Hide Rodney: Debate on Budget Policy Statement 
Hide Rodney: Debate on Budget Policy Statement 
[Volume:629;Page:1601] 
RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 It is always a great pleasure in relation to the Finance and Expenditure Committee to follow Mr Gordon Copeland and indeed Mr Hone Harawira. I enjoyed both contributions to this debate. I listened most attentively to both speeches and I agree with everything that Gordon Copeland said. We certainly have a problem in this country with the economy going down and with the Government over the next 3 years expanding its expenditure and effectively squeezing out the private sector. Of course that is what is driving up interest rates through the inflationary impact. 
I was staggered to be reminded by Mr Copeland that the increase in Government expenditure over the next 3 years is a whopping $9.2 billion. We often sit on the Finance and Expenditure Committee and talk about a billion dollars. It just rolls off one’s tongue but it is a very hard figure to get one’s head around. It is a thousand million dollars. 
Mr Copeland talked about an increase in expenditure of $9.2 billion and he said that core Government expenditure would rise to $55.4 billion. To give members a feel for what that is I want to paint a picture of what it would look like. Most people in this House or listening to the radio can at least imagine a $100 bill. I want members to imagine a $100 bill and to then imagine a bundle of $100 bills worth $10000 and standing just so high. We can imagine those bundles being stacked up on a table. We would put one bundle another bundle and a third bundle—and there is $30000 which is a lot of money but just so high. That is what Jonathan Hunt spent on his taxi chits in 1 year. 
Then we go a bit higher to $40000 $50000 $60000 $70000 and $80000—and ask how high $1 billion would stretch. Well it would not be just to the ceiling here; it would be way beyond that. It would stretch for a kilometre. So bundles of $100 bills stacked up to equal $1 billion would be a kilometre high. Of course $1 million is just a metre high. 
So that gives us a comparison of $1 million with $1 billion and when we look at what Dr Cullen is spending in the year 2008 we see that it is $55.4 billion. That is money taken from hard-working New Zealanders which would stretch 55.4 kilometres high. The increase alone in expenditure would be 9.2 kilometres high and quite frankly I would not let Dr Cullen spend $100 of my own money and think that he could do a better job than I could. 
Hon Chris Carter 
: No one would want to give you any money. It’s like Fiji; tell us about Fiji. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: Well I know that Chris Carter would not know what money was but I believe it is shocking to think that Government expenditure over the next 3 years will expand by that amount. So I agree with everything that Mr Copeland said. 
I want to pick up on a point that my colleague Hone Harawira made. Of course he is quite right: smoking is a terrible terrible thing. It is a terrible thing for the health of New Zealanders and what makes it particularly tragic is that those who are most addicted to smoking are oftentimes those who can least afford it. It is such a tragedy amongst young Maori still to see them taking up the habit of smoking despite the best efforts of people and the knowledge we now have about what it will mean. I just find it so sad when we see those beautiful young people with nice skin and healthy bodies but they are having a smoke and unfortunately we know how they will end up looking in 50 years how it will affect their health and how with even their best endeavours they may not be able to quit easily. 
But I want to quibble a wee bit with Mr Harawira’s suggestion that we ban tobacco as the solution— 
Tariana Turia 
: Ban the sale. 
RODNEY HIDE 
:—that we ban the sale of tobacco. I want to explore that if I may and ask Mr Harawira to consider what it would mean. The difficulty would be that people would not stop smoking. People would still smoke and the first thing we would have to do would be to increase the resources of the police enormously so they could go around and catch people who were illegally growing tobacco manufacturing tobacco products and possibly smoking tobacco. 
I know that Tariana Turia said that we will pull them up just for selling it but it is the same business. If we catch those smoking tobacco we have to find out whether they have bought it from somewhere. So there would be a huge increase in the State’s resourcing of the police to police the smoking of tobacco in this country of ours. 
 Prohibition would also make criminals of those who bought and sold tobacco and presumably we would need some penalty against them. Do they go to jail do they get fined—what do we do to people who buy and sell tobacco? Also of course nothing would help the criminal gangs in New Zealand more than the prohibition of tobacco because that would make the growing and the sale of tobacco a huge underground industry. I do not think we would necessarily see less tobacco being smoked in the end than we do now. 
So I caution about the use of prohibition. Yes I would love to live in a country where no one smoked and people did not buy cigarettes and where young people in particular did not take up the habit. But I urge caution about the idea that somehow through prohibition we can wave a magic wand and remove a drug such as tobacco. And my comments apply with equal force to other drugs and whether we are going about controlling them in the best way. 
The Government talks about economic transformation and there has been a transformation under this Government. The transformation has been the transfer of money from the pockets of working people and business people to the Government. That is the transformation that has occurred: everyone is feeling a bit poorer because everyone is paying a bit more tax. While the Government crows over the fact that it has a positive balance sheet the economy turns turtle. 
I know that Michael Cullen likes to heap scorn on Adam Smith but Adam Smith’s point was in part to explain that a country got rich not by having a king who had a lot of gold but through the sum total of the wealth that was created by its citizens through trade and that measuring a country’s wealth by its Government’s treasury was a complete mistake. Michael Cullen who thinks he is so clever about economics does not understand even the most basic point made by arguably the very first economist—that is that the wealth of a country is not measured by how much money the Government has. 
Day after day we are subjected to Dr Michael Cullen suggesting that because the Government has taken a lot of money from working people and businesses and put that money into its own Treasury the country is in good shape when actually it can mean the reverse. We heard that from Dr Michael Cullen in the Finance and Expenditure Committee today. The committee also heard what Michael Cullen had to say about the economic cycle. I found that very interesting—and Mr Copeland can confirm that I asked him what he thought had caused it. It is very interesting. According to Michael Cullen when the economic cycle is on the up it is his good work but when it is on the down it is everyone else’s fault and has nothing whatsoever to do with Michael Cullen. 
We can go right back to Adam Smith and every economist since; we know the conditions for growing an economy. They are free trade the maintenance of law and order the maintenance of the basic utilities needed to run an economy— 
Gordon Copeland 
: A stable currency. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: —a stable currency and a Government that keeps taxes low and spends wisely. Of course with this Government we have the exact opposite: a Government that taxes hard and spends unwisely and it therefore destroys wealth. Indeed this Government does not allow people in business to go about their business but hinders them every which way. 
I do believe that we face some very serious issues in our economy. We face some very serious issues on the social welfare front in health and in education and we face some very serious problems—to which there are no easy answers—in law and order and the maintenance of public safety. I do not see this Government or indeed this Parliament addressing those issues. That is the tragedy of the Budget Policy Statement. Where is the vision from Helen Clark or Michael Cullen as to where this country could be in the next 10 years? That is what we are lacking. That is why we need a better Government.