Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBudget Debate[Sitting date: 04 June 2013. Volume:690;Page:10659. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Budget DebateDebate resumed from 30 May on theAppropriation (2013/14 Estimates) Bill.Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): It is a great opportunity for me to talk about the great way that the health budget this year is dealing with the changing needs of our population thanks to the stronger financial management that the National Government has brought to the public health service. Health is again the biggest recipient of increased funding in the Budget. The total health budget this next year will be $14.65 billion including capital. When you contrast that with only 5 years ago it was $11.8 billion. So this Government has continued to invest in protecting and growing the public health service in the last 5 years. In tight world financial times when so many countries are reducing their public health spending or freezing it we are continuing to protect and grow our public health budget. In fact the OECD found that New Zealand had the third-biggest increase in public health investment of any country in the OECD in the latest available figures that it has produced. Vote Health in this Budget gets an average of around $400 million available for each year over the next 4 years to meet pressures and initiatives. That includes $350 million in new money and around $50 million in savings. It gets a lot better because we are able to use that money to invest in the changing needs of our population.Let us just have a look at some of those changing needs. We have been able to take money that we had set aside for district health board deficits and risks and because of our strong financial management we have been able to take that money—about $35 million—and put it into a heart disease and diabetes initiative. This heart disease and diabetes initiative is a very very significant boost in funding that we have announced in this year’s Budget. Why is it important? It is important because heart disease remains a leading killer of New Zealanders and similarly so many of the risk factors associated with heart disease are also associated with diabetes. We know that diabetes is a major challenge for New Zealand but what is an even more important challenge is the prevalence of pre-diabetes and what we can do as a country to deal with pre-diabetes. So in our $35.5 million funding boost for diabetes and heart disease in this Budget we are including $16 million to further increase the number of New Zealanders getting heart and diabetes checks. These heart and diabetes checks are an important preventive health target. They are important because they tell people of an age that they have gotrisk factors that may lead to them having heart disease or a heart attack or maybe having diabetes or being pre-diabetes. Once people know that they have got these risk factors once they know that they may be pre-diabetes they can then make the lifestyle changes that they need to make in order to better control their disease risk factors. So we are doing that.Secondly we are going to double the number of Green Prescriptions that doctors and nurses can give their patients. Green Prescriptions are a reference for a patient to go to a provider who can help them with more physical exercise or better nutrition. We know there are very very significant health benefits if people are more active so that is why we are going to double the number of Green Prescriptions over the next 4 years. It is a really significant investment of over $7 million. For those who have got diabetes—remember this is very much about preventing people getting diabetes; a very strong focus on pre-diabetes and prevention—we have got a number of local diabetes care improvement programmes. We are going to significantly increase that funding by about a third over the next few years in order to expand those local diabetes care programmes to provide more diabetes nursing and more podiatry services. That is dealing with heart disease and diabetes but so many of these people who have got heart disease and diabetes also have other diseases—they call them co-morbidities in health. We want to support those people to get better care from their general practitioners so we are putting $13 million into expanding the Care Plus programme which is a general practice - based programme that provides additional support to patients with long-term conditions. So you can see this is a Budget about the changing needs of our population.Similarly with aged care we know that we are ageing and we know that our country is getting a greater prevalence of dementia. The prevalence of dementia is growing at 4 to 5 percent a year. It is going to be a very very major challenge for New Zealand so in this year’s Budget we have got a very very significant investment of $70 million extra over 4 years for aged care and diabetes and a $20 million boost for home support because we think we should be supporting our older folks to stay longer in their homes if they want to and that is a $20 million boost to help those people do that. Similarly there is going to be a $12 million boost to dementia bed subsidies. What we know is that we are going to need a lot more residential facilities for people who are demented. As I said it is growing at a rate of 4 to 5 percent a year so what this will do is say to rest home providers: “We need more dementia beds. Switch on the investment signal.” This is the third year we have had a pretty significant increase in dementia bed subsidies and we are getting more of those beds.We are also going to put $2 million into dementia awareness because over the next 10 years dementia is going to affect everybody in terms of their friends families or someone whom they know who will be suffering from dementia. It is not a disease that people should be frightened of. They should be aware of the supports that are out there so we are investing $2 million to provide more dementia awareness programmes and to assist our general practitioners and our general practice teams with how they can identify dementia particularly with early detection because that can better help manage those people’s positions. Over $1 billion extra is going into training for our health care workers and there is also a $33 million increase for rest home bed subsidies across the board. We increase those subsidies every year and this is a very significant increase of $33.2 million. So that is focused on our ageing population but also on this increasing prevalence of dementia—150000 New Zealanders are projected to have dementia by 2045-50. So that is a very very very significant investment there.At the same time this Government continues to invest very strongly in preventive health and we are almost doubling our rheumatic fever programme. Members will recall that rheumatic fever became a national priority in 2001 and then that Governmentdid nothing. It made it a priority and then it did nothing other than more people got rheumatic fever. So our Government came into power and we have invested in two Budgets in a rheumatic fever programme aimed at reducing rheumatic fever in our most at-risk communities. What we know is—and even the Green Party which did not really want to admit this but in its leader’s speech on Sunday it actually talked about the fact—that where we have run this throat-swabbing in parts of the Hutt Valley we have not had one case of rheumatic fever while we have been running that programme. So we are running this programme right across the high-prevalence areas—Porirua the Bay of Plenty Rotorua the East Coast South Auckland west Auckland—and it is making a very very big difference.But of course what happens when school is not in? That is why we are investing in this Budget $11.25 million in developing sore throat drop-in clinics. One of the key messages is that one of the reasons why mums do not take their kids with a sore throat to some doctors is the time they have got to wait to be seen because mums are leading busy lives. So what we are going to fund are these sore throat drop-in clinics particularly in Porirua South Auckland and parts of west and central Auckland where parents will know that if their kid has got a sore throat and they need to be seen they can turn up at these drop-in clinics. There is no charge they can be seen straight away and they can have the throat swab taken and know whether their kid needs to get some antibiotics to deal with streptococcus A. It is a really sensible initiative. It is backed up by the $100 million investment on expanding the home insulation programme. This is a Government that acts across the life course and puts a huge investment into prevention. You know almost a quarter of a million homes were insulated under the first 4 years of our insulation programme. Another $100 million is going in particularly targeted at those high-risk homes.So this is another Budget of another year of record investment in health targeted at the areas that matter most to patients: making sure we have got a strong investment in prevention making sure that we are dealing with the changing needs of our population and making sure that our hospitals continue to provide the quality services that New Zealanders want. That is backed up by our 2000 extra nurses and our 1000 extra doctors working on the front line of New Zealand’s health services. This Government came to power with the challenge of repairing the damage of a decade of neglect wasteful spending and clinical disengagement. In the last 4½ years this John Key Government has delivered more operations faster more preventive care across the whole range of services and a health system that New Zealanders can be proud of.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am advised that the Greens wish to split their call—two 5-minute calls.DAVID CLENDON (Green): I am pleased to take the opportunity to speak in this debate on the Appropriation (2013/14 Estimates) Bill and particularly to talk about Vote Corrections—the money we are committing to spend on our prisons over the next 12 months. It is interesting to note that the amount assigned this year is in the order of $1.2 billion or $1.3 billion which is in line with what we saw last year but it is worthwhile going back 10 or 11 years when the budget for the Department of Corrections was to the tune of perhaps $460 million.Vote Corrections has increased by some 250 percent over 10 or 11 years—two and a half times more money is being spent this year than we spent a little over a decade ago. Increases of that order are not only unsustainable they are unacceptable given that one would think that the expenditure of all that extra money would be leading to better outcomes from our prison system but sadly that is not the case. We are seeing outcomes that are no better and indeed in many situations are actually worse than theywere 10 or 12 years ago. We need to ask some serious questions about why this considerable expenditure of public money is not producing better results.We saw a very graphic example this weekend just past of a corrections system in turmoil. We saw a major prison one of our newer prisons with serious fires burning and with 30-odd prisoners running amok. We saw a number of guards injured and a number of inmates injured. We saw lives put at risk—and I must take this moment to acknowledge the work of the corrections staff the firefighters the police and others who were obliged to go into harm’s way to try to settle that very unfortunate situation.You might dismiss this event as a one-off event but the outbreak of violence at Spring Hill Corrections Facility was actually one in a series of events and these events these violent outbursts are becoming much more frequent in our prison system. Going back to the middle of last year we saw two major incidents at Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison of prisoners protesting breaking out and setting fires. At Pāremoremo similarly about a year ago prisoners were barricading themselves in a tower trying to draw attention to the absence of response to their legitimate complaints. At Ngāwhā prison last year we saw several rubbish fires and damage to cells. At Rangipō prison a few months ago in March this year prisoners were protesting about poor conditions. In April this year we saw two incidents: one was when prisoners were fighting amongst themselves and then there was an assault on guards a few days later. Two weeks ago there was a serious stabbing at Pāremoremo and now we have had a major riot at Spring Hill.These are not isolated incidents; these are indicative of a system in turmoil. We are spending a great deal of money but we are not getting good outcomes. A lot of the reason for that can be sheeted home to the general culture the attitude over the previous two decades. There is more and more of a punitive culture in our prisons. There is much more of this nonsensical political contest to be seen as being tough on crime which actually means being tough on our communities because ultimately inmates in our prisons with very few exceptions are returned to the wider society. To the extent that we treat inmates poorly do not respect their human rights and do not provide humane conditions in our prisons inevitably we will see the knock-on effect of that when these people come back into our communities brutalised dehumanised paranoid and wanting to strike back at the system that has struck them.We need to do a great deal better. The money assigned in this Budget is sufficient to do better. We do not need to spend more money; we need to spend it differently.There is one obvious place to spend that—there is one safety valve in our prisons one opportunity for prisoners to attempt to have their rights and their conditions respected and that is the complaints process. We know the complaints procedure which is an internal process managed within the corrections department is failing badly. We are seeing too many complaints going directly to the Ombudsman. The Office of the Ombudsmen is being overwhelmed with quite low level prisoner complaints because there is no confidence within the prisons and within the families. Those who know what is happening in our prisons know that the internal complaints system is failing. The Ombudsman is being over burdened. That would be one very good place to start making a difference to get a system that works.HOLLY WALKER (Green): I would like to focus my attention in this short call in the Budget debate on the issue of housing which is indeed an issue that has dominated much of the coverage and debate of this year’s Budget. I guess to start on a positive note the Government does deserve to be congratulated—in the sense that it has finally cottoned on to the fact that we do have an affordable housing crisis in New Zealand. I must say it took it long enough. As we know this affordable housing crisis is absolutely the worst in Auckland where the average house price last year was $735000. That isthe average price to buy a new home in Auckland and that increased 12 percent in the last calendar year alone. So any time you hear the Minister of Housing crowing about low interest rates and how affordable housing is I would just remind you of that figure. Not only that but in Auckland it takes a staggering 71 percent of the average take-home pay to service the mortgage on a house that is priced in the first quartile. That is this house is one of the cheapest quarter of houses in Auckland and it takes 71 percent of the average income to service the mortgage on that house. When we talk about housing affordability anything over 30 percent of your income spent on housing is considered to put you in housing stress and for that house to be severely unaffordable. We have a situation in Auckland where it takes 71 percent of the average take-home pay to service the mortgage on one of the cheapest houses in the market. So that is your crisis for you and it is a pretty severe one.Well the problem is supply and demand right? We know that in Auckland we need about 13000 new dwellings to be consented each year. We have been averaging only about 3000 so it is no surprise that we have a severe housing crisis in Auckland. It is worst in Auckland but it is actually bad everywhere. That equivalent figure for the national average in New Zealand is that it takes 49 percent of the average take-home income to service a mortgage on a lower-quartile house. So again remembering that anything over 30 percent is severely unaffordable and puts a household in housing stress we have got a problem across the whole of the country. In places like the Central Otago lakes Nelson and Marlborough Wellington and Waikato that problem is elevated above the national average so we have a major problem.What we have seen from the Government in terms of solutions is the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill which I look forward to beginning to hear the submissions on in the Social Services Committee tomorrow. In recognition of the fact that the housing crisis is worst in Auckland this bill is effectively giving effect to the Auckland Housing Accord that the Government reached with Auckland Council earlier this year. That might be all right if that was all that it did. Clearly it has spoken with the council in Auckland it has identified the problem there it believes it has identified a solution to it and it has brought some legislation to the House to deal with it. Unfortunately the legislation does not deal with the issue just in Auckland it actually applies to the whole country. Not only that but Auckland Council itself because it was not consulted on the drafting of the legislation once it saw it actually found that there were inconsistencies between the legislation and the accord that it thought it had signed up to with the Government.But there are serious problems with the models that are proposed in the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. First of all it is based on the idea that the development at Hobsonville Point is the answer to affordable housing in Auckland. Given that the so-called affordable houses at Hobsonville Point cost either just over $400000 or $485000 which is not affordable for most people that is not a great model to base it on. There is also no guaranteed percentage of affordable homes in the new special housing areas that are going to be created and they override local democracy. Those other regions that I mentioned where housing affordability is also a problem had better watch out because the Government is coming to create special housing areas in their region whether they like it or not. All the power is with the Minister and if they cannot negotiate an accord with the Minister he can just put a special housing area in place regardless of whether the local council actually agrees overriding both the Resource Management Act and the local democracy for that area. And remember at the end of all of that there is absolutely no guarantee in that special housing area that a percentage of those houses that will be provided will actually be affordable for the New Zealanders who are in severe housing stress at the moment. So congratulations to theGovernment on identifying a problem—it is a shame that none of the measures do anything at all to address it.JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I am very pleased to stand and speak on this debate on Budget 2013 a Budget that keeps us on course in a consistent and a steady way. I recall the comments of the chief executive of the Tātua dairy company who said that consistent is good predictability is even better. I think that we have produced a Budget that certainly the business community and consequently I think families and industry around this country can rely on. I think that has been par for the course under Bill English our finance Minister who over this last number of years has enabled this country to be seen as a standout country amongst many economies around the world because of our solid track record and where we are going with this economy. We are right on track. We are delivering what we said we would.I think that today is a very hard day for the Opposition which is having to throw up all sorts of objections and criticisms when we know that so many things are going right. It is to do with the leadership the vision the stability and the safe pair of hands that we have in our Minister of Finance as well as our Cabinet colleagues.We have the lowest mortgage rates since 1965 after-tax wages have increased 22 percent since September 2008 and we know the cost of living increases have been their lowest since 1999. This is good news for New Zealanders. It is not just statistics and information coming out from the Government benches; this is what Statistics New Zealand says. Just over a month ago it reported that grocery food prices for the year ended April 2013 decreased—that means they went backwards went down became more affordable for New Zealanders—in the last year. Fresh milk went down 7.4 percent. I can remember that before the last election in the Commerce Committee there was such a hue and cry for an inquiry on the price of milk because everybody thought it was out of control and that we were paying huge international prices. We know that even just this last week Fonterra has announced a record payout for farmers and yet we see in the last 12 months that the price of milk has come down. That is I think the response of a good economy that is tracking along nicely. We also know that cheese went down 7.8 percent. Butter is down 23 percent. Meat poultry and fish are down 6.7 percent. There were a couple of things that went up: avocados went up 48 percent. So when you go to the shop to buy your avocados sorry. It was such a small production in 2012 compared with a bumper season in 2011.This is all good news for New Zealanders. This Budget is sensible and it is solid. It is what New Zealanders want right now. We do not want big sweeping and novel ideas like capital gains taxes and wholesale electricity monopolies. We do not want all of that stuff that those people are throwing up there because they are desperate. They are trying everything they can to attract the attention of New Zealanders. It is voodoo politics. They are hoodwinking people when we have got it right for 5 years now getting it right all the time for New Zealanders.Labour believes that it can enhance competitive power pricing by becoming the monopolistic buyer of wholesale electricity in the country. Pull the other leg. Come on. We are wide awake to that. The only people who are doing that are people who are moving away from monopolistic purchasing into a market-driven economy. Those members know that but they will not say it. It is a daft idea and we do welcome all their daft ideas because they just go to prove how solid and sensible this Budget and this Government are for the sake of all New Zealanders. Colin Espiner—who as I said in my last speech is no friend of the Government—says: “This is Third World funny-money stuff.” TheNew Zealand Heraldreferred to it as a 1930s command economy solution. We need to understand that we live in a society where when we get thebalance right around competition it brings through all the benefits of not only better innovation but better pricing for New Zealanders.I think that this is what the Government is doing in this Budget. We are responsibly managing the Government’s books. We are building a more competitive and productive economy and we are delivering better public services.Andrew Little: What about households?JONATHAN YOUNG: We are doing a lot in the housing space. It is not pie-in-the-sky stuff. It is steak on the plate while you wait and that is so good. We are delivering better public services. We are rebuilding Christchurch. We are building the foundations for future success. We need to understand that this is something that we need to build into the economic DNA of this country. It takes time. It takes time to get things right because it took 9 whole years to get it wrong—we know that. We know what a stuff-up they made of this economy and we know the hard work that we have put in place the hard thinking and the hard yards and it is starting to pay off. There was 3 percent economic growth this last year. It is far above the growth of the UK America Australia and the European Union of course. It is better than all those economies and all those nations that we look up to. They are looking up to us now because we have got it right and this Budget is doing a great job.We are increasing education investment. We are not just aiding people we are enabling people. There is a difference there. There is something there. We are putting tools in the hands of people so that they can have choices. They can be predetermined in their life because we are ensuring that they are getting education where it is really needed. We are pouring more and more money into early childhood education to ensure that those young kids are getting their foot on the first rung of education early on so that they are not struggling and trying to climb up later on. We are putting more and more money into tertiary education and more and more emphasis on and accountability into tertiary education. This is so that our young people—and not just young people but all New Zealanders—who go through these educational programmes can have their foot on the ladder of employment in a very successful way. They are coming out of our high schools with National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 in far greater proportions and numbers. We are seeing already that this is shifting. Already we are seeing some great responses. We know all the controversy and criticism that we have narrowed education. But we have not. We have a broad base on our education.What we are getting right is the fundamentals. We are getting the foundations right so that people can go into tertiary education with really good linguistic skills and abilities and so that they have really good numeric skills and abilities. These are the foundations for future learning and we have got to have them right. We cannot keep seeing our polytechs having to do level 1 and level 2 courses. They need to be doing levels 3 4 5 and 6. We need to make sure that our secondary schools are getting all the fundamentals right and they depend on the primary schools to get that right. So we have this complete pathway of learning and every single step on this pathway has to be strong and fit for purpose and has to be achieving for our young people. We cannot have one part of this system falling over because it is like a domino effect.We are getting it right. We are putting the money where it really counts. We are investing in education. We are investing in innovation. We are investing in all these areas that in time to come even as we see it now progressively we will see more and more. We are seeing New Zealanders succeed. This is incredibly important for this nation. We are just a small nation of 4.4 million competing in a huge world market of talent. We have got to maximise our talent. We are innovators we are dreamers we are thinkers and we are inventors. And when we have our education strong and robustwhen we have fewer people needing Government support and more people bringing resources to Government and to their communities what we are going to see is a nation with its head up. We are going to see a nation that forges ahead and we are going to see a nation that internationally economically and educationally will continue to forge ahead. We are going to take those high places of achievement and we are going to earn them. This Budget is very much a part of that long-term future for the future success of all New Zealanders. Thank you.Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): As we discuss the Budget that this Government has handed down I think it is important to consider the Government’s progress through its agenda to exploit all of New Zealand’s natural resources. In that context it is necessary to look at the importance that the Government places on its environment budget. I have taken a look at Vote Environment and I find it absolutely remarkable that there has not been one single policy initiative in the environment budget—not one new idea not one new programme not one new policy initiative to protect maintain and enhance our environment.The Minister for the Environment has done things but they are not reflected in this Budget. Let me give the House some examples. The budget for Vote Environment is to be set against our claims—our diminishing claims and our claims that are consistently under criticism—of being 100 percent pure. We have poor and declining water quality. We have erosion of our protections for our environment proposed in the Minister’s second tranche of Resource Management Act amendments and we have some self-interest reflected in the water recommendations and proposals that the Minister put out earlier this year. I would really like to know whether the Minister even put in a bid for her environment vote because it is not apparent from this Budget.I will just list some of the things that are contained in the Vote Environment part of the Budget—let us have a look at them. Environmental management obligations and programmes—there is no change absolutely no change. Improving resource management—there is a drop of $2.4 million from the previous year so improving resource management as a Budget line gets a cut. This needs to be explained. If the members opposite wish to give the Minister a heads-up that will be asked in the estimates questions when she appears before the select committee.I will tell the House where one area of increase has happened and it is in the funding to service the Minister. Funding to service the Minister has gone up by $313000 and the note attached to that in the vote is that the ministry expects that there will be an increase in ministerials as a result of the Resource Management Act and water management reforms. Clearly the Minister is aware that the Resource Management Act reforms and the water management reforms are going to be controversial so in order to bolster her own ability to answer the questions that are going to flood in and the challenges that are going to be taken against her she has increased the funding to service her office by $313000. That does not enhance the environment one iota.Advice on environmental hazards and waste—there is no change; no change there. The waste levy administration and assessment of projects for funding by the levy—there is a drop of $600000; $610000 actually. But it is a $600000 drop in the waste levy administration and assessments of projects that are funded by that levy to see how various industries can minimise their waste production. So there is not any vision about next year or the year after and whether or not our waste production and our minimisation of that is going to improve. There are no new targets. There are no new ideas. In fact there is a cut of $600000 in that area. The Contaminated Sites Remediation Fund—there is no change there. There is no change in the Contaminated Sites Remediation Fund. How is the Minister intending to deal with new contaminated sites as they emerge?She has only to look in her backyard at the Ōwaka Pit in her electorate which has had medium-density fibreboard combusting spontaneously and releasing toxins into the air. This has been happening for months. The fire has gone out only just in the last 2 or 3 weeks. The Minister clearly does not bother about that even though it is in her electorate because the prevailing wind makes those toxic fumes blow over the people who live in the electorate of my colleague Megan Woods. The Minister is not so concerned about the people in that electorate that she thinks there is anything that needs to be done about the burning of formaldehyde and the release of those toxins into the atmosphere creating an unpleasant smell and an irritating set of toxins that have caused some discomfort. So even for the Minister’s own backyard she has not appropriated or it would seem even asked for additional funds to address contaminated sites. The Ōwaka Pit is now in a state that needs remediation. The fire is out; now the ground has to be recovered.The Contestable Waste Minimisation Fund—no change. This fund has a certain allocation per year. Sometimes the funds are not spent in 1 year and they are moved into future years but there is no change. Where there has been an increase—and here we go again—is to the Environmental Protection Authority which gets an increase of $1.9 million. Why? It is so that the Environmental Protection Authority can implement its functions under our exclusive economic zone legislation and the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act 2012 so that when challenges are brought about the illegality of the law that this Parliament has passed in respect of controlling shipping above the continental shelf—which I am still of the opinion is not legal—then there will be sufficient resources in the authority for it to address those things.There is no change to the Fresh Start for Fresh Water Clean-up Fund for New Zealand water bodies—no change to that. For the Rotorua Lakes Protection and Restoration Programme there is a slight re-phasing of funds between the years but no overall change. Lake Ōkareka in Rotorua is suffocating from hornwort. It is a hugely invasive aquatic plant and there has been nothing in the way of additional funding put aside to restore Lake Ōkareka which is one of the Rotorua lakes. I have been to the lake. I have seen it myself. The people there work hard at trying to deliver quality. The fund for the Waikato River clean-up—no change. There is an amount of funding over 30 years but the real value of the funding will reduce over time. There is no change to the Waikato River co-governance no change to the Waikato River co-management and no change to the waste disposal levy disbursement to local authorities.The environment budget is a disgrace. The environment budget is lacking in any vision any foresight and any protective measures and simply plays into the hands of this Government’s agenda to mine and drill everything it can get its hands on in terms of our natural resources. It does not matter whether we have the legal right to do it or not this Government will proceed to exploit our environment in order to produce dollars and usually for its friends. So Skycity was sold the gambling laws Warner Bros was sold the employment laws and now we have Shell being sold the Crown mineral laws. Thank you.MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Budget 2013 is Bill English’s fifth Budget and it is indeed building momentum. It confirms that New Zealand is back on track with more economic growth more jobs rising wages and a return to surplus by 2014-15. That is all great news for New Zealand and very bad news for the Opposition which is bereft as we have heard this afternoon of any fresh ideas or policies. Both Labour and the Greens are of course—and have proven it time and again—anti-growth parties. They are opposed to any and all initiatives that would create jobs and boost the economy. The Opposition’s policies of borrowing more and spending more would takeour economy backwards at a great rate. And when no one would lend us any more money what is its solution? It is to print more of course. That is the sort of madness that the unholy alliance of no ideas would deliver. It is the tired old tried and failed policies of Labour and the “Watermelon Greens”—those individuals who are green on the outside and socialist red at heart and who think they are doing so well.This Budget 2013 is a defining document from a Government that is spending prudently not spending up large which is all Opposition members can come up with. So I am not going to waste any more time this afternoon on them. Instead I intend to focus on the very positive measures that were introduced in the Budget in the vitally important areas of health housing and welfare. As our very competent and successful health Minister Tony Ryall outlined at the start of today’s Budget debate this John Key - led Government is investing more in health than ever before. The Minister outlined the number of green prescriptions and the strong focus on investing in preventative care. To recap we are making a $1.6 billion investment available over 4 years. That has boosted the total health spending to a record level of $14.7 billion.Let us look specifically at where that is being targeted. As our population is healthier and we are living longer it is projected as the Minister indicated that by 2045 or 2050 there are going to be 150000 New Zealanders with dementia. As I and many New Zealand families know only too well the painful reality of living with dementia is a terrible struggle for the sufferers and for their families who have to watch as the people they love gradually decline and need more and more high-level support. My late mother’s 10-year decline with multi-infarct dementia was not untypical. It was very sad to see a once independent successful businesswoman and vibrant personality struggling to do the simple things like making tea and toast and desperately wanting to stay independent and in her own home for as long as possible. To help people in these difficult situations we are investing an extra $70 million in aged care and dementia services. That money is being very carefully targeted into the areas where it will help most.As my mother Agnes lost her ability to recognise people and places it became even more important to her to stay in her own home because it was a safe place and it was a place where she was familiar with all her surroundings and her garden. She was a happier and calmer person there. But as that eventually took its toll on her Mum needed more and more support to stay at home. Although I was able to pay privately for much of the assistance that she needed it is a very difficult thing to manage long term. I know that the $20 million that has been allocated in this year’s Budget targeted specifically to be invested in home support services will be invaluable. Some things are priceless. It will provide practical help so that people can stay in the familiar environment of their own home for as long as possible. With an ageing population we need to ensure the best possible quality of life for dementia sufferers and for their families. It is very clear to me that it is important to detect dementia as early as possible. I know of many families who were in denial for a long time and who were just not aware of the onset of dementia and its early signs. So they experienced I am afraid to say heart-breaking misunderstandings and family rifts actually until they understood what was happening.Overall as a society we need to have a much better and earlier awareness of dementia and its inevitable pathway. When the time does come for more expert intervention and residential care options we need a workforce that is equipped with the right level of training. There is no question in my mind that caregivers need to be compassionate and they need that quality in abundance. I believe it is basically a vocational guidance—it is a calling really to look after people who are losing their minds to dementia. There is also the need for better training and more specificallyskilled people to meet that growing demand. To meet that we have allowed $3.2 million towards training for health professionals and towards awareness programmes and also for early detection assistance for the clinical teams. These kinds of conditions require that high level of skill as well as that high level of compassion. Believe me I and people who have experienced it think that is money well spent. It will make a huge difference to the quality of life for the person suffering from dementia and for their families. With the best will in the world it is very difficult once the condition has reached a certain stage for most New Zealand families to look after dementia sufferers at home. That is why the $12 million increase in funding for bed subsidies and the vital encouragement for further investment in dementia beds are essential. So over the next 4 years we are also funding through the district health boards an additional $33.2 million on aged residential care subsidies.In the vital area of housing the Minister Dr Nick Smith is as determined through his portfolio as the health Minister Tony Ryall is with health to help the vulnerable in our society. We know that crowded cold and damp conditions contribute to dismal health outcomes. So making homes warmer drier and healthier is one of his priorities. It is the right thing to do. And unlike the waffle and the weasel words of the Opposition Dr Smith is not leaving that to chance. An extra $100 million investment in the highly successful home insulation programme is going to boost the number of homes insulated to 230000 by September this year. That is a clear and measurable thing. So all State houses that are capable of being insulated will be. It is a measure of the standard of our State housing stock. He is developing and trialling a Housing Warrant of Fitness to apply to all 69000 Housing New Zealand Corporation properties so that over the next 3 years this Government is making a record investment of $2.9 billion in State housing. It is also making very bold changes to the way that we deliver housing assistance and it is targeting it to the people who really need it.The shift from State dominated housing to community housing has been very successful in Europe in North America and in Australia. So in Budget 2013 our Government has announced that we are also going to extend income-related rent subsidies to community housing providers. Churches charities and other NGOs often integrate housing with other wraparound services to people with disabilities to people with mental health issues and to people with drug and alcohol problems. These sorts of wraparound services can often do let us face it a better job of meeting their clients’ complex needs. This Government is determined to create the right environment to grow the community housing sector.Quality affordable housing is good for the economy and it is also very good for communities. High housing costs ultimately raise debt and increases demand for social assistance. Under this Government the Kiwi dream of owning your own home will again become a reality and within reach of low and middle income New Zealanders. We have announced a raft of measures to make housing more affordable. We are looking at increasing land supply we are streamlining consent and compliance costs we are looking at better delivery of core infrastructure to support that new housing and we are also getting on top of the costs around building materials and construction. We are not just sitting back and leaving it to chance; we are doing something about it. We have concrete measurable things.As my colleague Jonathan Young said in his earlier call we are not just aiding people we are enabling people. That is why I come to our welfare reforms. They are increasing and under Budget 2013 low-income families will be receiving greater support. It is really a combination of what we have been doing—extending proven programmes and also introducing new initiatives targeting resources and targeting support. This is complemented by the Government’s $139.3 million investment throughthe Social Housing Fund which others have detailed. Helping people to help themselves is what is at the heart of this Government’s Budget. This is a Government and this is a Budget with real heart and measurable outcomes that will really help people because it is targeted it is precise it is measurable and it is going to work.This Government has put another $1.5 million to support budgeting services as well for people who have not ever really been taught how to grasp the reality of budgeting and making sure their cheque books work and making sure they are not overspending. Those are lessons that perhaps the Labour colleagues across the way could well benefit from.To end I will say that the people in my North Shore electorate have given me very positive feedback on this Budget 2013 and all its measures. Measures relating to ACC were some of the things that they have been looking for. They wanted to have some better provisions there and what we are doing there with the reduction in the levies has been outstanding. They have told me that they love the significant levy reductions of around $300 million which will extend to $1 billion the following year. Thank you.Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East): I listened very carefully to the Budget speech from the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery where he said that anyone standing for the Christchurch City Council should look at the finances. He said—and I want to quote him—“do not be deceived by what you are being told by the people who are presenting those figures.” That is an extraordinary statement coming from a senior Minister in the lead-up to a council election. I placed the Minister’s speech on my Facebook page and the response was immediate: what does the Minister know that we do not know? There was a considerable amount of fear expressed that the Minister knows things about the council’s finances but is not telling the people of Christchurch exactly what those concerns are even though the council is at the moment going through its 3-year plan process. Christchurch City Council is not going through the 10-year plan process that other councils are going through. It has had its planning process reduced to 3 years but more significant the Government has decided not to make the council subject to the usual Auditor-General oversight.So on one hand the Minister says that we should be concerned about Christchurch City Council’s finances and look at them very carefully and not be deceived by those presenting the figures—he is referring to the mayor and the chief executive who have signed the 3-year plan; he cannot be referring to anyone else because it is their signatures that actually appear on that document—and yet the Government has decided in its wisdom not to make it subject to usual Auditor-General oversight. The Labour Opposition members asked that that Auditor-General oversight be included in the Order in Council when we were asked to comment on it but we were not listened to. Why did the Government allow this process to proceed with no proper scrutiny clearly knowing things that the people of Christchurch do not know and with an election looming?Add on top of that the extraordinary pressure that the Government is placing on the council to pay for the Government’s blueprint even though the people of Christchurch had absolutely no say whatsoever with regard to the major anchor projects that it announced. I do not think that the people of Christchurch need a Cabinet Minister—the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery—to stand here in this debating chamber firing shots at the council down in Christchurch but also in the same breath can I say that we do not need a council that shows that it is incapable of being the kind of partner that a Government needs in a recovery situation.The Minister warned us about these people who are presenting these figures and I think that deception is a pretty strong allegation. But how does the Government have confidence in the council when the front page of the paper has been dominated by a chief executive who is blatantly double-dipping both as the chief executive receivinghis extraordinarily high salary—which received huge feedback in a negative sense from the public—and also as a director receiving director’s fees for sitting on the Civic Assurance company? He is now having to appear in front of the council to explain why Civic Assurance is taking so long to pay the council’s insurance bill. He is double-dipping. In any situation like that a chief executive of an organisation would pay their director’s fees directly to the organisation that they were representing on that body. Only three or four councillors have actually consistently stood up for transparency in Christchurch but they are accused by the mayor and the chief executive of being the problem.I have to say that this has got to stop. It absolutely has got to stop. The people of Christchurch need their leaders to really step up at this time. We are going into our third winter—our third winter—and people are still living in unacceptable situations that we would not ordinarily tolerate in a First World country. The pressure that is being brought to bear on ordinary Christchurch residents living in areas where the land is the most challenging is unbelievable. They do not need to read in the paper about what can only be described as sheer greed and then at the same time hear that the Minister is making these allegations in Parliament without giving the substance to the people of Christchurch. I think it is absolutely vital that the people of Christchurch are told the truth about what is going on at Christchurch City Council.The Government’s blueprint is part of the problem. It is a big part of the problem. The people think that they have been forgotten—put to one side while we talk about what buildings are going to be built in the centre of the city. We see a campaign bid for City First or Christchurch First but really it should be the people first. If the people are dealt with first then surely the rest will follow.In the last couple of weeks the Prime Minister has said that “big-ticket Christchurch recovery projects could be scaled back to help bridge the funding gap between local and central government.” But whose funding gap is that? Who created the funding gap? The Government manufactured the funding gap when it decided that it would completely rewrite the city’s draftChristchurch Central Recovery Plan and would then hand the bill to the people of Christchurch. That is what has happened in Christchurch. John Key says that major projects like the new convention centre and the roofed sports stadium could be downsized to save money. But whose money would that save? They were not our decisions. Christchurch City has never had the opportunity to have a say about these major anchor projects that the Government has foisted upon us.John Key said the council had only three ways of paying its share of recovery projects: borrowing the money significantly raising rates and “it changes its asset mix”. Well what does “it changes its asset mix” mean? It means selling Christchurch’s strategic assets that we have held on to because those assets have actually been a part of ensuring that we had revenue-generating opportunities but also the strategic ability to govern our ports both the airport which is the gateway to the South Island and our seaport similarly in terms of goods coming in and out of the country and also obviously Orion which was the standout performer after the series of earthquakes that we had. I have never seen an organisation operating the way it did but the work that it did in advance the resilience that it built into its network ahead of the disaster occurring was what saved Christchurch and indeed saved New Zealand a considerable amount of additional cost that would have otherwise applied.So when the Prime Minister says “it changes its asset mix” the Prime Minister is saying: “People of Christchurch you must sell your revenue-generating strategic assets and fund loss-making facilities where the council cannot even tell the people of Christchurch how much they are budgeted to lose because the Government has not even prepared a business case for any of these so-called anchor projects.” This is aNational Government and there is no business case prepared for any of these assets. How can the council pay its share when we do not know as a city what our share is? And why should we pay for any share that was not part of what we as a city determined was in our best interests?John Key then said it was up to the council to ask whether residents wanted the “nice-to-haves” in the city’s rebuild. What are these “nice-to-haves”? No one in Christchurch has been told that any of the anchor projects are negotiable. Many people feel that John Key has relegated the repair and rebuild of homes on the most challenging land in Christchurch to being a “nice-to-have”. We in Christchurch say it is not a “nice-to-have”; it is a “need-to-have”. That need is very very real. We need the Government to be working alongside the council in partnership with the community. Take the community with us as we rebuild our city. I am extremely optimistic about what we can achieve in Christchurch but we need central government local government and community all working together on the rebuild and repair of our city.Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Police): I moveThat the debate be now adjourned.Motion agreed to.