I tell members the view I have come to is this. We used to think as we were sitting across here when John Key’s flip-flops went on all the time—gone by lunchtime is now gone halfway through question time—that he was being slippery. But slippery is not the right description actually is it? We made a big mistake in calling the Leader of the Opposition slippery or the National Party members slippery. I call them weak. They are weak because they will not face up to hard decisions. They will not stick with them. They will not tell people what they really stand for. Bill English was on the  
Agenda 
 programme the other day and he could not even answer a simple question: whether he would retain the 39 percent top tax rate. The answer was: “Um we’ll let you know.” When asked when he would do so the answer was: “Sometime in the future.” How can National’s finance spokesperson who wants to be the next Minister of Finance 4 5 or 6 months out from the next election—whenever it might be—not know whether National will keep the top tax rate intact? How can that be? 
I tell members that there is a newspaper called  
The New Zealand Herald 
. It is not actually a well-known socialist organ I can tell members. But I was struck by the editorial a couple of days back that stated: “Now that the Budget is behind us the National Party has less excuse”—I never thought it ever had any excuse anyway—“for indecision on most of the important … issues facing the country. … As late as eight days ago finance spokesman Bill English could not answer a question as basic as whether National would keep the top tax tier 39c in the dollar”. That was in the  
New Zealand Herald. 
 I mean its people are almost paid-up members of National and it is saying “For God’s sake Bill what are you doing? You surely know that?” No no. 
Well New Zealanders are starting to ask themselves some hard questions. They are thinking that if National does not know that now if it is not telling them its policy now they have heard that before and it was called the secret agenda. I remember a famous politician being asked about the secret agenda and why the country had not been told about it. The answer was that it was because people would not like it. Well we now know that the National Party is not going to tell us its agenda because it fears we will not like it! How is that a qualification for Government? When a party gets into Government it has nowhere to hide then. Are National’s members going to go on the  
Agenda 
 programme and say they do not know what the top tax rate is going to be they do not even know what it is and ask to be told that? Does that show leadership? Is that being slippery? Does that show strength? No it shows weakness. These are hard questions: whether National will do this or that; whether it will cut social services in order to give higher tax cuts. It should tell us about that. 
The Business Roundtable came out recently and said it wanted there to be a low flat-tax rate. Everyone in this House knows where he or she stands on that. I know where I stand; I am against it. My Labour colleagues are against it. ACT knows where it stands; it is for it. I am sure New Zealand First knows where it stands and the Greens know where they stand. I am sure the Minister of Revenue knows where he stands. What about the National Party? There is nothing but silence. It is the silence of covert people who want to hide their agenda because they know that people will not really like it. 
Have the National members forgotten history? When a party goes into Government or hopes to and goes in with a secret agenda then delivers what people do not expect or when it crushes the expectations that it has raised how long does it stay there? It does not stay very long and I would have thought that even the meanest of minds would figure that out by now. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: That’s why we have MMP. 
Hon JIM ANDERTON 
: Exactly right. We have MMP but not because it is the German system. The people of New Zealand said they did not care whether the system came from Outer Mongolia because if it would lead to something better than they had had from National—and from another party that I will not name—then they would have MMP. Well surely that should have given National a signal. 
I challenge the National members to be strong. I ask them to come and tell us in the House what they really stand for. They should tell the people of New Zealand that and then we can have a fair contest. Otherwise they will be going on the campaign trail with no clothes on and people are going to know that.