te Heuheu Georgina: Budget Debate 
te Heuheu Georgina: Budget Debate 
[Volume:608;Page:5864] 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (NZ National) 
: 
 New Zealanders have the right to expect that a Government will put in place a framework and policies that will increase the chances of a prosperous lifestyle for them all. This Budget does nothing to give confidence in that regard—nothing at all. The previous speaker can recite her little speech in the way that she has and make things sound all rosy pie but the future is not rosy pie. Unless the Government can guarantee sustainable long-term growth for this country we will not be able to afford the kinds of things that New Zealanders have grown accustomed to having such as good access to decent health services a decent education system continuing employment prospects—job prospects—and good growth prospects that will encourage businesses to stay here and invest more money thereby providing more jobs and wealth creation. This Budget does nothing for any of those prospects. And the pity about it is that this Government continually boasts about what it is doing for Maori when in fact the reality is the reverse of that. 
As far as Maori are concerned this Budget fails to deliver. In contrast to the 2000 Budget when this Government rolled out the red carpet—so to speak—with all the ribbons and bells on closing the gaps for Maori the 2003 Budget carefully avoids any particular focus on Maori. Of course there is a reason for that. Clearly Labour is looking to send a message to its core voters and to address growing public anxiety over its handling of Maori issues. If members look through Dr Cullen’s Budget delivery this year they will be lucky to find the word Maori mentioned more than three times. Maori will probably not be impressed by this Budget but even more than that the Maori electorate MPs who sit on the Government side of the House will be even less impressed by this Budget. 
None of the initiatives announced in this no-growth Budget will necessarily improve the lives long term of ordinary Maori families who are struggling to live their daily lives. My bet is that not even the Government’s own Maori electorate MPs are impressed by that. Why is that? It is because over the last 3 years those MPs have had to sit and watch while millions of dollars went into the mainstream only to be soaked up by the bureaucracy and with the benefits to Maori being impossible to assess because Ministers and chief executives refused to be audited. 
Edwin Perry 
: That’s right! 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU 
: Absolutely that is right! I can tell from the body language of the Maori MPs on the Government side of the House that they will be absolutely disappointed and probably angry that the millions of dollars that went out in the closing the gaps programme particularly to mainstream agencies have been soaked up mostly by the bureaucracy and that nobody is able to tell us what the value of that has been for Maori . 
Adding to the frustration of the Maori electorate MPs is that while they have seen an allocation in Vote Maori Affairs each year for Te Puni Kokiri to play the sheriff and to try to pin the big agencies and their chief executives down in the vote this year they have also seen other parts of the vote like policy development and brokerage and facilitation—true development activities—lose some of their allocation. The part of the vote that does have an increase is in the area of State-sector performance. In other words there will be more money for Te Puni Kokiri to act out the farce of playing the sheriff to big-spending agencies that refuse to be tied down. 
That was confirmed recently by the release of official information papers that basically showed that the task of monitoring the big agencies is beyond Te Puni Kokiri. In my view it should not have that role anyway. If the Government is serious about closing the gaps while continuing to dole out money to big agencies like social welfare and others then the monitoring of those agencies should perhaps come from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. It should not be left to Te Puni Kokiri which has great difficulty in trying to pin those chief executives down. It has recently been confirmed that although millions of dollars have been sucked up by those agencies the value of that for Maori cannot be assessed. That is an unsatisfactory state of affairs. If we were to take the Government seriously—and it is actually time that Maori did start to take the Government seriously—then one has to ask why it has allowed that situation to happen with all that money going out and nobody but nobody being able to assess its effectiveness. It is an absolute waste of taxpayers’ funds and this Government ought to be ashamed of itself. 
I want to make some comments about the treaty claims process. The Government has made much of its $6.5 million in new funding for a treaty information programme. There is no doubt that there will be agencies and members of the public out there who may appreciate that. But what New Zealanders want most of all—Maori included—is to have the historical grievances concluded and put behind us. If members look at the Budget for this year and look at the appropriations in Vote Courts for the Waitangi Tribunal they will see that there is absolutely no new funding for it. There is no boost of funding for the Waitangi Tribunal which is actually the key to having settlements concluded. It is time that this Government learnt that no matter how eagerly Maori might want to conclude a settlement the thing they want most is to have their day in court and to be able to go to negotiations armed with findings and recommendations from the Waitangi Tribunal. If members look at the Budget they will see that there is nothing in there to enable the Waitangi Tribunal to gear up its activities in that area. 
The Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations has set a 2-year time frame for the reaching of an agreement between the Government and the 100-plus claims involving the central North Island forestry and there is an expectation that the tribunal will move in tandem with that negotiations process. I ask the Minister to explain how the tribunal is to do that and at the same time to continue with the work that it is currently doing and has been doing in the past. My bet is that in the 48 hours following the release of the Budget tribunal officials and executives probably had to huddle themselves away and work out what they will have to put on the back burner in terms of hearing days doing research writing reports and making recommendations. They would have had to cut back on their forward schedule in order to accommodate the Minister’s time frame of 2 years for those 100-plus claims. That shows the Minister’s ignorance about the value that Maori place on having their claims go through the Waitangi Tribunal. 
On the face of it $6.5 million for a treaty information programme looks worthwhile. I understand that there is an intention that there will be the publication of treaty booklets and pamphlets already in circulation but there will also be a lot more seminars and workshops on increasing the understanding of the treaty. That will not necessarily benefit the New Zealand public. I guess we could take from it that there is a lot of money in there for some consultants—increasing the gravy train—but no money whatsoever to allow the key organisation the tribunal to increase its core activities. That is a total failure on the part of this Government. This is a Budget that the Maori members on the Government side of the House will probably want to hang their heads in shame about—and so they should. If they are to make their representation of their electorates mean anything then they should make the Government deliver in a much better way than it has been delivering in the past 3 years. This Budget does not do that. 
Sitting suspended from 5.58 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.