Ardern Jacinda: Budget Debate 
Ardern Jacinda: Budget Debate 
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JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 We can pontificate as much as we like about the Budget and we can share as much rhetoric as we care to share. In fact National MPs have done plenty of that. We have heard a lot of talking in the abstract. I do not know how many times I have heard the word “aspiration” but I am still none the wiser as to why Government members believe that this Budget creates any aspiration. We have heard a lot of talk about hip pockets. Sometimes we have even heard contradictory slogans coming from National MPs including for instance the fact that the Government is fiscally prudent even while we see the country moving into an extra $1 billion of debt in order to fund the tax cuts—and that is before I take into account the additional cuts that have been made to health and education to fund them. 
I can understand that perhaps that is just a case of contradictory messaging. What I cannot abide is the utter hypocrisy of claiming that in any way— 
Tim Macindoe 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The member knows she cannot use that word in this House and it is very rich coming from her. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: He has just ruined his point of order. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: You do not need to comment further. The member knows that she cannot use that word. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: What I cannot abide are any slogans or statements claiming that this is a Budget for the future of New Zealand when in the same breath we hear that the last Budget’s suspension of contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund will continue. That does nothing to assist the next generation to pay for the superannuation of the generation of baby boomers. We need to provide them with superannuation if we are to continue the superannuation accord on supporting the old in retirement. Add on top of that the fact that future generations will be subsidising heavy polluters through the Government’s emissions trading scheme which does nothing to encourage or incentivise a reduction in emissions. Finally I could also add to the list the fact that the accident compensation scheme has been whittled away. It is a scheme that Government members all benefited from in their youth and in their heyday—if they ever had one indeed—but young people will not have the benefit of it. So I cannot let the assumption stand that the Government has done anything for future generations of New Zealand. 
I want to apply a different measure to the Budget and it is not one of slogans statements or calculators. It is simply the message that I am receiving out and about in Auckland Central in particular about people’s individual experiences of what the Budget will mean for them—putting aside all the hypothetical talk of hip pockets and looking at what it will mean in practice for some of those families. The first measure I would choose to raise is the simple measure of the cost of living because that is what is raised with me most often when I am talking to families in particular. Of course they have been able to do their own maths on the Budget. They recognise that in many cases particularly if they are low and middle income earners their tax cuts will be modest compared with those of some higher-income earners. A lot of their tax cuts will be almost immediately swallowed up not just because of the fact that New Zealand will have one of the highest consumption taxes in the OECD via the increase in GST to 15 percent—and people are very alert to that—but also because of the fear of what an increase in inflation to 5.9 percent will mean for the many many homeowners in Auckland in particular who have disproportionately large mortgages. Members opposite who are from Auckland will know that in that area households tend to spend a greater proportion of their income—well above the national average—on rent or mortgages. That means the rise in inflation is a real fear factor for those people. The true measure of the Budget is whether people will feel better off and on that measure it will fail. 
I want to delve into the housing issue a little more deeply. It has been brushed over by Government members as something that they have somehow dealt with through the simple measures we see in the Budget but I do not believe that is the case. I ask what the Budget will do first of all for wannabe first-home buyers and the plentiful renters that we have in my city. The Government decided to target the measure of depreciation but I do not believe from what I have seen that that will in any way compel those housing investors who are holding on to our housing stock to sell up; rather they will recoup the additional loss that they anticipate and that will have a harmful effect on the many renters in my electorate. For instance a survey of landlords was taken— 
Hon Nathan Guy 
: Which electorate? You don’t have an electorate. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: The electorate where I represent Labour. It is known as Auckland Central. A survey of landlords found that 50 percent of landlords plan to increase rents. That will have an incredible impact on low and modest income earners who will get maybe $15 from their tax cuts but are facing an increase in rent of—I have heard cases of this—between $10 and $30 per week. Earlier in the evening Aaron Gilmore talked about a student who had come into his office; he had sat the student down and jubilantly shown him that he would be $2.62-a-week or thereabouts better off as a consequence of the Budget. What he did not mention was the fact that the student as a renter pays a landlord for his accommodation and may face a similar increase when the full effects of the Budget kick in. He also did not mention the fact that students are facing a $50 surcharge on their student loans which in many ways is interest on student loans by stealth. That not only wipes out the student’s $2.62 but also puts him in the negative. 
What about those who aspire to own their own home? The Budget does not fix the ongoing supply issue which we already know about. In fact all it does is affect people’s ability to save if they are already renters in the rental market. Finally on that last measure it does not make renters’ lives better. 
I will touch on young families as well because in that area we are seeing already very tangible examples of how the Budget will affect them. Anyone who has visited an early childhood education centre will know that. On my side of the House I know that many Labour members have done that although I am not sure many National MPs have visited early childhood education centres recently. In Auckland Central for instance I visited a Samoan bilingual early childhood education centre on Richmond Road. There was no rhetoric in what they shared with me; the numbers were pretty simple. They are facing a cut in their funding of $100000 purely because they aspired to have their centre full of qualified teachers in order to get better outcomes—because the evidence demonstrates that that is what happens when we have qualified teachers in early childhood education. They followed the direction of the previous Labour Government and ensured that they had a higher ratio of qualified teachers in their centre and they are now being punished for that as are many early childhood education centres in Auckland which tends to have a high proportion of qualified registered teachers teaching in its centres. 
I ask Government members whether they would care to speak on that point and perhaps share some tips with the people running those centres. For instance is it their suggestion that they should start charging individual parents an average of $20 to $30 per child to keep them in what are now underfunded early childhood education centres? What should those early childhood education centres do about families who were previously covered by Work and Income which gave their child additional support? The threshold has moved so they are facing a double hit. How is the Budget making their lives better? 
It would be remiss of me not to mention young people. There has been much trumpeting about how the Budget has initiatives that will assist the 60000 young unemployed people in New Zealand. To date the Government response on youth unemployment has first and foremost been to deny the numbers and to talk about benefit numbers. That is completely disingenuous given that a number of young people are not eligible for benefits which is the measure the Government chooses to use. The Government’s second technique seems to be to try to reduce the number of those unable to work who are able to access support from the Government by forcing them on to the Limited Service Volunteers programme before allowing them to access the benefit. The final attempt to assist those young people seems to be to deny them access to training education and support. At best it is a poor plan and at worst it is ignoring a significant issue. Again the Budget has done nothing for those young people. 
Just before the Budget came out I was asked by a National MP whom I will not name whether I was looking forward to my tax cut. I told him no and that I would rather he did something useful with it like continue to fund early childhood education. He responded that my tax cut would make me aspirational. I did not respond to him at the time but I have to say having seen the Budget in its entirety now that in some ways perhaps it has made me aspirational. Now I have more aspiration than ever before to make sure that this Budget is one of National’s last Budgets.