Turei Metiria: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Turei Metiria: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
[Sitting date: 26 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3367. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I listened very carefully to Bill English’s speech this morning and to the description of the targets. You know the Green Party is a very strong advocate actually for setting targets for reducing poverty and for eliminating family violence and we think there is a lot of opportunity for some better cross-party work on those targets. The problem with Bill English’s speech is that it was all just talk. It is not a question of just setting the targets or saying what he said as nice as it might have sounded. The practicalities of a Government and the choices that a Government makes about where it puts it priorities whom it values and who gets it resources are set out in the Budget and if you look beyond the pretty words of Mr English and look at the details of the Budget you can see very clearly that there is no commitment to eliminating poverty and there is no commitment to protecting vulnerable families or vulnerable children because the money is being taken from exactly those families and being delivered elsewhere—to mining companies and to the very wealthy. So it is all well and good to hear those nice words but the Budget itself shows that those words are just not true. They are rhetoric designed for public consumption. I think it also behoves the Government to understand that the New Zealand public is just not that stupid. 
This Government is failing New Zealanders every day and it has made life much worse for those who have the least. The choices that the Government has made in the Budget are poor choices and what it has required in that Budget is that ordinary New Zealanders pay the price for its poor economic management. There are some examples. There is the $2 billion cost because of the 2010 tax cuts. By giving a huge whack of money to the wealthy the Government has created an economic hole and now it is asking low-income families to pay for that. There is the $12 billion that the Government has committed still to motorways. Even though it requires increased borrowing and the Government cannot afford it it would still rather spend $12 billion on motorways than on families. There are the emissions trading scheme pollution subsidies. The Government would still rather pay $1.5 billion to polluting companies than make sure that New Zealanders have warm secure housing. It would rather give $400 million in irrigation subsidies to a few despite the cost to the environment and to the rivers than make sure that all our kids have access to a high-quality public education service. And of course there are the asset sales. Treasury itself has shown that the Budget deficit will be made worse as a result of the asset sales. Well that is $100 million a year that the Government is prepared to waste to meet its ideological drive to sell off New Zealand’s assets. 
Having made these bad economic decisions about where it is putting its money the Government is now looking to New Zealanders to pay the bill. And it is not just ordinary New Zealand families but their children—the very vulnerable children and the young people Bill English was talking about this morning. The first tax cuts were supposed to be paid for by the increase in GST which vulnerable families had to pay. The Government is now going back to low and middle income New Zealanders and saying: “Please pay some more.” Please pay some more in your student loan. Please pay more in your student allowance. Please pay more by having your training incentive allowance for beneficiaries taken from you. Please pay more for early childhood education. Please pay more for your prescription charges. That is what this Government is asking of low and middle income families. Please pay more so that we can continue to dole out our resources to the people we like like the mining companies the emissions trading polluters and others. 
We did some analysis of this to look at how families have been affected by this Government’s Budgets over the last few years and this is what we found. A solo mum of one who is on a benefit who is also working part-time—so she is involved in her community—is $5000 worse off today because of National’s economic management. A typical family with both parents in work with three kids earning around $70000—a very average family in economic terms—is $11000 worse off because of this National Government’s poor economic management. But someone who is earning $400000—say someone on a Prime Minister’s salary—who has two kids is $19000 better off as a result of National’s policies. So we can see just with a very simple analysis of National’s economic management who is getting the money and who is being asked to pay. And who is getting the money? It is the very wealthy. Who is being asked to pay? It is the very poor. 
I sit here and listen to Bill English talking about how the Government wants to set targets to help protect vulnerable children and I know that that is just a lie because the Budget tells me— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! The member will withdraw and apologise for that comment. 
METIRIA TUREI 
: I withdraw and apologise. The Budget tells me what this Government actually wants to do which is to take money away from low-income families from those vulnerable children and give it away to the wealthy. We see that over and over again. 
The Green Party has been very clear that we are committed to reducing inequality in this country and to ending child poverty and it is also clear that our solutions work. The best example of this of course is the home insulation scheme. In a deal that was done between the Greens and National last term and the Greens and Labour the term before we established the home insulation scheme. It was originally designed to see what kinds of savings could be made in energy but actually it turns out that for the $300 million - odd that is spent to insulate New Zealanders’ homes the country saves $1.5 billion in health costs. It is an enormous fantastic economic success. By investing $330 million in New Zealanders and their families and their homes $1.5 billion of health savings is returned to the entire country. And not only that but the research shows that the lives of 18 elderly people have been saved as a result. 
That is the kind of green economic solution that actually does do what we said it should do. It does make lives better for ordinary New Zealanders. It does protect the health of those who are the most poor—in this case mostly those who are very elderly and living alone. It does have huge economic benefits not only in creating jobs but in health savings to the country as a whole. These are the kinds of successful solutions where clear and careful investment of Government money into those solutions that work for families does deliver. It is one of the success stories of the green economy. It is also true that the Budget failed to allocate any more money for that scheme and we will continue to work with the Government to see whether we can get it to at least contribute something given that so many businesses now and so many communities are involved and so many families take such a huge benefit from it. 
Not only are there significant costs to New Zealand families as a result of this Budget but there are also real threats to the environment. We know that our rivers and lakes are under threat from dairy intensification. There are increased subsidies for irrigators. Over half of our monitored rivers are unsafe for swimming. That means our kids our vulnerable kids are not safe when they go out swimming in New Zealand waters. National of course makes plans to make it much worse by subsidising more intensification—mining our soils as someone described it. Well of course that is not all that National is mining. Those members are talking about mining World Heritage sites now of course too. I understand that John Key has said that they just want to look at what is in the World Heritage sites but they will not touch. It is a bit like a child who just wants to count the lollies but promises not to eat them. Yeah as if New Zealanders believe that! 
New Zealanders know rhetoric when they hear it. They know that this Government is demanding that New Zealand families pay the cost for its poor economic management and that means that ordinary New Zealand families will suffer. Not only as our analysis has shown are ordinary families much worse off now than the very rich families but there is the increased cost to these families over time of the failed transportation decisions prescription charges and early childhood education and the continual fights that our community has to have in order just to maintain essential services like reasonable class sizes so that their kids get a decent education. These are all costs borne by families and those costs are imposed by this Government through the choices that this Government makes about where it puts resources. 
Every Budget demonstrates the values of a Government and this Government does not value children families and communities. The Green Party is here to stand up for children families and communities. Thank you.