Tolley Anne: Budget Debate 
Text is subject to correction 
Tolley Anne: Budget Debate 
[Sitting date: 31 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2770. Text is subject to correction.] 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Police) 
: 
 I stand in this House proud to be a member of the John Key - led Government and proud to acknowledge our coalition partners the Hon Peter Dunne the Hon Pita Sharples and the Hon Tariana Turia. I thank them for their help. I want to congratulate our Minister of Finance Bill English on the 2012 Budget. It is a very sensible Budget—a very sensible Budget that addresses the four key focus areas that this John Key - led Government has identified. Firstly there is responsibly managing the Government’s finances. Why is that important for a Government? Well at this time when we are still working our way through a global recession and when we are dealing with our second-largest city having been largely destroyed by a series of earthquakes there is no more important time for a Government to be focused on managing responsibly the finances of this country. We have done that by protecting the most vulnerable in our communities from some of the sharper edges of that recession. We have not seen in this country the austerity measures that other countries around the world have had to implement and we have maintained our front-line services. We have seen in fact a growth in front-line services of people like police doctors nurses and teachers right across the years of this recession.  
The second area is of course building a competitive and productive economy. We have seen an extra 60000 new jobs created in our community over the last 2 years. The Opposition does not seem to understand that the Government does not create jobs. There were jobs that the Opposition created when it was in power and when times got tough they were unsustainable. We need businesses to grow and we need New Zealand employers to decide to take on more staff and grow their businesses. We are creating an environment and a framework that will enable them to do that.  
The third area is to deliver better public services—better services for New Zealanders that they pay their taxes to get. We have heard from the Minister of Health of one area where we have seen a dramatic turn-round. Whereas 4 years ago people were waiting for treatment—in fact they had to fly women to Australia to get cancer treatment—now they are receiving that cancer treatment within 4 weeks. And this Government of course fully funded Herceptin for women—younger women largely and family women—who were having to pay enormous amounts of money under that previous Government.  
The fourth area of course is rebuilding the Greater Christchurch area. I have a quote on my wall. It has been there for some years. It is attributed to a great Roman politician. I know that some of my colleagues have been quoting literary examples. Well actually I want to go back further because Cicero that great Roman politician author and orator who lived from 106 BC is supposed to have said: “The Budget should be balanced the Treasury should be refilled public debt should be reduced the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work instead of living on public assistance.” That was written over 2000 years ago and not much has changed. I put it to you that not much has changed.  
Why is it important that the New Zealand Government balances its books? Why is it important that we get into surplus in 2014? It is so that New Zealanders have options. Of course—why else would we want to do that? We do not want to be beholden to overseas lenders; we want to be able to manage our own country and create good options for our New Zealanders. Labour New Zealand First and the Greens simply do not get it. I quote Cicero again: “To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child.” That is a pretty accurate description I have to say.  
You cannot keep spending money. You cannot keep spending money. If you have not earned it you cannot spend it. I beg your pardon Mr Speaker; I am sure that you would not spend money before you have earned it. But Labour New Zealand First and the Greens seem to have this cost-plus mentality. They keep wanting to do all the things they have been doing even when those things are ineffective and continue to spend more. We have seen that Opposition oppose every single change that this Government has tried to make. Every time we have said: “This programme isn’t working. We’re going to stop doing this programme because we’re getting no results from it.” we have seen the Opposition cry out and put up some poor innocent person or child as an individual case to show that that programme should not be cut.  
We have seen our Public Service look deep into the way it operates. We have managed to produce some fantastic Public Service results without extra money by looking at our back room by looking at where there is duplication and by looking at where programmes are ineffective—in other words they are not getting results—and stopping them. Clearly the Opposition cannot comprehend that method of working and that says that it does not deserve to have hold of the Treasury benches. That says that the Opposition cannot be trusted with other people’s money. It is not Government money; it is taxpayers’ money and taxpayers deserve to have a Government that recognises and values the fact that it is someone else’s money that it is spending. The members sitting on the Opposition benches over there do not understand that and that is why they will be there for quite some time to come.  
I want to talk about some examples—in particular where two departments have looked deep within their resources and managed to produce extra services with the same and similar amounts of money. The first example is the New Zealand Police. The police are looking at how they are operating and how they manage their resources. They are looking to get good intelligence. They are looking to work in a 21st century environment. They can do things smarter and better and they do not need to keep having extra dollars put into the department. That is a simple way—every household around New Zealand is looking at that. But our police are I think doing a fantastic job.  
I want to come to the Department of Corrections because we made some announcements in Budget 2012 about the department. It also looked deep within its organisation and found savings to offer up to change the way we deal with the people who either are in prison or are serving their sentences out in the community. We are spending $65 million over the next 4 years on a radical new way of addressing crime in our communities and that is saying that if 27 percent of people who leave prison come back within 12 months then we have to keep our communities safe by reducing that by a quarter. That is an enormously difficult target to have set but the Department of Corrections has set that target because it believes that by addressing alcohol and drug addition 33000 offenders will get access to drug and alcohol addiction services—33000. The previous Labour Government struggled to provide those services to 500. For the first time offenders who are on remand will get access to those services to education services and to trade skills in the workplace. For the first time ever those remand prisoners will have access to that. The Labour Government was in power for 9 years and was never able to provide that. It did not try and it had all the money to spend. Now at a time when there is not a lot of money to spend the Department of Corrections has said it can do things better. It has said it can find the money by digging deep by looking at where the duplication is by stopping things that do not work and by investing money in things we know will work.  
The Drivers of Crime work that this Government has done tells us that drug and alcohol addiction is one of the main features of reoffending. Another feature is poor education. The Labour Government was in power for 9 years and it watched while one in five students left school not able to read or write. Many of them are in our prisons. Many of them are in our prisons. This Government knows well how to look deep and make the changes we need to make in order to balance our Budget.