Adams Amy: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeAdams Amy: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 07 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11701. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): After that short break from reality it is my great pleasure to take a call in this Budget debate reflecting on Bill English’s eighth Budget the eighth of this National-led Government. I think that for anyone who is looking at the meat of the issue rather than the noise in a Budget it tells them that the economy is strong it is stable and jobs are growing—200000 so far and another 170000 to come. Incomes are growing and importantly they are growing faster than inflation so real incomes are growing. We are on track to have an average income of $63000 a year under the stewardship of this Government. And our GDP is growing—that is not something to take lightly or to say quickly because the reality is that most of the countries we would look to for comparable indicators of success would kill to have a GDP growth averaging 3 percent a year over the next few years. New Zealand is in a position where it is envied around the world for its strong stable economy and that is thanks to Bill English to John Key and to the stability and success of this National-led Government.We are now in a position where the moderate and rising surpluses that this Government has delivered enable us to have choice and actually that is what economic growth and surpluses and the operating balance before gains and losses and all the phrases that Treasury can throw around and that we discuss in this House—that is actually what it means. We get the country back into surplus because once we have surplus we have options to do things that matter to New Zealanders. That is why in this Budget you are seeing us being able to now raise the budget for Pharmac. As my colleague Dr Coleman said in the opening contribution today the budget for Pharmac has risen to $850 million a year meaning we can fund more of the drugs for things like hepatitis C which affects 50000 New Zealanders; melanoma drugs which are incredibly expensive but very very successful; and bowel cancer screening across New Zealand. And there is the biggest investment in school property spending in more than a decade. That is why we work so hard on this side of the House to get us into surplus and create growth.Those surpluses are hard-won and hard-fought for but they represent the very real ability to provide that sort of quality of life for New Zealanders. We have not done it through borrowing; we have not done the old Cullen/Labour trick of “Just keep spending the money. Let us run up the debts for our future generations to pay for.” We have done it the way New Zealand families and New Zealand businesses do it which is to earn the money first do the hard yards work out how you can trim your sails work out how you can be more efficient work out how you can actually deliver more within a constrained budget and still deliver surpluses. Not only have we seen better achievement and more spending in education not only have we seen more elective surgeries every single year since we have been in office not only have we seen a falling crime rate—it is safer on our streets—not only are we doing the work that my colleague Anne Tolley is leading to reform Child Youth and Family as we desperately need to do but we are doing it while ensuring that we get the books back into shape and we do not leave significant debts for my children and grandchildren to have to pay in years to come.Those surpluses are starting to provide the very real choices and ability for this Government to do those things and we are very proud to be delivering them when countries around the world are facing increasing deficit forecasts. In fact our debt track is going down. That is a remarkable achievement given the challenges that this Government has faced—the international the economic and the frankly seismic and weather-related challenges—to get to a position where our debt track is reducing our core Crown debt forecasts are going down and the surplus forecasts are going up. We are in a very strong position.I want to talk for a moment about the parts of the Budget that relate specifically to my portfolios. I have to start off with the $837 million invested by this Budget in the justice sector. That is one of the biggest investments in the justice sector that we have seen and it is on top of the extra $56 million that we put into the sector through Supplementary Estimates for this current year. What you are seeing in the Budget is another $280 million for the police force.We are now funding 6000 out-of-gate referrals so that when our prisoners are leaving prison we are working extensively with them in the community—and in a collaborative wraparound way—to ensure that we are doing everything we can to ensure that they can reintegrate well into society. I want to talk about one specific statistic that I think is incredibly significant and that is this: we now fund 4500 alcohol and drug treatment places in our prisons every year—4500. Do you know what that number was in 2008?Hon Members: Tell us.Hon AMY ADAMS: It was 500—500 places funded under the big-spending Labour Government. We are now funding 4500 alcohol and drug treatment places every year and I am very very proud of that.The Budget includes $8.2 million towards the setting up of the sex offender register to help keep our young children safe in society. Within that overall allocation $208 million goes into the justice and courts sector. That is the biggest single investment we have seen in more than a decade. Of that $208 million the biggest investment is focusing on access to justice. This House will be aware of the challenge of ensuring that communities and people within our communities have access to effective legal help when they need it. We are putting $96 million into increasing legal aid into increasing civil eligibility thresholds into increasing criminal legal aid funding into ensuring and enhancing the funding for community law centres and into further funding for the Public Defence Service. Can I just touch on that for a minute because I was a huge fan of the Public Defence Service when Minister Simon Power created it and it has been remarkably successful to the extent that judges now regularly comment to me about the high quality of the advocacy they see from our public defenders in court. It is a brilliant training ground for young lawyers it is a very high-quality legal service for those who need it and we are very pleased to be funding it further in this Budget.Restorative justice gets a $16 million boost in this Budget and again this House should be aware that restorative justice has the potential to really revolutionise the way we think about deal with and let victims recover from what is generally lower-level offending. It does allow victims—they tell us this—to be heard to feel that they get a sense of addressing their offender to get closure and to recover much better. For the offenders we are seeing a significant reduction in reoffending by those who have been through restorative justice. It does work. It is outside the norm we want to see more of it and that is why we have put more money into restorative justice.We have funded an increase in non-violence programmes for family violence offenders as part of our work and you are going to see more from us in this space as the work of the Ministerial Group on Family Violence and Sexual Violence continues. I do want to mention and highlight the $46 million that with the help of Minister Anne Tolley we are putting into sexual violence services for victims—$46 million. When the Social Services Committee did an inquiry into the funding of sexual violence services—and we want to commend it for its work—it noted that we needed to put more funding into the sector. We agreed we said we would and this Budget delivers on it.The Independent Police Conduct Authority will get an extra $300000 every year to ensure that it can continue to operate and hold our criminal justice sector to account.In the time remaining I just want to talk very briefly about cyber-security. Cybercrime is a pervasive and real threat that we have to deal with. In fact the global trade in cybercrime is now bigger than the international drugs trade. Cybercrime is bigger than the international drugs market. When you look at our $231 billion economy we have to ensure that New Zealand businesses are well-positioned to take advantage of the digital world. We are uniquely positioned to do that with our world-leading infrastructure and our incredible innovative and resourceful Kiwis but we have to ensure that they learn how to keep themselves safe. That is what cyber is about. It is why this Government put out the first-ever Cyber Security Strategy in 2011 why we refreshed it last year and why this Budget includes $22 billion—oh sorry million; that would be a good cyber-security centre—$22 million to set up New Zealand’s first Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) which will be the one-stop shop and trusted clearing house for information incident response and triage analysis of threat information and importantly our international point of contact for cyber-security incidents.In addition and in that space can I finish by making reference to the money we have set aside in the Budget for the Harmful Digital Communications Act and the agency we have set up. Last week I announced that NetSafe is the approved agency under the legislation. It will do a fantastic job of enhancing education and awareness about being safe online and will provide people with a very real very cost-effective and quick form of redress. It is just another brilliant aspect of a Budget of which I am incredibly proud.