Adams Amy: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeAdams Amy: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 30 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10591. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for the Environment): Here we are discussing and debating the fifth Budget of the National-led Government and I have to say that every single day in this House the difference becomes clearer and clearer. I could be talking about the polls of course which are also becoming clearer and clearer about what New Zealanders want but I am not. I could be talking about the difference between the factions in the Labour Party because every day they become clearer and clearer but I am not. What I am talking about is the very clear difference that the New Zealand public can now see between what this Government is continuing to deliver has delivered for the last 5 years and what Budget 2013 is a continuation of—the solid sensible caring and progressive management of this Government which has got New Zealand on the right path—and what the Labour-Greens coalition would condemn this country to. That is what is becoming clearer and clearer in the minds of New Zealanders and I welcome it actually. I welcome Labour tethering itself hitching its cart to the Green horse because that is showing New Zealanders very clearly the real risks that they face if they were to put that lot in charge of this country.Bill English in this Budget has New Zealand on track. He has us on track to get back to surplus. He has this year in this Budget shown us that this year we are looking at a deficit of around $2 billion when Australia that mighty powerful nation across the Ditch which is always held up to us as the beacon of all things good has announced under its Labor Government a $20 billion deficit. We are on track to a $2 billion deficit this year and a return to surplus as promised in 2014-15. Bill English is delivering us steady growth—in fact growth rates that are the envy of most of the rest of the world and are bettered only by Australia. He has delivered us continually reducing debt projections remembering that we inherited from the Labour Government never-ending deficits. We were facing a country that would never ever get back to a surplus—never get back to surplus. [Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! The Speaker will not allow a speaker on their feet to be drowned out. This is Parliament; it is not a public house.Hon AMY ADAMS: Thank you Mr Robertson. I enjoy their bleating. It shows just how much the truth hurts them. Bill English has us on track to get back to surplus. That is a remarkable feat. We see falling unemployment we see record low interest rates and we see the lowest rates of crime in 30 years. That is what sensible management means. That is what a caring progressive Government that is focused on what matters and that does want a brighter future for all New Zealanders means.What is the difference between the alternative and the options New Zealand faces? What would a Labour-Green regime deliver to this country? Well what we do know is that those parties continue every day to show us without doubt without question that they would take more money out of the pockets of New Zealanders to spend on inflated bureaucracy working groups more red tape more spending and more debt because that is all they know it is all they deliver and it is their only way of functioning. It seems to me that they are genetically hard-wired to focus on what they can take and what they can spend. Every utterance that we hear from Labour and the Greens is about how much they can take and how much they can spend—not one word not one policy not one contribution not one press release and not one speech about how they are going to contribute to getting the New Zealand productive sector up and running providing the jobs providing the incomes and providing the opportunities for New Zealanders.Hon David Cunliffe: Come on Amy. You don’t even believe this crap. You don’t even believe this rubbish from the research unit. You just don’t believe it. Look like you believe it. You’ve got no idea.Hon AMY ADAMS: You see David Cunliffe still does not get it. David Cunliffe still thinks that Government spending is the fix for all our worries. If a Government can tax you more and spend more on bureaucracy then everything will be well. The Labour Party still thinks there is a magic money machine and magic beans that it can spend and that it can just keep on spending keep on taxing and keep on borrowing. That will not matter. Never mind that under a Labour-Green Government under the settings that those parties left us with and the ruination that they gave to this economy right now we would be looking at $100 billion more debt—$100 billion more debt that is the future they want for young New Zealanders. That is the future they want to condemn every young New Zealander to—a $100 billion debt burden around their necks. We will not do that. We will manage this economy sensibly. We have done so for 5 years and we will continue to.That is why you have people like the IMF coming out and saying that New Zealand has got it right. New Zealand has got economic and political settings that are right and that other countries should be looking to. That is a significant milestone. That is why our interest rates are low. If you want to talk about making living affordable for New Zealanders the best thing we can do—Mr Assistant Speaker I apologise for bringing you into the debate—the best thing this country can do is ensure that we have sensible policies low debt and low interest rates and that the settings are right so that businesses can create jobs and are incentivised to invest. That is one of the core reasons that we in this party and in this Government are focused on reforming the Resource Management Act to ensure that while it protects our environment it also provides the certainty and the streamlined processes that mean that we can have housing that we can afford that we can create jobs in our cities and in our towns and that we can do it in a way that is not simply a fest of billing for the consultants the lawyers and the planners who have built up around the industry that this has become.We have got to have good outcomes but we know that in the last 2 years alone these over-bloated cumbersome litigious processes have meant that at least $800 million worth of projects have not gone ahead. That is jobs. So every time one of theOpposition comes into this House and says “Where are the jobs?” I say to them “How about you support fixing some of the roadblocks to creating those jobs? How about you get on board with the Government and say that we can do better that we can have settings that look after our environment and still provide certainty and opportunities to invest?”. But no Labour wants to oppose it. In fact the Labour Party has already come out and said that if elected it would repeal all the improvements to the Resource Management Act which is interesting really because it is saying that it would rather keep the inefficient bloated expensive litigious system that we have than support any sensible change.Do you know what else that would mean? It would mean that the Labour Party has announced that it opposes our including in the Resource Management Act the protection of New Zealand from natural hazards. That is one of the changes that we want to make to Part 2 and yet we have already got the Labour Party coming out and saying that it opposes that and that if it was elected it would reverse that. Here we are with the Labour Party. Labour members are sitting there telling New Zealand that they do not want in the Resource Management Act the protection of New Zealand from the risks of natural hazards. I think that is appalling I think it is disgraceful and I think it shows how they are willing to play politics and to do and say whatever they can to get back into power where they can continue to borrow spend and ruin the future of this country. They are shameless. They are not looking out for the best interests of this country. If they were they would be looking to support sensible meaningful improvements.This morning I have been up in Kāpiti announcing the beginning of the build of ultra-fast broadband in Kāpiti in Levin in Gisborne and in Upper Hutt because we are interested in supporting rural and provincial New Zealand. We know that we can make significant gains by ensuring that rural and provincial New Zealand is connected and can do business from anywhere in this country; that our children in the smallest town or the smallest rural community can access the best resources not only in New Zealand but in the world; that our patients can get access to health care from wherever they are through high-speed video hook-ups and telehealth initiatives; and that our businesses can conduct business around the world recruit staff work from home and sell into markets anywhere in the world. This is transformational. It is transformational infrastructure that this Government is backing and Labour voted against it because Labour does not support rural New Zealand and it does not support families in small-town New Zealand getting ahead and the National Government does.But it does not stop there. We are rolling out ultra-fast broadband. We are supporting better water infrastructure. We are supporting better roading networks to ensure that our goods can get to market. We have put in place for the first time an exclusive economic zone protection regime. Nine years under Labour and the Greens—did they care about putting rules in place to protect the exclusive economic zone? Absolutely not—absolutely not. The National-led Government is the one that introduced rules to protect the exclusive economic zone. The National-led Government is the one that introduced the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management. The National-led Government is the one that introduced the Waste Minimisation Act and is reducing waste in our landfills. This is a Government of action; that is a Government of ruination.