Robertson Grant: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 06 June 2013. Volume:690;Page:10863. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): Just so we get the numbers exactly right there are 10 members in Judith Collins’ faction. Just so we get the numbers exactly right there are 10 in Judith Collins’ faction. Steven Joyce could not get out of here quick enough. He could not get out of here quick enough. He even walked in front of Judith Collins just to make sure he made the point. Judith Collins is so busy on Twitter—she is so busy on Twitter—she is not doing even the fundamental bits of her portfolio. Marie Shroff not a woman known for major exaggeration is in the paper this morning criticising the Government saying that it is lagging behind on privacy issues. She said that she lamented the behaviour of the Minister. Well we do that every day on this side of the House. We lament the behaviour of Judith Collins because she is failing in her duty as a Minister to look after the privacy concerns of New Zealanders.What this Budget will be remembered for is something that that Minister knows a great deal about. This will be the Budget that will be remembered for National looking after its mates. We saw no better example of that than we have over the last few days. This Budget will pass today—we know that. We can see that on this side of the House. It will pass today with the vote of John Banks who the police have said broke the Local Electoral Act. He is currently in court with a private prosecution because he broke the Local Electoral Act.Scott Simpson: Mark Peck.GRANT ROBERTSON: He should not be in this Parliament. He was handed a cheque Mr Simpson. He was handed a cheque by Skycity for $15000 and he did not declare that. He asked for a donation from Kim Dotcom and he did not declare that. That is the shabby behaviour that will prop up this Government and that will pass this Budget. And then we have Peter Dunne who is not the leader of a registered political party. He is not the leader of a registered political party and yet he retains that status and all the funding that goes with it. This is a shabby Government propped up by shabby parties which has delivered a shabby Budget. The members on the other side of the House should hang their heads in shame when they look at this Budget because the message that they are sending to New Zealanders is that they will look after their mates not your mates.I think the other thing that this Budget will be remembered for is what happened during the urgency debate around the Budget. I want to make very clear to this House that the process that the National Party went through when it was passing the carers bill was obscene and against our democratic process. Professor Andrew Geddis from Otago University put it this way. He said: “I think National just broke our constitution.” That is what it did.Hon Hekia Parata: Oh!GRANT ROBERTSON: Hekia Parata dismisses it. Well-known constitutional law expert Hekia Parata dismisses that!Hon Hekia Parata: No need for disparagement I just don’t agree.GRANT ROBERTSON: She does not agree with it. Well she should go and read Andrew Geddis’ piece and see that what he is saying is that National fundamentally undermined the rights of New Zealanders by shoving that legislation through under urgency by not having a proper regulatory impact statement and by denying the rights of those carers to go to court. That is what happened under this Budget.And do you know what? Under this Budget John Key keeps claiming a mandate for this and a mandate for that. Well I have decided that Mr Key does know something about man dates—he has been on a number of them. He went on one with Ian Fletcher and that certainly got someone a job. He went on one with Skycity and that certainly got it a deal. He went on a man date with Warner Bros as well—that got it a deal. Steven Joyce caught the bromance bug. He went on a man date as well with Shell. That is the kind of man date that the National Party believes in not the mandate for the public of New Zealand.The one thing I want to focus on in this speech in terms of the content of the Budget for Judith Collins’ benefit is around employment. I want to make very clear that if anyone in New Zealand believes that this Government knows what it is doing with the economy knows what it wants to do for New Zealand and has a plan they should take a look at the unemployment statistics and they will think again—146000 New Zealanders are unemployed.Jami-Lee Ross: It’s coming down. It’s coming down.GRANT ROBERTSON: Jami-Lee Ross says that it is coming down. Well I hate to let the member know that that is 41000 more New Zealanders unemployed than when National took office. Also since National took office the number of 15 to 24-year-olds unemployed has gone up by 12100. The number of 15 to 24-year-olds who are not in employment are not in education and are not in training is up by 12000 to 79000 people—79000 young New Zealanders not in employment not in education and not in training. That is the failure of this Government: the failure to invest in our young people so that they have the opportunity to achieve their potential. That is the failure of this Government.What the Government said in the 2011 election campaign—and everybody on this side of the House remembers it because National Party MPs repeated it on the election stand—was that there would be 170000 extra jobs created by this Government by 2015. Well what we discover in Budget 2013 is that National will fall 61000 jobs short of that target.Dr Megan Woods: How many?GRANT ROBERTSON: Sixty-one thousand—the population of Nelson. That is how far National will fall short of its promise made in the 2011 election campaign to create extra jobs. The Government does not have the policies or the commitment to focus on creating jobs. In fact it has a policy agenda that goes in the other direction from creating jobs by creating a two-speed economy where the regions of New Zealand do not have the support and the resources to create jobs and by putting in place employment relations legislation that will drive down wages and that will deny people their rights at work. The Government has policies that are against work and that are against jobs not in favour of growing them. That is why the Government will fall 61000 jobs short. In the last year only 8000 extra jobs were created in New Zealand. That is why the Government is falling short because the National Party does not have the policies that are required to make this happen. But what is worse is that in this Budget National has recommitted again to a target of 170000 new jobs in the next 4 years. So having completely failed to achieve the promised target in 2011 it has decided to make up the same target again. It is a recidivist offender the National Party. It keeps making up these promises and it keeps failing to deliver.People in New Zealand who heard John Key’s statement that there would be a brighter future have been let down. They have been disappointed. The vested interests of New Zealand see a brighter future. The Skycity deal-makers see a brighter future. But the ordinary hard-working wage-earning New Zealanders do not have that brighter future. That has been put aside put on the scrap heap of slogans along with being ambitious for New Zealand. That is what this Government said it would be: ambitious for New Zealand. At best at the moment the Government can say that it is ambiguous for New Zealand. That is the best that it can say at the moment because this Government has failed to put up a plan that will actually drive the kind of job creation that is needed in this country.The Labour Party has been absolutely clear about what we believe should drive job creation. We want to pull the big levers in our economy. We want to change monetary policy so that it actually allows people to create jobs with a stable and lower exchange rate. We want to make sure that we have fair procurement rules so that New Zealand Kiwi companies actually get a fair go at bidding for Government contracts. We want to make sure that we have apprentices as part of those contracts so we do not have people on the scrap heap. If Phil Goff’s promise to New Zealanders had been allowed to be fulfilled we would have had people training so that they could do the Christchurch work. Instead that side of the House has decided that it is OK to import workers into New Zealand because it sat on its hands. We need to pull the smaller levers too. We need to get in there and assist 18 and 19-year-olds who are on the dole by making the dole payment a subsidy for an apprenticeship. There is a practical policy that this Government could have picked up and it has failed to do so. Today in industries like the building industry they are thousands of workers short because that Government sat on its hands.This National Government has no plan to grow jobs. Its own Budget tells the Government that it is falling woefully short of its target. This is a shabby Budget backed by a shabby Government with two support parties in John Banks and Peter Dunne. In terms of Mr Banks he should not be able to be in this House and in terms ofMr Dunne he should not be able to receive his allowances as a party. Today I hate to say is a day of great shame for our democracy in New Zealand. This Government has shown that its approach to supporting vested interests does not end outside this House; it happens in this Chamber as well.