Parker David: Financial Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: Financial Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 04 March 2014. Volume:696;Page:16254. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Deputy Leader—Labour): I almost expected a bell for yourself. The financial review conducted in the Finance and Expenditure Committee of Treasury and the Minister of Finance highlighted one thing amongst many which was that 5 years into this Government it has not yet run a surplus. Five years into this Government it has not run a surplus. Indeed it is close to racking up an additional $60 billion worth of borrowing—Dr Russel Norman: $60 billion?Hon DAVID PARKER: —$60 billion since it came—Tim Macindoe: And who caused that?Hon DAVID PARKER: Who has caused that? Actually that was contributed to by the Government’s unaffordable tax cuts which were weighted in favour of the wealthiest in society who needed them less than others.Let us contrast that with what the Secretary to the Treasury acknowledged in Christchurch just 2 weeks ago. The Secretary to the Treasury is not known for his exuberance. He told a Christchurch audience that “Having a buffer in the Crown’s balance sheet helped New Zealand to manage the double blow of the Canterbury earthquakes and the global financial crisis.”—i.e. he was giving credit to the prior Government for creating a buffer on the Crown’s balance sheet.We hear Mr English saying that there was a decade of deficits that the Government inherited—that terrible circumstance inherited from the prior Government—which of course is not true. The prior Government ran nine Budget surpluses in a row—6 percent of GDP at one stage amongst the highest surpluses in the developed world at a time when politicians like National Party politicians who were in power in countries in Europe or in the United States or indeed the Labour Government in the United Kingdom were running smaller surpluses or deficits in a time of plenty. So when the global financial crisis hit they already had high Government debt. The legacy of the last Labour Government was low debt—very low debt nil net Government debt. GrossGovernment debt was down from 38 percent to 18 percent of GDP. That is why this Government has had room to move. That is exactly what the Secretary to the Treasury was saying last week in Christchurch.We have just had turned down an urgent debate—somewhat surprisingly given that the report I am about to refer to the latest bungle by the Minister of Finance was for a recent period rather than the period under financial review. But we have learnt just in the last week that there was a billion-dollar mistake by Treasury. It miscalculated income inequality figures in New Zealand by $1.2 billion by in the main double-counting the accommodation supplement that is received by low-income families. Treasury also made some mistakes around Working for Families tax credits. The effect of that is relevant to the Bryan Perry report into income inequality which is the statistic that the National Government always reverts to because it does not want to talk about asset inequality it does not want to talk about decreasing homeownership rates both of which are measures of inequality growing and it does not want to acknowledge that the only time there has been a substantial decrease in annual income inequality a narrow measure though it is was under the last Labour Government through Working for Families. The only statistic the Government was willing to talk about was the Bryan Perry report on income inequality.We now know that the Government knew that that figure was wrong. We know that the Government has known since December. The Minister of Finance confirmed today in the House that he has known since 10 December and that the Prime Minister knew on or about that date and so did the Minister for Social Development. Yet they were all during the earlier part of this year when we were having debates in this House about income inequality using the Bryan Perry report that they knew was flawed. They knew it was flawed not by a small amount but by $1.2 billion of additional income that was attributed to low and middle income households which they did not in fact receive. That report understated income inequality.The Government does not talk about the other measures of inequality that show it is rising quickly. The census showed a between-census increase in the gap between household incomes in South Auckland—