Barry Maggie: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBarry Maggie: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 01 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11567. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MAGGIE BARRY (Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage): I rise with great pleasure to talk about Bill English’s eighth Budget. It is an excellent example of its kind. It gives us choices that we have not been able to make in other years. We have listened to the arts sector we have listened to conservation and those are the two areas of my ministerial responsibilities.I would have to say that that member Jacinda Ardern who has just resumed her seat is a tragic example of her kind. She has achieved nothing. She does nothing. When people compare that member with the actual member of Parliament for Auckland Central and all that the Hon Nikki Kaye has achieved as opposed to her doing what? Turning up at the odd disc-jockeying turning up to the odd event—actually doing very very little. In fact I cannot think of a single contribution that member has made that has made a difference to anybody—a tragic and pathetic example of her kind.But I am not going to spend any more time on the foolishness and delusional nonsense that is being peddled by the Opposition. Instead I will concentrate on what we have achieved and this Budget has achieved much. The economy is set to grow by 2.8 percent in the next 5 years so when we look at what we have achieved around job growth we have been able to spend more on health and more on education. Ultimately those are much better results for New Zealand families and vulnerable children.Hon Annette King: No wonder they don’t want her back on the Henry Show.Hon MAGGIE BARRY: Those are the kinds of things that count rather than carping from the edges of the universe as the Hon Annette King does—again an ineffectual individual who achieved very very little. In fact she put her portfolio backwards in the period of time that that member had it. When we look at Tony Ryall and at Jonathan Coleman we see people who have actually achieved.Let me look at my own portfolio responsibilities because when you look at the arts sector in New Zealand it is very easy to see that there has been a vibrancy—cultural dimensions that have been added to enrich us as a society. I am very grateful indeed that we have such resilient arts organisations. I am very glad indeed that they put together good strong business cases and I was able to support them. I put a very strong case to the Minister of Finance who listened very carefully and acted in a way that I think was responsible.For the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (NZSO) for example its funding has increased by more than 10 percent. So it has gone up $1.2 million from about $13.446 million to $14.646 million. This is an increase that will enable the Symphony Orchestra to travel more around the regions to take its extraordinary world-class orchestral members and talent to the parts of New Zealand that are clamouring to have that kind of cultural engagement. The Symphony Orchestra has responsibility for the National Youth Orchestra as well so it is nurturing the young orchestral people of the future. I think that is a very important part of the arts.The NZSO was given the great accolade of being a finalist in the Grammy awards up there with world-class orchestras—really up there punching above its weight in those international stakes. It is doing that because it is supported in its own country. The Symphony Orchestra I think is a major asset for us. I think something like 60 percent of its orchestral members are now able to be used in a way that they were not able to be before. In other words with the additional funding that it will have now the orchestra will be able to travel around New Zealand go to the regions and make sure that the very talented line-up of people that it has whom I saw performing on Italian National Day—20 of them went to the celebration and were extraordinary and incredibly impressive to the ambassadors who were there and to all of us.The Royal New Zealand Ballet is another example of a Crown entity that does an extraordinary amount. It has out of its own endeavours for box office for business and for partnerships and philanthropy managed to achieve more than 60 percent of the funding that it requires to run itself. That is commendable. That is the sort of thing that Crown funding can do to assist and back up its endeavours which are already very good indeed. Tutus on Tour—the ballet will be able to send more ballerinas around New Zealand and perhaps on some more international tours as well.Along with Te Matatini which has had a 56 percent increase—it will be able to take our national kapa haka which is extraordinary and unique and very much part of who we are as New Zealanders and our identity to the world. To those who were privileged to see the Edinburgh Tattoo our Matatini kapa haka groups that performed before it as the curtain-raiser if you like to the tattoo were extraordinary and people love them. They have been invited internationally around the world. The money the $1.94 million we have been able to allocate is up from $1.24 million. This is in fact permanent baseline funding and it will enable them to develop kapa haka around New Zealand. The regional organisation of Te Matatini will be able to set up 50 more groups a year in schools. They will be able to encourage kapa haka not only as a vibrant cultural expression but also as something that is good for your health—your cultural health and your physical health as well.When I look at the entities that are under my immediate responsibilities as the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage I am very proud of what they have achieved. I am very proud of the ability that they have to not only reach the people of New Zealand and to resonate with them but also to ensure that partners philanthropists and others really appreciate and value them. This means of course that the taxpayer’s dollar can go a great deal further than if we just paid one entity the lump sum of money and then did not look at developing other business partnerships.My task is partly to make taxpayers’ money go that much further. I am concentrating on doing that as well in my Department of Conservation (DOC). Despite some of the nonsense that has been peddled particularly by the Greens and backed up by the other Opposition people DOC’s operational spending has increased. It is difficult to understand why the Greens are having so much trouble with the mathematics. In 2008 the operational funding for DOC was $316 million a year. This year it is $391 million. That is a rise by everybody’s standards and everybody’s mathematics except the Greens who deliberately peddle misinformation and nonsense constantly about DOC and also attack it—attack it for what it does attack it for the fact that you have extraordinarily good-hearted people who work for DOC and try their absolute best and they succeed. I am very proud of them and I am very proud of what they do.There is plenty of good news for conservation in this year’s Budget. Let us look at one aspect of it: the War on Weeds which we launched last year where I have the Dirty Dozen annual array of weeds that need to be kept under control. We have as our No. 1 weed—and I fear it will be so for many years to come—wildings. We call them wildings because they escape from where they ought to be and they get away on us in our New Zealand landscape. Generally they are conifers but there are also sycamores and other specimens that have done this. So on Budget day Nathan Guy and I announced a $16 million package and that is going to increase our work to be able to control wildings.Wildings occupy at the moment something like 6 percent of the country’s total land area. That is about 1.8 million hectares that is high-value conservation and very productive land. They also smother our native species and ruin the biodiversity of New Zealand. So when we look at the money that we spend on wilding control it is up around $11 million a year actually and we are going to be targeting to control some priority areas including the Molesworth Station the headwaters of the Southern Alps lakes and rivers and the central North Island.Battle for our Birds is another reality this year because of beechmast seeding so $20.7 million has gone into landscape predator control which involves the use of aerial 1080 but with that money I have allocated a reasonable sum to do two pilot schemes on self-resetting traps.David Shearer: A reasonable sum?Hon MAGGIE BARRY: It is a very reasonable sum actually. It is many millions of dollars and it will be used to test and to pilot these self-resetting traps. Once you have dealt with the rodent population—knocked them back to negligible numbers—you then put the self-resetting traps in and they are able to protect our endangered and threatened species. This will be the biggest ever predator pest control operation in New Zealand’s history. So it will be more than 800000 hectares and that will prevent the plague proportion—biblical plague proportion actually—of rats stoats and possums. The results of 1080 have tremendously improved our ability as a nation to be able to control these predator numbers—these introduced eco-invaders.When I look at superannuation as well—when we cast back over the 8 years that National has been in Government superannuation entitlement has gone up 34 percent. This is a Government that cares about seniors and is concerned about the way that social isolation and elder abuse the growing rates of dementia numbers and so forth are needing to be planned for—not feared; not worried about unduly but to understand where we are heading with dementia rates with an ageing population. At the moment it involves about 50000 New Zealanders. That will treble and we need to plan ahead for that.This was a great Budget. I am very proud to be part of the Government that delivered it.