Collins Judith: Budget Debate 
Collins Judith: Budget Debate 
[Volume:626;Page:20843] 
 JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 We have heard from Mr Tim Barnett who said that he was proud of Labour’s Budget. My colleague Dr Wayne Mapp said that he must be the only one. But no I read the other day that Kerre Woodham said David Cunliffe telephoned her radio show on Newstalk ZB and made the most extraordinary toadying comments about the Budget. Kerre Woodham is normally a bit of a lefty but she said that she was nauseated by this. How could this man even as a Minister in this Government possibly say that 67c a week in 3 years’ time will keep the public happy? Why does he not just say “Let them eat cake.”? In fact what he said was “Let them chew gum.” because that is all people can buy with 67c a week. 
Mr Barnett has been talking on and on and on about how spending more money gets better results. We all know that that is absolute nonsense. Members should look at the health spending. Under this Government it has gone up about 50 percent from the days of 1999. What has happened to the number of operations performed in the public sector in that time? It has gone down or occasionally it has stayed the same. 
Hon Marian Hobbs 
: What happened to nurses’ wages? 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: I am not one of Labour’s members. I can behave myself in the House. What has happened to nurses wages? Nurses are only now starting to get the pay that the Labour Government has been promising for 6 years none of which was factored into the health budget last year. That is what has happened. Nurses have been underpaid for years. The Government has promised them money for 6 years and it is only now starting to get the pay system working. That is what it has done. Unfortunately the poor old nurses have been the ones to miss out. The Government let them wait and wait and wait while it built up the bureaucracy in the Ministry of Health so that the bureaucrats could push around their little pens and the Government did not give a toss—the Prime Minister has used that term so I will too—about the poor old nurses at the coalface. What about the nurses in the private sector such as the ones working in rest homes? We know that the great reward that Marian Hobbs is talking about has not gone to them. We know it has not. 
Let us talk about some of the waste in the health sector. Let us talk about the number of Treaty of Waitangi indoctrination courses that the nurses of Otago are forced to go through. Let us talk about the indoctrination into the Treaty of Waitangi that midwives have to go through. Midwives from Australia cannot practise here unless they get themselves indoctrinated with the Treaty of Waitangi. We know what is happening to the money and it is not going to where it needs to go. 
The people of Otago who find themselves in hospital have to have pillowcases that are a different colour to sheets. That is so that they can be washed separately because of protocol. Jill Pettis looks very puzzled. The  
Otago Daily Times 
 ran that story on its front page and I am sure that as the chief Government whip she would know about it. What about the money wasted on that sort of nonsense? 
Let us talk about education spending. This Government talks ad nauseam about how much money it spends. What about seeing some outcomes for our people? Let us look at Te Wananga o Aotearoa. When National was in Government the wananga was getting $4 million a year. That was fair enough. Last year the Labour Government gave it $239 million and the wananga is still going broke. The wananga had the Government’s own commissioner on the board for 18 months and it is still going broke. The Government simply attacks the people running the wananga. It should be looking at the Ministers who were in charge of it. We know who was in charge until he had it removed from his responsibility—Steve Maharey. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Smarmy. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: I understand that the staff called themselves “Smarmy’s Army”. He let it go just as he did with the Families Commission. He just let it go and the wananga could do whatever it wanted. This Government has been conning people particularly the media to think that spending more money means getting more. That is not true—we have got less. That has been shown over and over again. Teachers in decile 1 schools are saying that they cannot get even the most basic things for their kids. They need better reading-recovery programmes. The few things that this Government has done for kids started with National—for instance introducing social workers into schools. The Government has only now started to increase the numbers a little bit. Who brought that policy in? National brought it in. The Government is talking all the time about giving our children Family Start. Who brought in concepts like that? National did. 
What is in the Budget that is so wonderful? There is nothing that is so wonderful. Here are some examples of quotes from the media about the Budget: “What we knew was that there was going to be this deep dark secret. We knew there was going to be a deep dark secret because Mike Williams the President of the Labour Party said so.” The deep dark secret of the Budget. It was a deep dark disappointment because it was 67c a week for working New Zealanders to get in 3 years’ time. It was worse than an insult; it was a disgrace and every commentator up and down the country whether that commentator was left right middle or any other form said what a disappointment it was. We can see what has happened to Labour—it has absolutely lost the plot. Has there ever been anything like Dr Michael Cullen in the last few weeks? He has lost his temper in Parliament—he lost it again today. He has lost his temper at the media accusing one TV station of doing something naughty and then apparently it was another TV station. He has been losing it all the time. The reason he is losing it is because he knows that this is just about the worst Budget that anyone has ever seen. 
We were sitting here listening during the Budget speech and waiting for the big one. We were wondering where the big one was and what the Government would do to show some vision. What did we find? We found that the depreciation of laptop computers can now be reduced a bit more quickly. I sat there reading the Budget speech and listening to Dr Cullen and I turned to my colleague Dr Wayne Mapp and said: “Laptop computers will be able to be depreciated at a quicker rate. My goodness isn’t that a big one.” 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: It’s like a tax lecture. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Dr Mapp said it is like a tax lecture. I asked Dr Mapp whether he could imagine George Bush Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair saying in their big Budget speeches: “You’ll be able to depreciate your laptop computers. That’ll bring you round.” It will not and this Government hates the fact that people like John Armstrong from the  
New Zealand Herald  
have termed this Budget the  
Titanic  
the  
Hindenburg 
—one of the great disasters of our time. John Armstrong is a very experienced commentator and he knows a thing or two. He certainly knew that this one was a booby. It was a booby from the time that Dr Cullen refused to have his photo taken with the Budget as it was coming off the press. That was the telltale sign that Dr Cullen had been rolled by his own caucus. He was forced to go ahead with this pathetic little tax cut to try to make it look as if the people of New Zealand were going to get something. But of course all he got was the big booby prize and he had to front it. 
Poor old Dr Cullen he must be very disappointed. My goodness he lost his temper today when he was put on the ropes by John Key. He lost his temper time and time again. This is one of the most appalling Budgets of all time. We all remember the talk about the “black” Budget. This is the “blank” Budget. It is a blank Budget from a Government that has lost all idea of what to do other than spend spend spend.