Hughes Darren: Imprest Supply Debate 
Hughes Darren: Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:628;Page:464] 
DARREN HUGHES (Labour—Otaki) 
: 
 It is typical of many of the speeches that we are hearing from the new National Party members that they still have not worked out that National lost the general election. They are talking as though they are the great representatives of the people but they lost at the general election. The country went off to the polls after a very hotly contested election campaign and the Labour Party with allies in other parties was returned to govern New Zealand. Now we have to try to pass this Imprest Supply Bill because this debate is Parliament’s opportunity to approve the money that will be spent between now and the end of the financial year. We are looking at the sorts of things that the Government is proposing to spend money on. It is also a very good opportunity to reflect as a confidence measure on what would be happening if the other lot were running New Zealand. That is where we get into some big problems. 
The first part of the argument regarding the Labour-led Government’s programme involves us actually having to put numbers on a page that all add up together. That is a bit of a problem in politics—what we say on the one hand we have to be able to do on the other. We have a kind of realism problem in the Labour Party: we actually like to do the things we talk about. That is why we put out a commitment card. The figures are all there for everybody to see in a printed bill and in a printed Speech from the Throne. They are all there for everybody to see. 
But members on the Opposition side of the House say that they think the Government taxes people too much. Mr Foss has just told us that tax is more or less theft and that the money does not belong to the Government but belongs to the people. So presumably on that basis he does not believe in taxation at all. Or if he believes in a bit of taxation presumably he thinks the tax rates that the National Party took to the last general election were far too tough—he thinks that National the party he belongs to was too timid and that it should have gone further with tax reductions than the $7 billion borrowing and spending-cut tax plan it proposed at the last general election. 
If we accept and take as reasonable Mr Foss’s point that the taxes charged by Labour are too high and the taxes National proposed to charge were too high that would mean savage cuts to Government spending. That is where we run into problems. That guy will get up in Parliament within the next 3 years and demand that the Government pay orchardists to rip out trees. He will get up in Parliament within the next 3 years and demand better roads between Napier and Hastings and demand a sweetheart deal on an airport. That member will get up in Parliament within the next 3 years and demand every single bit of taxpayer dollar he can for his own area and then say that he is a fiscal conservative that he traded a few dollars here and there around the world and that he believes it is not Mr Cullen’s money but the people’s. 
So we have a massive contradiction; there is no logic at all. For 3 years National will have to work out a way of trying to reconcile the craziness of saying that it wants to tax less and spend more. I am not saying that National will spend more just because I am trying to attack it politically. We had to sit through the raft of maiden speeches—which were more politically correct than the Labour Party back-bench speeches I have to say. Of course none of the National members campaigned in that way. They all said around the country that we needed one law for all that the Treaty gravy train was going crazy and that it was political correctness gone mad. But they all stood up in here wearing the biggest pounamu and bone carvings they could hunched up over their desks and said: “Tena koutou I acknowledge the Maori people in my area. I am trying to learn to say a few more words with a little pronunciation that sounds vaguely South Pacific.” Those people are extraordinary in the double standard we are seeing. On the campaign trail they said that political correctness had gone mad and that they had to fix all those problems and then they come in here and say that the Government taxes too much but that it should please please spend more on the things they like. 
I see Mr Blumsky over there on the Opposition benches. Of course he did not really bother to add up accounts when he was at the Wellington City Council and he does not think he should do the same when he comes into Parliament either. He wants billions of dollars of extra spending right across the Crown bank accounts. I bet he wants to charge people less tax as well. Members can imagine what would have happened if Mr Blumsky had gone around the harbour ward and said he would put people’s rates down and their spending up. I know he got into a lot of trouble when he had that job but not even he went around when he had that responsibility and said he would put people’s rates down and their spending up. But that is what National is trying to do in the imprest supply debate. 
At least the list MP from the West Coast was slightly more realistic in his aim because of all the extra spending that he wanted he wanted the strategic Arahura road-rail bridge to be done. That was the only thing that he wanted to have done. It is fair enough to hear one thing that an MP wants to have done but we have had to sit through 15-minute speeches from all those people demanding that more and more be done. 
National became so desperate about its taxation policy during the election campaign that it even promised to get rid of petrol taxes in the last week of the campaign. That is how desperate it was to try to win the general election. So I remind the National Party of the biggest tax bribes New Zealand has ever seen—the 15-year itch the National Party gets. In 1975 it was going to get rid of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and put superannuation up to 80 percent of the average wage and in 1990 it was going to cut the surcharge. It won those two elections. But in 2005 the 15-year bribe—the National Party itch—came around and National could not do it despite the tax cuts despite the petrol tax and despite the race card. It tried all those things. For all National’s talk of the new representative feel it thinks it has all it did was to hoover up the votes of the other non-Labour parties. It was not some great victory by the National Party. How can its members say they feel good having thrown everything they possibly could in order to try to buy a general election to be sitting in Opposition—that they delighted to be there? I think that is absolutely amazing. 
I see the member for Rangitikei on the Opposition side of the House. His big new plan is to build some new prisons. He was on the front page of the  
Dominion Post  
this week stating we should build some new prisons. So we have to take all the promises from the general election campaign plus the tax cuts—National was going to put a total of $5.2 billion into all of that. Now since the election all the extra promises have started. So Simon Power asks for a few more prisons. But there is a problem with that: where we will build the prisons? On the one hand National members beat their chests and say we should build a few more prisons and on the other hand they say they should not be built in their areas. 
We saw that with Mr Ryall who is a slightly odd sort of character. He used to go around saying we need more prisons but not in the Bay of Plenty. As soon as people wanted to build a new prison in the Bay of Plenty guess which piece of legislation the National Party reached for in order to try to slow it down? It was the Resource Management Act. Yet what was National’s position on that Act? Its position on that Act around the country was that we had to get rid of political correctness gone mad and the appeals process—except when National needed it. The National members also said we had to try to cut taxes except when they wanted to spend money on their favourite thing. 
It is absolutely extraordinary that National now comes in here to the House to oppose a bill that actually adds up. It does not like it but its members will have to explain to people why they are voting against legislation that puts into place some policies that I think will be quite popular out there. I am glad the student loan money will get voted through in this bill. I am delighted that the National Party keeps making a big song and dance about the student loan issue. It is on the wrong side of that argument completely—just as it was in 2000. I ask the National members to please put in all their six questions tomorrow on the student loan policy. Of course in the Labour Party we had the scarfies on our side—actually the National Party had scarfies on its side too but our scarfies were students and its scarfies were from a cult. National put a taxation plan out there that gave members of Parliament like all of us $91 a week in tax cuts but that gave two-thirds of people less than $10 a week. That is fairness; that is the mainstream! The mainstream is now people who are very very wealthy but those who get only 10 bucks a week back are not counted as part of it. 
Finally I say the National Party is very upset about the support we are getting from New Zealand First and United Future. It is absolutely devastated about it. National has not explained to Parliament how it is that the Government working with two parties is a hotchpotch arrangement but a National-led Government of five parties would be a fantastic idea. How is that? It is a stable Government if it is Don Brash and five parties but if it is Helen Clark and two other parties on top of the Government that is a hotchpotch. How does that work? It does not work and that is why the National members will sit over there on the Opposition benches for another 3 years and try to work out why this Government is making progress on things that people actually care about. That will lead to 9 long years in Opposition for the National Party. We have to watch people like Mr Power wasting away their middle age in Opposition sitting around and trying to find work to do. 
The only other good thing that will happen I think in the taxation area is—[ 
Interruption 
] Trying to find work to do—that is right. Well I tell the member he should keep on looking because it will take a while. I see that Mr Copeland from United Future will speak next. As part of our arrangement with United Future we will look at the corporate tax rate. The interesting thing about that is that a Labour-led Government will go back to the polls at the next election with a better policy towards business regimes than the National Party had in its taxation plan at the last election. So for all those members’ talk about freeing business from the shackles their taxation plan was the harshest on their business supporters. 
We have an Imprest Supply Bill that takes us through to the end of the financial year. It is balanced it has been worked out and it contains policies that Kiwis want—against a pie-in-the-sky policy that says: “I want this; I want that. I am like a kid in a lolly shop: I want to try to get a job that pays lower wages but pay my mortgage off at an even higher rate.” It will be 3 long bad sorry sad years on the Opposition benches for those members because they will have to get out all the abacuses in the world to work it out that talk is cheap and that being in Government is good.