Carter John: Budget Debate 
Carter John: Budget Debate 
[Volume:618;Page:13737] 
JOHN CARTER (National—Northland) 
: 
 A number of people on the other side of the House if not most would probably agree that I am a relatively simple person. Indeed a number on this side would probably say the same thing although not necessarily to my face. But one thing I suspect a number on that side of the House and certainly a good number on this side will concede is that I am not a bad local member of Parliament; that I am in touch with the electorate; and that I hold a seat that in any demographics should actually be held by the Labour Party but is not. I am sure the Labour Party will acknowledge that at the last election it was held by a record majority. 
I wanted to open my Budget speech with those comments for this reason. A number of people on the other side must be extremely disappointed in the outcome of this Budget. One of the things that never ceases to surprise me—and it happened when we were in Government and it is happening now with the Labour Party in Government—is that Governments seem to get out of touch with their electorates. They seem to get out of touch with what is happening in the constituencies. One of the things that I know the Labour Party and the Labour Government were hoping would be an outcome of this Budget was an increase in popularity in the polls. It must be an awful disappointment to them that wherever they look they find they are not getting the response they expected. 
Let me tell members why that is occurring. The reason is that the Government is out of touch with what the people of this country are thinking. New Zealanders are concerned about the social engineering that has been going on subtly over the last 4 or 5 years. What they see in this Budget is that here again Helen Clark with the support of Michael Cullen is trying to manipulate the minds of the public through giving them back their own money. People are not buying it. They are not interested in Michael Cullen saying to them: “I’m going to make you feel better by giving you some of your own money back.” The people of this country want the opportunity to use their own money their own way. The public of this country have become very cynical about politicians right across the board and right now they are extremely cynical about this Labour Party Government which they perceive is using this Budget and their money in an endeavour to buy their votes at the next election and people are not buying it. 
I say to Michael Cullen and Helen Clark that if they think they have changed the minds of the public with this Budget and will get support out of it between now and the election then they are sadly mistaken. Too often we see—and I say this about the past Government as I do about this one—that it is so easy for a Government to lose touch with the sentiment of the people because it gets so ingrained so engrossed and so involved in trying to manage the things that are important to it today that it forgets to look beyond and to look at what people are thinking. 
When I go back to my electorate of Northland and get down to what the people are feeling—and I say again that I think it is acknowledged that I have my nose to the ground and that it is a pretty good political nose—I know that people in Northland and across the country are saying: “We are extremely disappointed in what Michael Cullen Helen Clark and the Labour Government have tried to deliver to us today in this Budget.” 
There is so much cynicism around now so much concern about social engineering and so much worry about the fact that this Government is out there trying to use the public’s money to buy votes that people just will not buy it. People are cynical about this Government they are cynical about the Prime Minister and they are cynical about Michael Cullen’s Budget and as a consequence this Government will be disappointed in the outcome of what it thought would be a bumper crop. It will be an absolute failure. The Government will have to look elsewhere to get votes and those votes will not be there for it when it expects them.