Robertson Grant: Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 15 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:18019. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Well here we are under urgency debating the Government’s Budget the critical measures to turbocharge the economy to take the step up to lift wages and to get better jobs and the Government comes to the House to remove cheque duty. That is right. Stop the marches in the street. Call off the hunger strikes. Cheque duty is gone. Around the country New Zealanders celebrate the fact that they will save on average 35c a year—35c a year—from the removal of cheque duty. I have got advice for New Zealanders around the country: do not spend it all in one shop. That is my advice—35c a year. This is the Government’s big idea that holds us here in urgency on a Friday: the removal of cheque duty. We are looking in the Budget for the comparable measures: the rebate on cassette players fondue sets and lava lamps because they are about as relevant as cheque duty is to the economy today.Hon Trevor Mallard: What! What are you saying?GRANT ROBERTSON: Trevor Mallard may also have a rebate placed on him by the end of the day. This is as good as it gets from the Government. This is the thing that the Government has lifted out from the Budget to say “Here’s our economic plan: the removal of cheque duty.” Well that is not enough. It is hard to believe that the Government thought that that was important enough. In the middle of all the many initiatives Bill English could have talked about in his Budget speech he chose to talk about the removal of cheque duty. So on this side of the House we welcome the scourge of cheque duty being taken away from the lives of New Zealanders but we ask ourselves whether or not a timid scattered backward-looking fragmented Budget like this deserves to have cheque duty—that 35c a year—lifted out as the biggie.By the way those figures do come from the Bankers’ Association—that an average of seven cheques a year are written out by bank consumers around New Zealand. Goodness only knows some people must be writing a lot of cheques to get that averageup. But seven cheques a year at 5c a cheque is delivering 35c a year to New Zealanders. This is the social dividend from the National Government—35c a year. Amazing stuff! Do they still have 35c mixtures? They probably did in the 1980s when people were paying by cheque but they do not any more. It is 35c a year from the Government to turbocharge the economy. I was seeking advice from Mr Mallard on the future of 35c mixtures—Hon Trevor Mallard: You eat more lollies than I do.GRANT ROBERTSON: Ah yes—not any more. That is the first part of this bill so there is the turbocharging of the economy.Then we come to the measures to relieve the housing crisis. The Government has decided that it recognises the depth of the housing crisis and the fact that in Auckland particularly housing is becoming unaffordable. Last month $6000 was added to the cost of an average house in Auckland so the Government has come along today with a package of measures to sort out the devil of the cost of plasterboard varnish and nails in the construction of houses. It guessed that it will save $3500. The Minister basically just said that—that it is just a guess of approximately $3500. Well that might touch the conveyancing fee for somebody trying to buy a house. While we are at it first-home buyers and building houses do not always go together. Just a hint for the Government that if it wants to actually do something that will improve the lot for first-home buyers it needs to have a programme like KiwiBuild where we are actually going to build 100000 affordable homes across New Zealand. My colleague Phil Twyford will certainly be speaking at some length in this debate around Part 3 of the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill and its woefully inadequate response to the housing crisis.I do note that within the Budget and within housing a number of interesting facts have come to light. At the moment many people are struggling to buy a house and struggling to service a mortgage. At the moment in New Zealand you need to spend 49 percent of the average gross full-time wage to service a standard mortgage. That is tough work for people—49 percent. Well what the Budget shows us is that by 2018-19 people will need to spend 63 percent of the average gross full-time wage to service a standard mortgage—63 percent. But it gets worse. If you are in Auckland it is 49 percent now but when it is 63 percent across New Zealand if you are in Auckland then 83 percent of the average gross full-time wage will be needed to service a standard mortgage. That is why housing is unaffordable for New Zealanders. That is the Kiwi dream being taken away from the next generation of New Zealanders.We have a housing crisis in New Zealand. We all have a responsibility to do something about it and in this legislation the National Government is taking the tariff off nails and varnish and plasterboard. It is not enough it is insufficient it is hopeless and it will not do anything to greatly improve the chances of people getting into their first homes and that is it for housing in this Budget—that is it.The third part of the bill is around the Climate Change Response Act and my colleague Moana Mackey will have more to say about that. What we can say there though is that although it has been described by the Minister as an “unintended consequence” that is not how it is viewed out in the sector. The question we on this side of the House have is: why does the Government hate the forestry sector so much? Why has the Government got it in for the forestry sector and want to take it on? I can tell the Government this having looked at the regulatory impact statement. The section where it says “There has been no consultation with stakeholders on this.”—that was a mistake. Can I just say that that was a mistake. Right around the country iwi forest owners are not going to be happy with this. They are not going to be happy with this response.Quite clearly this is not the climate change legislation that the Government should be putting before the House.So that is it. That is what the Government has come to us today as its big Budget bill to bring in front of the House under urgency. It is woefully inadequate. We look to this Budget for some ambition for the New Zealand economy and it is not there. It is politics as usual. It is an election-year Budget where National has come in and stolen a few policies from Labour but it leaves ambition for the economy at the door. If we want to have good jobs and higher wages it does not come from tweaks to the cheque duty; it comes from actually adopting an approach where we bring New Zealanders together. It is a partnership between the Government and business and communities that is about creating jobs and making sure that there is industry and regional development and that there is an economic upgrade that will actually add value. We are not going to get higher wages in New Zealand through politics as usual—by investing in the same things we have always have done at the same rate.We need to upgrade the economy in manufacturing in forestry and in information and communications technology. We need to make sure that the skills are being gained by people to take on those jobs. We need to get the settings of the economy right by changing monetary policy so that people are back at the centre of the economy—not the speculators not the bankers but the people who actually drive productivity in our economy. And that is the other thing that is missing from this Budget. Where is the dividend to reduce inequality? If we really want to do something in our economy and our society then we have to harness the talents of all New Zealanders and this Budget leaves behind those who live in poverty. There is very little in this Budget that reaches those people and the last bill that we debated missed them out entirely.This is not a Budget for future generations; this is a Budget for this election year. If this was a Budget for future generations we would not be allowing superannuation spending to outstrip education spending this year and that is what is happening. There is no policy in here for future generations to know that they will have universal superannuation. There is nothing here that looks ahead to that. There is nothing here that looks ahead to safeguarding the Kiwi dream of homeownership or of giving people a fair chance to get on the property ladder. There is nothing in here to address the inequality that means that if you are lucky enough to live in Mission Bay in Auckland your median income will have gone up by $6000 over the last few years but if you are in Māngere or Ōtāhuhu you will have ended up with only a $200 increase. That kind of inequality cannot be sustained in our economy. This is a woefully inadequate piece of legislation that the Government thinks somehow trumpets its Budget. It actually shows that its Budget is a failure.