Jones Shane: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Jones Shane: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Advance Copy - Subject to minor change before inclusion in Bound Volume.] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 If there was ever an example of a situation where volume and mock rage were inversely related to content we have seen it from that member from the South Island Amy Adams. We had a contribution from someone who chaired the Finance and Expenditure Committee prior to joining the racing industry where he has been gelded and is devoid now of intellectual content. I think that he ought to come back to the Finance and Expenditure Committee and improve the current quality of its chairperson’s skills as revealed by what was a very tawdry speech. 
What we are talking about here is an ideological tract. Come the end of the year Kiwis have a very clear choice: more poverty more unemployment ongoing suffering wretched lifestyles the urban poor and the rural poor and a tidy very handsome caste of economic beneficiaries otherwise known as the confrères from overseas the merchant banking community who will be the primary beneficiaries of the asset privatisation exercise. The vast bulk of young New Zealand families are trying to go to Australia because their circumstances are worsening day after day—ask the schoolteachers. Let National members ask Fonterra why it has to provide more and more food for free breakfasts in decile 1 schools and then come back and tell this Committee and tell Kiwis that we are on the upward slope. No that is not what the major corporates are saying. They are digging into their own pockets and so they should; after all they have been handsomely rewarded by the disproportionately unfair polices of the current Government to the vast majority of Kiwis. I tell Mr English to ask those Kiwis. 
At the end of the year the asset sales give-away is a brilliant public policy debate for us to have. I accept that on the other side the National members genuinely believe that by privatising part of these assets we will open up a new array of investment opportunities. But I ask who the beneficiaries of these investment opportunities will be. Those members are trying every trick in the book. Of course Treasury has unravelled their key argument. Treasury has said there cannot be a successful privatisation unless there is substantial investment from overseas. Yet those members are going back into their own communities and quietly telling Kiwis that this is a good idea and that they will enjoy some sort of Thatcher-like psychic experience—that we will suddenly become a prosperous shareholding democracy. The tiny number of Kiwis who will have that opportunity—once again the disproportionate beneficiaries of the wretched tax give-away that Mr English introduced several years ago—just shows that Kiwis as a consequence of the paucity of our own savings do not want to acquiesce. They do not want to see the current Government preside over the dilution of the slender wealth that we still have left in our country. That is why that is a brilliant issue to fight this election on. 
There is the predictable misinformation as to our tax reform policy. The key point is that the average Kiwi will be $100 better off per week as a consequence of these policies. Kiwis will respond to that type of incentive. They will not respond to the puffery. They will not respond to the rhetoric from the Prime Minister and his friends in their increasingly expensive cars when they drive past and see the bleak broken windows in the tangata whenua part of town and in the Pasifika part of town and see the vast majority of Kiwis who are heading towards “Strugglers’ Gully”. Somehow that statement of accuracy is regarded as non-aspirational and non-patriotic. There are members who are in charge of their offices and are close to the communities they purport to represent but that does not unfortunately include Mr Bennett. He is where he belongs but that is another matter. We knew at the beginning of this debate that we would come under some fairly significant attacks but the facts are clear: as a consequence of this tax reform package $100 per week and a host of other initiatives would go into the pockets of Kiwis. I desire to ensure that there is money available in the kitty for families to deal with the issues regarding their children. 
But families are telling us that this Budget has failed the thousands of—and indeed in my case 16000—young Maori. Thirty percent of Maori between the ages of 15 and 25 are unemployed with no opportunity to go on with any meaningful training. Those are the issues that will motivate Kiwis at the end of the year not all the hollow empty promises that will benefit a narrow caste of economic beneficiaries.