Hughes Gareth: Debate on Budget Policy StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHughes Gareth: Debate on Budget Policy Statement[Sitting date: 12 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16603. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GARETH HUGHES (Green):Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. It is quite interesting—I cannot remember the last time I followed both Jacinda Ardern and Jami-Lee Ross. It is great to see the three youngest members of Parliament I think all taking a call in this Budget Policy Statement debate because the budgetary and fiscal issues social issues and environmental issues facing our country are pressing enormous challenges.In this debate tonight I am reflecting on the differences—sure there are asset sales and deep-sea drilling—but also on what unites us. I believe that every member in this House and every party in this Parliament wants to see a richer New Zealand. They want to see those kids out of poverty. In a country that exports food that feeds 20 million people I am sure that we can all agree that kids should not be going to school hungry. We all grew up camping on the beach and swimming in rivers. We all love and I believe want to protect our environment. We also want to see Kiwis in jobs. We have all seen experiences of chronic joblessness. I believe there are a lot of things that unite us in this Parliament.It is a question however of the plan. Where is the plan to deliver those outcomes we can all agree on? I think what is clear when you read the Budget documents is that we are absolutely unsustainable. I do mean in an environmental sense—a sustainability sense—but also I mean in a fiscal sense. The debt outlook facing our country is huge. At the moment our current account deficit of 3.6 percent is the second-largest owing in the OECD just behind Turkey. It is absolutely unsustainable for us to carry this much international debt. The only recourse for a small country like ours is to keep selling off the assets keep selling off productive assets like farmland.It is time to take control back. This Budget paints a very dark picture in terms of debt the cost of living inflation and also the simplification of our economy—the reliance on only a few raw commodity exports. What we also know from the Budget documents is that this country is borrowing $1.1 billion a year—$1.1 billion a year—to pay for those tax cuts. As someone of above-average income in this country who has benefited from those tax cuts I have seriously got to question the wisdom when the country is paying for those tax cuts for the wealthy—they are paid for by everyone paid for by previous generations who have had their assets sold off. We are seeing debt spiral out of control. We are seeing an economy increasingly reliant. We are seeing our tradables sector fall behind the non-tradables sector. What we are seeing is the real income earners at a national level the exporters actually struggling versus the non-tradable sector. What we are seeing is the cost of living increase.For a country that is working its hardest—so many New Zealanders are working two jobs; they are working 60 hours a week—this is a country where the cost of living is amongst the highest and we work some of the longest hours for some of the lowest wages in the OECD. That is why our households are struggling in debt. When you look at the inflation announcement we are expecting tomorrow what we are seeing are rampant house price and energy price rises leading to inflation. We see housing prices are up 44 percent in the last 5 years. Electricity prices are up 20 percent in the last 5 years. An unknown story I think the public should be more aware of is that the drivers of that are leading to inflation which will bring a real cost to New Zealanders.So it is about choice because we all want to see Kiwis in work swimmable rivers and kids out of poverty—but it is about choice. Who is going to focus on that? Who is going to prioritise that? To be frank what I see from that side of the House is a Government that is focusing on the Choruses the Tīwai Points and the Anadarkos not on the real people who live in real streets in real Kiwi businesses—the small and medium enterprises doing it hard in the current environment.What we need is a fiscal balance with a capital gains tax broader capital markets and a broader mandate for the Reserve Bank. We need to strengthen Kiwibank. We need to embrace the opportunities in clean energy where we know there are four times more jobs. We need to support our thriving IT sector.Today we have seen a massive plank in the Government’s economic agenda fall out entirely. It was the Government pouring literally tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money down Anadarko’s deep-sea oil well. You know what? It looks like Anadarko did not find anything. And you know what? It was never going to be a credible economic strategy—hoping that someone finds something down in the depths of the ocean and that they do not leave too much of a mess.That plan to embrace the past has fallen over. It is time for New Zealand to embrace the future and put real people and real kids and their parents first; to be a country that looks to the future with confidence and entrepreneurialism and innovation and embraces new sectors like clean energy and IT. That is the richer New Zealand a cleaner smarter future for New Zealand and that is what we will be taking to the country this election. Kia ora.