Bridges Simon: Budget Debate 
Text is subject to correction 
Bridges Simon: Budget Debate 
[Sitting date: 31 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2798. Text is subject to correction.] 
Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Consumer Affairs) 
: 
 What an outstanding speech we have just heard from the Hon Chester Borrows delivered with heart and with passion. He comes into this House and he shows us why we are proud of the New Zealand National Party and what we are doing in this country. We do not come to this House to deal with issues in the way the Labour Party does. We do not come with hollow rhetoric. We do not come here out of sectional interests trying to keep people where they belong. We do not come from the unions from the teaching union we do not come from the legal union. We come here because we want to deal fairly and honestly and responsibly with the issues this country has in front of it.  
I want to say that Bill English and John Key have delivered this year a fantastic Budget that this side of the House is proud of. We are proud of the Budget that has been delivered in this House and we are proud of it because it is the very best most sensible Budget that can be delivered in the difficult uncertain times we are in globally and also in New Zealand. This is a Budget that not only the New Zealand National Party but New Zealand can be proud of.  
I want to go through some of what I think are the salient points. Firstly it is a responsible Budget—it is a responsible Budget. Members opposite have gone quiet on that because they know that that actually matters whereas the Labour Party in Government as we have heard in the good years was spending like drunken sailors with “$2.5 billion more this year and another $2.5 billion” from Mr Michael Cullen. Today they are not sure where they are—whether to spend up or say they are responsible; they just do not know. But we will balance the books in 2014-15 and that matters to New Zealanders. They tell us when we are down at the schools and they tell us when we are at their health centres that they want that and so we are delivering that for them. That will deliver to this country choices and options and the ability to do things creatively as we have heard. 
 But let me be very clear. This was not an austere Budget. This was not whatever that means. We hear about austere times in Europe. We do not have an austere Budget in this country. We spent some $72 billion or $73 billion over this financial year. We did that and we have proven it to New Zealanders and they trust us on this. From 2008 to 2011 we kept our word as we are doing this time. We kept our word we smoothed off the sharp edges of the recession and New Zealanders backed us and gave us another term.  
Our prudent management our balancing of the books and our reprioritisation means fundamentally we can spend more in the areas that New Zealanders tell us they want us to spend more in. So we are spending more over $1 billion more in health. And what an unalloyed success that has been in terms of more elective surgeries and in terms of redirecting funds into cancer treatment and immunisation. Those are the things that New Zealanders talk to us about and say that they want. 
Iain Lees-Galloway 
: $80 million worth of public health cuts. 
Hon SIMON BRIDGES 
: Yes. As I say there is reprioritisation in the health department so we can spend more and more. There is more money going in Mr Lees-Galloway—more money in Palmerston North in the Rodney district in Tauranga in Wellington and in New Plymouth. You name it we are putting more in there. Education—I will come back to it because I have heard the things said I have heard the heckling from the other side. There is more money—about a half a billion dollars more money—in education this term. Welfare: we are putting more money into welfare. That is because you can judge a society not just by how it treats the vulnerable but by how many vulnerable it creates.  
We have heard a lot about the politics of envy the kind of politics actually that the Labour Party likes to play with. But let me put another phrase that is well known into this debate: the soft bigotry of low expectations. That is what the Labour Party stands for fundamentally—the soft bigotry of low expectations. It keeps them on the welfare because it knows that that is where they should be and it knows that that is where they will keep on voting for it. We are investing money into welfare to get people off welfare so actually they can do well and they can get ahead. We know on this side of the House unlike that side of the House that what those people—all people in all our communities—do is aspire. They want to get ahead. They want their children to do well.  
So I suggest that this is an upbeat confident Budget given the times that we are in and given what we have been dealt—the cards we have been given in terms of a global financial crisis the worst in 70 or 80 years and in terms of the earthquakes. And I am not trying Andrew Little to politicise the earthquakes. They have been a terrible ordeal for the people of Canterbury. But we have got them and that reflects what we have to do and the way we have to treat it.  
But let me be political about this. The other circumstance we have been left with is the mess that Labour left us—the absolute mess. In 2008 in every single quarter there was negative growth—negative growth. Labour had the good years Cullen spent like a drunken sailor and then when the times started to get a little bit tough this is the way the growth went—down. Yet in our Government in 10 out of the last 11 quarters we have delivered growth. In the toughest times this world has seen in 70 to 80 years we have delivered growth. The one quarter we did not was the first one before Bill English gave us his first Budget. We have delivered 60000 new jobs in the last couple of years. Those are the facts.  
We have grown the economy as I have said. And as I think Scott Simpson made clear at the coalface when you are talking to property owners and new home buyers we have in this country at the moment the lowest interest rates this country has seen in 45 or 50 years. They are results that talk results that most of the developed world would be envious of: Europe America Canada and Japan. Yes OK Australia is doing well. We do not want to wish that away for our big brother next to us. But in this country where today we have lower taxes and we have less regulation jobs are moving here.  
Let me say another thing about this Budget. It is always very important to look at the counterfactual at what is on offer on the other side. 
Paul Goldsmith 
: Nothing. 
Hon SIMON BRIDGES 
: Well it is not nothing; it is a shambles. It is a shambles. Labour members are outdone by the guys in black and green on either side of them who seem to be getting more media than they can—at least positive media. And they cannot decide whether to save money and be prudent or to spend it and throw it away. So what they do is they double-talk. They do both. They say both. They say: “We are going to spend more; we are going to spend less. We are going to be responsible; we are going to be reckless.” And they oppose all the time everything we do that is constructive for this—[ 
Interruption 
] Well I am coming to that and I am glad you mentioned it: the proposed retirement age. That latest so-called policy or excuse of a policy that they give us is a shambles. They have said they will put it up to 67 or start doing that around 2020.  
But then yesterday or the day before David Shearer their leader—at least for the next week or so—came out with a doozy. He came out with a doozy. 
Andrew Little 
: He doesn’t smoke. What are you talking about? 
Hon SIMON BRIDGES 
: Ha ha! He said that for manual workers Labour would put it to 60. Well let us not worry about the cost of that; let us just run through how that will work. Manual workers? If people thought taking GST off fruit and veges was a nightmare for the lawyers to get involved with let us go with manual workers.  
Who is a manual worker in this country? Well Shane Jones is a manual worker. He is only manual when he is watching videos in his own hotel room. Trevor Mallard? Well he is manual when he is fighting with another member outside or when he is running away—like that member Andrew Little did—from process servers because he is scared of the full arm of the law. But that has caught up with him. Are they manual workers? Are farmers manual workers? That policy is a shambles that they should be ashamed of. When eventually they do get their next Prime Minister—the way they are going it is not going to be Shearer Cunliffe Parker or Robertson; it could be “Chippy” Hipkins in sort of 2028; he might be their next one—they will not keep that shambles of a policy.  
Here we have a responsible Budget for the times a Budget that is dealing with a whole lot of uncertainty in the world but nevertheless reprioritises the money and makes sure there is more for health education welfare science and innovation. It is a Budget New Zealanders can be proud of.