Mackey Moana: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
Mackey Moana: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
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MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I am very pleased to stand and take a call in this debate. That was a very telling speech from the member who has just resumed his seat. I do not think he actually talked much about this bill at all. He talked about how he wants to amalgamate all the councils in his local area and he blamed all the democratically elected councillors over there in his electorate. That is fine and good on him but I suspect that if he keeps passing the buck blaming everything on his local councillors and not accepting any responsibility as a member of a Government he might not be the local member for very long. 
This Budget was a real opportunity for the Government and the people of New Zealand expected to see some vision and a plan—a plan for lifting New Zealand out of recession faster a plan for ensuring that we do not make exactly the same mistakes the National Government made last time we went through a recession and a plan that ensures that when we do come out of recession we hit the ground running and New Zealand is not left at the back of the pack as we were the last time Mr Carter was a Minister in Government. 
I think that New Zealanders hoped that National might have learnt from the failures of the past—learnt what worked and what did not—and might have come up with some kind of concrete visible transparent plan to assist New Zealand during this difficult time. But we got no plan. There was no plan for jobs and the Prime Minister admitted yesterday that 1000 New Zealanders are joining the dole queue every single week. As we heard in question time today he has no plan to stem that—no plan to create jobs— 
John Hayes 
: It’s a good place for you to go. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Well you see that is the level of debate that we get from National members. Even Mr Paul Quinn is being quiet because he is taking this seriously. 
Paul Quinn 
: Ha ha! 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I knew that would get him started. All John Hayes can say is that the dole queue is a good place for me to go. That is the level of intellectual thinking on that side of the House. [ 
Interruption 
] I tell Mr Hayes that we on this side of the House take the situation a little bit more seriously than his party does quite obviously. 
We hoped we would see something—anything—to create jobs in New Zealand and to hold on to the jobs we have. We hoped we would see something of a plan to help the people who unlike Mr Hayes do not have a guaranteed job in here for 3 years and are genuinely concerned about how they will feed their families over the course of the next few years. We hoped we would see a little bit of a plan in this Budget but there was no plan. 
Let us look at some of the areas of the Budget and let us look in particular at research science and technology. The Government had the gall to put out a press release stating that this Budget made a substantial increase in its investment in research science and technology. Of course it failed to mention the fact that when we consider that the Government has removed Labour’s research and development tax credit we see that there is in fact a cut of more than $1.2 billion. There has been a cut of $1.2 billion in the very sector that could help to bring us out of this recession faster the very sector that we need to help us create wealth in this country. 
The National Government has said that it does not value that sector at all and does not think it is important enough to keep those incentives. Mr John Walley said just this week that recent statistics show that New Zealand’s private sector investment in research and development is 0.51 percent of GDP. That is a third of the OECD average. He called on this Government to take that seriously and to reinstate some kind of tax incentive. 
Members on this side of the House are not saying the Government has to reintroduce exactly the same thing we did. What we want to see is some kind of tax incentive because it has been shown to work everywhere around the world. So I want to know what the Minister of Finance knows and I want to know what every single one of our trading partners who has these tax incentives in place does not know. 
Not only are tax incentives working in those countries but they are also putting New Zealand at a strategic disadvantage. When we look over the Tasman we see that Mr Kevin Rudd is increasing and improving the tax incentives for research and development yet New Zealand is going 100 kilometres in the opposite direction by removing them in their entirety. 
I come now to the New Zealand Fast Forward Fund. National likes to talk about being the party of the agricultural sector. If we compare the scheme that Labour put in place with the insipid anaemic scheme that has replaced it we would have to say that that is absolutely not true. Although we can talk about the quantum of that fund and that is very important National seems to have failed to grasp that one of the most significant things about the Fast Forward Fund is that long-term funding certainty was provided for our research sector for the first time. The sector knew that the fund was there for 10 to 15 years and that it was a significantly sized fund. The sector knew that it was not something politicians could dip into and it knew it would not have to come cap in hand to the Government every single year just hoping that it would get an appropriation. 
Researchers working in the food and pastoral sectors quite rightly feel very worried. They have told me that next year’s appropriation for pastoral and food innovation initiatives might go the same way the tax cuts went. How can the sector be certain that its funding for next year will be there? How can it be certain that its funding for the year after will be there? The reality is that it cannot. 
One of the fundamental foundations of the Fast Forward Fund was that long-term stability and that has gone as well in this Budget. So we do not have any plan to stimulate the economy. We saw that a full third of the tax cuts in the Budget went to the top 3 percent of income earners. That is nothing more than just paying off one’s cronies; let us be honest about it. There is absolutely no economic reason why we would push the tax cuts towards people who will save the money or go on an overseas holiday and spend it on stimulating other people’s economies. 
If we really want to use tax cuts to provide economic stimulus we would give them to the people who will spend them. We would give them to the people who need them now—the people who will use them to pay the bills feed their families and pay their mortgage. That is the kind of thing one would do with that money. Not only is that economically the right thing to do but it is morally the right thing to do. These are the very people who are struggling right now. 
One of the big issues in this Budget really had to be the stopping of payments into the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. We have heard a lot of comments from National members. They have been crowing and saying that superannuation has to remain at the current level of entitlement. But what they do not say when they make those comments is: “But we’ve stopped the funding that will pay for that.” 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: Rubbish! 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Oh it’s rubbish. 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: The fund will fund only 14 percent. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Oh right! The fund will be $35 billion short by the time the baby boomers retire. 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: You don’t understand. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I say to Mrs Tolley that if Labour had realised we did not need to pay for superannuation then we would not have had a fund at all. We would not have had a fund if we had realised that money was not the problem. 
Now is the time we should be maintaining this fund. The superannuation fund did very well last month. Can the Government members who are all yelling at me now answer one simple question? How can we maintain the current levels of entitlement to New Zealand superannuation if the money is not there to pay for it? 
Hon David Parker 
: They believe in Santa too. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: That is right. Maybe the pixies will bring it. Maybe Santa will bring it for them. The fact is that it cannot be done. 
National has made a political calculation that it will not be here when that problem arises. That will be a problem for a future generation. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: When Paul Quinn is Prime Minister. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: When Paul Quinn is the Prime Minister this will be his problem. 
While we are on the topic of cuts that will affect our young people we have to look at the cuts in education industry training tertiary education and adult and community education. We have to ask what this Government is thinking. National did this the last time we went through a recession. The last time New Zealand went through a recession a National Government cut industry training funding cut tertiary education funding cut funding to the areas that will upskill people and cut apprenticeships. 
We are now going through a period when people need to be upskilled. A lot of people have got jobs that are not particularly skilled. They are now finding that they are the first in the dole queue because they are the unskilled workers. The first port of call for these people would be adult and community education. That is absolutely their first port of call. They will want to upskill. 
Paul Quinn 
: Now we’re on to adult education are we? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I suggest that Mr Quinn might want to have a look at taking a few adult and community education courses. 
The fact is that we will come out of this recession with an unskilled workforce exactly as we did the last time National was in Government. What happened the last time we were in a recession? New Zealand took a lot longer to recover and we had bottlenecks within our economy because we had such an unskilled workforce. This National Government knows that because it was National’s fault—National did it. It was a Labour Government that had to come in and deal with the reality of it. Labour had to come in and boost industry training. Labour reintroduced Modern Apprenticeships and boosted them up. We moved faster than we promised we would because there was such a bottleneck in our economy. And here we are again! 
John Hayes 
: Do you realise you’ve said nothing of substance in 10 minutes? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I say to Mr Hayes that a definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. This Budget was the very definition of insanity.