Kaye Nikki: Budget Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Kaye Nikki: Budget Debate 
[Sitting date: 29 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2612. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central) 
: 
 I am very pleased to speak in this Budget debate. The first thing I want to talk about is courage in relation to the Budget. Last night I heard a speech about courage. When we think about courage we think about accepting reality and accepting the situations in New Zealand that may not be things we are proud of but also about making the hard calls for New Zealand. And what I can tell you about this Budget is that we are not only accepting the reality about our place in the world and some of the issues that we have had in the past but also implementing policy that means that many young people in New Zealand will actually have a future. We are making the hard calls for New Zealand that we need to make. I want to talk about some of those today.  
I also want to say that there is a clear contrast in this House. There is a clear contrast in this House between us and Opposition members whose strategy around this Budget is to deny oppose and hope compared with us making hard decisions. They have denied the situation that they left us in with regard to our economic situation and we are addressing this within the Budget. They have opposed many economic issues that we are proposing within this Budget and they are hoping that everything will be OK.  
I want to address just some of the issues and some of the initiatives that we have in this Budget that mean we have a real economic plan for this country. The first thing I want to talk about as chair of the Education and Science Committee is our tertiary education system and the changes that we are making. We acknowledge that we have one of the most generous tertiary support systems in the world and if we want many of our young people to have a future and to have high-paying jobs we have to shift expenditure into research funds in areas like science and technology. We have announced a $326 million initiative in this Budget around research and technology. We have also announced a number of changes to the student loan system. What that is about is freeing up funds so that we can invest more in research in our tertiary system. What that means is that rather than people coming out of university with high debts that they will never be able to pay off because they will never be able to get the high-paying jobs in research and innovation we are saying that we need to spend that money on research within our tertiary institutions. We also need to make sure that we are spending that money in those areas like agriculture—and some of those other areas might be digital media—so that we actually can create industries that have high-paying jobs.  
Compare that with the Opposition members who firstly have opposed everything from labour law changes to tax reform changes to mixed ownership changes and to investment in infrastructure. When you look at the rest of our economic plan which again is highlighted in initiatives in this Budget you see that we also focus on massive investment in infrastructure. We acknowledge that if we want our country to be better then we not only have to shift funds within our tertiary education system but also have to invest in infrastructure. You will see that that is reflected in this Budget whether it is in our $1.5 billion Broadband Investment Fund whether it is in our roads of national significance which are about ensuring that goods get to market quicker or whether it is in the tax reform changes that we are making.  
In this Budget there is $1.36 billion that is coming out of revenue around closing up tax loopholes and what that is saying to New Zealanders is that we believe in fairness and we believe that if we really want to have a future for our young people we need not only to reform our tax system but also to invest in infrastructure to ensure we reprioritise in areas like science and innovation and to make changes within our education system. It comes back to the point that I made before which is that if we want to have a country that has a future we need to make sure that we do not allow one in five kids to leave our education system not being able to read and write properly. That is actually appalling.  
Now I want to cover just a few initiatives within this Budget with regard to education. What we are saying is that we acknowledge that there is a very difficult financial situation not only in New Zealand but also around the world. If we want to be secure we have to have zero Budgets we have to make sure we reduce debt and we have to pay our own way in the world. The way we do that is that we have to reprioritise expenditure. So what we are saying is that we know that New Zealanders in their own homes understand the situation and that they have to make choices. Some of the choices we are making in education are to say that we know that if we invest more in teacher training and professional development then we can actually raise the level of achievement more.  
I want to give you an example of a place that I visited recently—the Best Pacific Institute of Education. In the Budget there were 3000 additional places in the Youth Guarantee scheme and I am incredibly proud of that. I want to tell you about these kids. A number of these children—and some of them came through our education system in the last 12 years if members opposite want to crow about hearing about people who are poor—came out of our education system not being able to read and write. No one in this House should be proud of that. I am proud that through our Youth Guarantee system we are giving them a future. We are giving 3000 more places within our Youth Guarantee system to say to those kids that the Government will ensure that they get some basic National Certificate of Educational Achievement qualifications because actually we did not do our job in our education system before that. That is the kind of initiative in this Budget that is about creating a future where young people leave our education system actually being able to read and write and being able to go into professions that have high-paying jobs.  
I want to touch on that again. Again you are seeing a very clear contrast between this side of the House and the other whether it is in National’s investment in infrastructure whether it is in the reshuffling of funds in our tertiary education system or whether it is in the huge package for science and innovation. I want to show you a graph here on science and innovation. This graph I am holding shows what we are spending on science and innovation. You can see it going up regardless of the tax credit that the Labour Party talks about so much. We are clearly prioritising in very difficult financial times as a result of this Budget and saying that actually if our country wants to earn more money then we know that that is going to be in areas that are high tech. We know that we need to spend $160 million.  
I want to address one of the initiatives that we have announced—the Advanced Technology Institute. That is a massive initiative to spend over $100 million on investing in good science and research that is going to enable our industries to sell high-value products to the rest of the world. Again it is about priorities. On this side of the House we understand that with the incredible situation that has been happening around the world with the fact that we went into recession before the rest of the world and were staring down the barrel of a decade of deficits it is actually not OK to have a strategy to just deny that everything is happening oppose everything and hope everything will be OK. This Budget is about choices whether they are in the education area whether they are in the economic area or whether they are in the health area. New Zealanders know that this Budget is about choices. There are hard calls to make and it comes back to what I said before—it is about courage. It is about being able to stand up to New Zealanders and say that we do not have any blank cheques to write and we have to get the money from somewhere.  
What I can say is that I am confident—I am actually very confident—that when you look at where we have put the money in various parts of the Budget you see that we have prioritised areas like our most vulnerable like the kids in the Youth Guarantee scheme where there will be 3000 more places as a result of the Budget. We have found $326 million for science innovation. This Budget is about creating a future for our young people. It is about ensuring that we earn our way in the world ensuring that our young people have higher-paying jobs and ensuring that they leave our schools actually being able to read and write. It also ensures that for those young people who came through the system under the last Labour Government and who cannot read or write we will help them get back on their feet and we will ensure that they can get into work. We know that not only their futures but also the futures of their children are dependent on our waking up and realising that the world has changed that we have to make choices and that some of those choices are hard but they are about reprioritising expenditure. Every single line that you see within our Budget is about understanding that the world has changed and making those choices. You can compare that with the Opposition approach of deny oppose and hope.  
I came back to New Zealand to stand for Parliament. I was in London working and I came back to stand because I truly do believe that we have a great leader and that we have principles within our party that actually recognise the economic situation that the world faces. We have prioritised to ensure that young people in New Zealand are going to have a future.