Fairbrother Russell: Budget Debate 
Fairbrother Russell: Budget Debate 
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RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER (NZ Labour—Napier) 
: 
 Uncertainty swirls around us. It is time for the sound management of the economy. The Budget delivered by the Hon Dr Michael Cullen delivers just that prescription. It is a prescription for certainty and for confidence. Internationally we have war terrorism and disease and the global economy is not performing well. Those concerns affect everybody in my electorate of Napier. I know that because every weekend I doorknock. I know what my electorate is saying so I know the sort of Budget it wants. It has the very Budget it had hoped for. This is also the Budget that the editorial writer in  
Hawke’s Bay Today 
 wanted when writing on the eve of the Budget. I quote: “Good times have given the Government the luxury of being able to press ahead with its social charter—that is after all what it was elected to do.” What is that social charter? It is concerned with equity among people in health and in education and with strength from diversity—diversity of people and of lifestyles. 
But no the anticipation of that writer that there would be a big spend-up was not fulfilled because there is drought across the country. That affects our Hawke’s Bay economy. Unpredictable frosts and frost patterns affect our wine producers. Returns to dairy farmers are affected by falling milk prices and a rise in the value of the New Zealand dollar. We have a power crisis created by a second very dry winter. That crisis has revealed the flawed planning that gave this Labour Government an electricity generation and distribution model that needs change. We have an unexpected set-back in what we can draw from our gasfields. We have an abundance of coal but not the technology to use it environmentally wisely. Those are the uncertainties that each person in the Napier electorate has playing on his or her mind and that the editorial writer must have had in mind when he stated “the certainty that wealth needs to be created before it can be shared.” 
But there is also plenty of really good news. The growth rate of our economy is strong as is that in Hawke’s Bay. New Zealanders are returning to live in New Zealand. Well-qualified migrants are choosing to make New Zealand their home and the place to raise a new generation of Kiwis. To those people Hawke’s Bay is seen as a slice of heaven. The demand in Napier for existing housing stock is phenomenal. Prices are unheard of and people are buying houses almost sight unseen. To get a new house built is even more difficult. In fact a senior bank officer said to me yesterday that he was forced to confirm a finance deal or otherwise there would have been a wait for 14 months before the builder could return to that site. 
There is business confidence in Hawke’s Bay—business confidence to market products and to take risks and business confidence to retain the asset of land. That was no better demonstrated than by Kim Crawford Wines in my electorate of Napier. Just this week that winery announced the sale for $18 million of the brand Kim Crawford Wines. It has sold the intellectual property in the brand and kept the land and the assets. An overseas wine distributor has bought the brand for $18 million. That is a demonstration of faith in the economy of the Napier electorate. Unemployment figures fluctuate but are lower than for a long long time. Napier is a great place for those looking for work. 
In Napier we have innovative educational establishments. The Eastern Institute of Technology is rapidly becoming a flagship in the tertiary education field. Our secondary schools offer variety and excellence. Our primary schools are centres of innovative educational and management ideas and our young people are being helped by the Gateway programme by increased operational funding and by the availability of more teachers in this coming year. 
In Napier we receive health services that are determined to keep us fit and well. We have a sports foundation that is the highlight surely of the Sport and Recreation New Zealand programme. It is headed by an innovative leader in Colin Stone. It is pulling all the sports together and they are performing well in the new stadium which is a model of intercity cooperation and was built recently in Taradale. But when medical disaster does strike in Hawke’s Bay we have the health system to cope with that. Hawke’s Bay had the first severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) patient in New Zealand. The record of dealing with that patient has been described by those who know including the Ministry of Health as exemplary. Our services were up to that crisis and our specialists were able to cope with it. The board is now led by a chief executive officer who loves his job. He recognises that it may well be more expensive to have someone on a waiting list than to get the surgery done. From discussions with that chief executive officer I would expect our waiting list to be reduced to one-third of its current size over the next 6 months. 
Napier is a community of small businesses which have previously had to run to the same rules as multimillion-dollar and multinational businesses. That problem is addressed in this Budget. Assistance with payroll and employee administration will make small-business operation less stressful. I speak as someone who has run small businesses for something like 30-odd years employing up to five or six staff. Removing the difficulty of meeting large provisional tax payments will enable the small-business owner to plan and to manage cash flows like any household budget—that is with regular outflows of cash in line with the pattern of money coming into the business. That is what this Budget provides for the smaller business people. 
Napier’s own Dr Michael Cullen as the Minister of Finance has set the finances of this country into a pattern of certainty and stability. The job for the rest of us in Napier who claim some leadership role is to make sure that the pattern delivers to each family individual student invalid and business. Dr Cullen has given us the tools to build a strong economy. I will remind members of what those tools are. They are the tools of youth development because surely the future of this country is in our young people. 
Firstly the Gateway programme enables senior secondary school students to begin work-based qualifications and to learn the disciplines of work. Last year it was available in two schools in Napier—Colenso High School and Tamatea High School. This year it has been extended to five further secondary schools in Napier and the pattern is now established from that developed in Napier and other centres so that eventually all decile 1 to decile 5 secondary schools in New Zealand will take part in the Gateway programme. That augurs well for our young people. Secondly there are the Modern Apprenticeships. At the end of March this year there were 132 Modern Apprenticeships in Napier and 5012 nationally. The target of 7500 Modern Apprenticeships by 2006 should be met. The aim of the mayor’s task force on jobs for all 15 to 19-year-olds to be engaged in appropriate education training work or other options that will lead to long-term economic independence and well-being will be met. 
Those targets of youth development the Gateway programme and Modern Apprenticeships are important because many of our young folk going through school these days have faced the urge to become academic to go to university and polytechnics when to many of those children and youth the real benefit is not in academic pursuits but in exercising their bodies and using manual skills to contribute to our country in a very practical way. The sooner that we move away from the academic cringe of feeling that if one uses one’s hands and body to earn an honest dollar one is somehow an inferior citizen the better it will be. This Labour Government is introducing that kind of equity in the workforce. 
But education cannot get by without funding and I am pleased to say that in Napier this Budget will release almost $300000 in additional operating funding. I am on the board of trustees of a secondary school in Napier and I know how important that increase in money will be. Boards of trustees are run by everyday mums and dads who have to face their own problems and then give their time voluntarily to run the schools. 
Peter Brown 
: Has the member ever got his hands dirty? 
RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER 
: As well as that—what that member may have lacked is good teaching—19 additional teachers will be made available to Napier schools in this next financial year. That is a prescription for success and is a prescription for the social charter spoken about by the editorial in  
Hawke’s Bay Today 
 on the eve of the Budget. That prescription will lead this country forward with valuable young people who have a place to fit in and who can find their place in the world. That is why John Roughan writing in the  
New Zealand Herald  
in the weekend was able to say that the established superannuation fund “is still there and Cullen is now salting away the tax surpluses to build a fund that might relieve my kids of some of the cost of paying for the retired baby boom. National true to form promises to abolish it.” 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: United Future members have split their speeches so I will give the next member the bell at 4 minutes.