Cullen Michael: Taxation (Annual Rates and Urgent Measures) Bill — In Committee 
Cullen Michael: Taxation (Annual Rates and Urgent Measures) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:628;Page:782] 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 I am not quite sure whether that was a waving of the white flag or simply another leadership bid from the member. He said the most important thing right at the start of his speech: next year taxation will not be as big an issue as it was this year. That sounds awfully like waving the white flag. It is only in an election year that taxation is a big issue for the National Party . The party does not like to talk about bribes of course but one can afford billions of dollars worth of tax cuts at no cost. 
Mr English said that taxation will be off the agenda next year; it will be much less important than it has been. Why? Because Mr English never supported the National Party’s tax programme. He knew and said this privately that it did not add up. He knew it did not add up because he has been a Minister of Finance. He knew the programme would not work and that all National’s candidates up and down the country were being fed a whole load of bovine something or other. They were feeding it out to the people paid for by the Exclusive Brethren who I hope pay their taxes even if they do not vote—although our check of the rolls shows that the men vote but the women do not which is very interesting. All of that was leading to the conclusion that somehow or other a cornucopia of riches would flow forth in terms of tax cuts without impacting upon anybody. 
Then Mr English told us that the issue will always come down to where the money is spent. Well indeed it will. But I have to tell him that Treasury has not come up with any great ways of saving money. Treasury’s ways of saving money if we are looking seriously at doing that come down to all the usual things such as lifting the age at which one receives New Zealand superannuation and “targeting childcare more precisely” or roughly those words—that is more income testing for middle-income people who are trying to access childcare and hence more of the effective marginal tax rates that the National Party so objects to time after time. They come down to targeting heath assistance particularly in terms of primary health care—in other words raising the cost of going to the doctor or the cost of prescriptions for the great mass of middle-income New Zealanders. Those are where the savings can be made. 
I invite Mr English to signal that his programme as the next National Party leader if he gets the job is to raise those costs of the middle class and give them back the money by way of tax cuts that they otherwise would have got the benefit of through services. Of course he will not say that. Mr English is an old-fashioned interventionist who always says that the Government should do something. He says the Government should do something whenever there is any problem in New Zealand. 
Hon Bill English 
: I don’t. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Did anybody else recognise me then? Did it not sound familiar? Mr English says the Government should do something. He does not say what it should do; as long as it does something it will be all right. Deep inside Mr English a real old-fashioned Muldoon tries to come out whenever there is any kind of problem in running the country. Mr English is not like Mr Key of course who wants to give everybody back their own money by way of tax cuts. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.