Bennett David; Dean JacquiHon DAVID BENNETT (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. I just want to first start with a little introduction for members of the public as to what happened to the Labour Party in the last three weeks. Now they would have seen the polls and they would have known that they were in big trouble and the squeezed middle cost of living argument was starting to take residence in the New Zealand public. Now they would had to have rewritten their Budget in the last two weeks to actually try to achieve something to deal with that issue.That's what happened and there's only two members of the Government that would actually have known what happened. The rest of them are all backbenchers. They wouldn't even know it. They would have only worked at caucus on Tuesday when the leader came in or the Minister of Finance would have come in and told them I've got this great plan to give this money to all these people." They had no idea—they had no idea. Mr Parker and Mr Woods here they're both sitting so silent and looking down because they knew—they knew. They were in Cabinet. They would have had the discussions. All these guys here most of them aren't coming back. They're going. And they tried to save them and that's what happened. And the Labour Party members would have gone to caucus on Tuesday and they would have had this big presentation saying "Look at what we're going to do for the squeezed middle." Don't be so dumb. Understand what is happening. Your party has destroyed the New Zealand economy and today you have controlled that destruction even further. Don't take it from those ones in the front. They'll still be here. You won't be and that's what you need to understand. Now that's the Labour Party. That's the dynamics of what has been going on in their party. But let's actually look up what it is: a payment to every New Zealander that's under $70000 of income. Well look at the Australians when there was a recession a few years ago for the global financial crisis (GFC). They gave $1000 to everybody to spend. The Labour Party is not that generous are they? They didn't give a thousand bucks like the Labor Party did. Guess what happened in Australia when the Liberal Party gave that thousand dollars! Everyone just spent it on TVs. It didn't actually help the Australian economy at all. And if anyone looks back at what the approaches were to the GFC spending money by giving a payment to a community was seen as the least effective approach. The most effective approach is what the National Party did here which was actually invest in infrastructure invest in skills and invest in the ability for New Zealand to grow its income going forward. That's what this Budget should have done. This Budget should have been a long-term Budget for New Zealand; it shouldn't have been a short-term Budget to try and pay people off. That's all it is and it's not going to save the Labour Party; in effect it will do the opposite for the Labour Party: it will create more inflation in the next few months.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! I'm going to ask the member to come back to the bill.Hon DAVID BENNETT: Well the major part of the bill and the Government's promise for this Budget is a payment to individuals and that payment will actually create inflation. There's no other way to look at it. It's just going to be spent in consumer spending; it's not actually for the infrastructure of New Zealand to grow a stronger economy. That's where Labour's missed the trick. If they actually wanted to use that money effectively they should have used it so that we could grow our way and pay our way so we can have the services we want. The services and health and education aren't going to come from giving everyone a slight payment. That's not going to do it. The way that the services come is if you increase the tax take by New Zealand having a bigger economy. That's how you get more services in the country. The Labour Party doesn't understand the fundamentals of economics. But there is another thing that those two senior Ministers that are here will actually have known about that the backbench don't know about yet and that's that New Zealand's probably going to be in recession in a few months' time. Look at all the other major economies in the world going through a high inflationary environment. All the projections are of recession. And guess why those two senior Ministers didn't give you that money today! They didn't give us that money in April near an election; they gave that money in August leading on because they knew that was when the recession was about to start. I bet you they've got that advice from Treasury and from the Reserve Bank that there is the potential of a recession in New Zealand and they are trying to stave off that recession because you cannot win an election going into a recession and the Labour Party will do all it can to try and win the election even if it means misusing New Zealanders' money. And that's what they did today. They misused the investments that New Zealanders give to this House. People don't pay this tax to this House for fun; they work damn hard out there to make the money so this House can make the best decisions for all Kiwis. That's why we have a Parliament. That's how the economy works. It is not to be used by a political party for posturing and trying to win votes. In effect they are actually going to lose votes because all they're doing is creating more inflation fastening that chance of a recession coming and therefore ordinary Kiwis will be losing a lot more than the money that they are going to get out of this. We've heard talk today about what you could actually buy for that kind of money and it's little or nothing. Most people know how expensive it is now to get their groceries each week. Most people know how expensive fuel is. We can't blame overseas all the time. Look at the structural imbalance in the New Zealand economy. What could have been a better way to spend that money? You know we had Jamie Strange stand up before from Hamilton. Well the Labour Party cancelled the road from Cambridge to Piarere. That was $600 million. They actually cancelled—they didn't go ahead with Southern Links which would actually be very important for Hamilton which would be about the same kind of $600 million. There's two projects there that would have actually been better investments for New Zealand than giving everybody 350 bucks to go buy a TV that's imported from China—because that's what's going to happen. I bet you there'll be sales at The Warehouse for TVs just at the right price. Every student bar will be setting up nice little packages for students to take advantage of. There'll be all these little consumer treats that are out there which the business community will take advantage of the Labour money. The Labour Party have fallen into another trap and the reason they are in that position is because first of all they don't understand how to make money; they don't understand how to run an economy. Secondly they think you can buy votes. They think the public is stupid. They think they can actually be smarter than the public. That's the urban academic elite that is the Labour Party. Thirdly they actually were under pressure. They had no understanding of what to do. They were panicking. But the learned members of the Labour Party's senior bench were panicking in the last couple of weeks. And the result of that panic—they would have gone to their officials "What can we do? What can we do? What are the options? What can we do in two weeks that we don't have to do any work on?" And the option would have been: "Well you can give everyone some money." That's it. The Labour Party ticked it off and their poor little backbench sitting there now stunned as mullets looking at each other going "What's happened to us? We shouldn't have listened to these two in the front row. We should have actually stood up for our people." Well there's a chance to the backbench of the Labour Party. There's a year to go to the election. Stand up for the people in New Zealand; don't be led by your front bench that are only interested in their own salaries and positions. Actually make sure if you get to spend New Zealanders' money you spend it on things that are good for New Zealand and don't make all these rash promises. In the economic development area we've had Stuart Nash come up with a beautiful promise of $100 million for a banking finance system for small business. It won't even get off the ground. It's got no chance. That guy could not sort that out in the next year. They have got no idea. They had this thing for regional and strategic investments that it was to take over from the Provincial Growth Fund. They gave $58 million for it last Budget. They've only spent $6 million of that $58 million in the whole year.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member's time has expired."