Cunliffe David: General Debate 
Cunliffe David: General Debate 
[Volume:663;Page:10976] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 Budget 2010 should be about the many not the few. It should be about investing in the future not whining about the past. Tomorrow the Budget excuses will run out for the National Government. After 9 years in the wilderness it did nothing last year except wreck superannuation. A year later the public wants to know what is under the bonnet of its clapped-out car. Tomorrow the public will find out. The National Government promised aspiration it promised a brighter future and it promised not to raise GST. The Government promised Tuhoe. What has it delivered? 
This Government is becoming known as the Government of broken promises. Tomorrow we will find out what fairness means to the National Government and I think it is the same as it has always meant—be fair to the top 5 percent. Give them a windfall gain while rape victims cannot get counselling. Borrow to fund tax cuts for the Business Roundtable while elderly people cannot get home help. Tell someone on $70000 who will be getting 50c a week if he or she is lucky that someone on half a million dollars who will be getting $350 a week that that is fair. 
National has forgotten that New Zealanders do not like to be told that they are just jealous. Well they cannot be both jealous and fair. One thing New Zealanders know is that not only is the Government inherently unfair but it does not have a solution to the underlying structural problems of this economy. The Government promised a step change it promised courage it promised leadership to address the savings problem to rebuild our export base to lift the incomes of all New Zealanders and to stop the drain to Australia which has worsened in the last year. New Zealanders know we are not even standing still; we are slipping backwards. We are seeing our dairy farms being bought up by foreigners. We are seeing private assets being sold to fund the slip-slide away of an economy that does not balance and a Government that is out of ideas as to how to fix it. 
This has not been a good week for the Prime Minister. He told Tuhoe what he really thought of them. He told middle New Zealand what he thinks of them. They are not core and critical. They are just the jealous whingeing whining battlers on which his mates stand. He has even given up pretending that tax cuts drive growth. He knows that the literature shows they do not. Anyway New Zealand has the third-lowest tax rate in the OECD—far lower than in Australia—so why would people go to Australia for lower taxes? They would go there to have higher incomes; to earn higher wages. The task facing the Government is to lift the wages of ordinary Kiwis to get more Kiwis in jobs to put more food on the table of ordinary New Zealand families who face—wait for it—higher GST; property taxes which are driving higher rents; increased accident compensation tax; higher tobacco tax; higher costs for student loans; petrol going up; power prices going up; and mortgage rates going up. And the Government says it stands for fairness. What is fair about that? 
Fairer tax cuts would put money in the pockets of hard-working New Zealand families. They would create jobs. They would create the future that New Zealand needs—more jobs and better incomes—by boosting exports by boosting savings and by boosting the smart economy. [ 
Interruption 
] As my colleague Mr Shearer has pointed out that Government is putting back into research and development less than half of the amount it stripped out. It is preaching savings after stripping half the funds going into KiwiSaver and half killing New Zealand superannuation. New Zealanders know truth and they know lies. Tomorrow we will meet the truth.