Hodgson Pete: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
Hodgson Pete: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:626;Page:21294] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Transport) 
: 
 There are apparently 2 minutes left so I will not embark on the major part of my contribution to the debate until after the meal break. Instead I want to respond to some of the comments made by the member who has just resumed his seat. He has with this Government a point of agreement and some points of disagreement and I want to tease out his arguments a little. 
He had a point of agreement when he said—and he said it only the once—that enforcement alone will not improve road safety. He is right. We agree with that. We think enforcement alone will not improve road safety and we are not supporting an enforcement-alone approach. That is why the advertisements on television that the member referred to are running. They are being paid for courtesy of the safety administration programme run by this Government. That is why more money is going into road safety engineering this year than ever before. That is why roads that are being built or refurbished today are safer than ever before. That is why the median strip along Centennial Highway that the member referred to went in under this Government. We understand that engineering education and enforcement together matter. What will not work is education and engineering. What will not work is two out of three. That just will not work. Two out of three will not do. Education engineering and enforcement together are mutually reinforcing. 
It is not OK for the member who has just resumed his seat to suggest—and here is the point of difference—that this Government has enforcement in order to raise revenue. We do not. We would like nothing more than to collect nothing from speeding tickets. We would like nothing more than for nobody to receive a speeding ticket. It would suit us down to the ground. We would lose money. Actually if we take a venal approach to it and talk about money only instead of lives we can say that we would probably make money on that because we would avoid the costs of hospitalisation of people whose cars have been crunched and the accident compensation costs that are inflicted upon society. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: I have one question to ask the National Party. Where is its policy? Where is its policy on tax cuts? A policy on anything would do but I ask where the policy on tax cuts is. The reason I am asking is that the National Party does not have a very good record of following through. It did not follow through on Orewa I. It did not follow through on imprisoning a whole lot of people in jails that had not been built and that it did not have the money to build. It did not follow through very well on what it said about taking babies from solo mums and putting them out for adoption. It has caused itself quite a headache by having lots of little dabs about where it might go if it were ever to become the Government but never following through. 
Now the weeks since the Budget are beginning to count. There has been no follow-through. Colin Espiner said in the weekend  
Press 
: “If National doesn’t release its tax-cuts policy—not just drop hints—in the next fortnight it will drop back behind Labour in the polls.” It will do that anyway but the question is where is the tax policy. The reason it matters is that the ACT party has in the interim managed to put out its tax policy. All the details of that policy are out in the public arena. It makes no sense of course but it is out there. United Future has put out its tax cuts policy. The Greens have even decided they have things to say on taxation. But the National Party has simply said that it would give mighty big tax cuts. It is not saying how big or for how many—unless we add them all up. Let us add up all the hints that have been dropped about 39 percent becoming 36 percent and 33 percent becoming 30 percent and about making sure that an extra $600 million—coming out of taxpayers’ pockets—is spent on roads as well as about getting rid of this tax that tax or the other tax because National does not like it. When we add it all up we get a very big number. 
It has not yet been confirmed in a tax policy statement from the National Party. Why not? Because the National Party is starting to work out that it is not a minor party that it cannot drop big tax numbers without coming under the immediate scrutiny of the finance sector of the Labour Government and of anyone who knows anything about how to drive an abacus. The National Party knows that it has to come up with a tax policy that is saleable and it has gone and oversold. It cannot possibly put together a tax policy that would give the cuts of $30 $40 or $50 a week that New Zealand families would say is good enough—because that is the sort of money just for starters they are getting from the first part of Labour’s Working for Families package. So if National intends to give $30 $40 or $50 a week to New Zealand families it needs to tell us where the money would come from. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: The surplus. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: The associate professor of something or other from an earlier time has interjected that he thinks the word is “surplus”. I have news for that gentleman: there is none. The operating balance excluding revaluations and accounting changes is a surplus that is spent on capital investment the Cullen fund retiring debt building hospitals and building schools. There is no surplus. So we have promises for rich New Zealanders and for middle-income New Zealanders. We have promises of cuts in the carbon tax in company tax and in income tax and we have promises of no cuts in services. That does not add up. 
The National Party has got itself into the beginning of a hole. It said that it would give New Zealanders tax cuts of consequence it said that every New Zealander would be better off as a result of tax cuts from National and it has worked out that it cannot afford the money. The only way it can afford tax cuts is either to borrow in order to fund them—and guess what the word “Muldoonist” was used against Don Brash the leader of the National Party in the  
New Zealand Herald 
 today by a widely respected commentator—or to make swingeing cuts to health education social welfare justice and law and order. Those are the two options: borrow and hope or swingeing cuts to social and security services. 
The National Party is in a hole. It had a great time a few weeks ago. It is in a hole now and it will have to announce its policy soon because otherwise the hole will get bigger. That is the problem faced by the National Party. The hole will not get any smaller; it will get bigger and bigger. As the expectations of tax cuts rise in the country as the smart alec two-word signs go up around the country showing the difference between Labour and National and as National thereby comes under the spotlight questions will be asked more and more often by commentators and then by the public: “Where are the tax cuts? Where is the difference? What will this election be about?”. If it is not about tax cuts then the public already knows how it will vote; people will vote for the Government they know and love so well. But if National can pull 5 billion bucks worth of magic from somewhere and call it tax cuts then people in New Zealand might want to give it a bit of a chance. 
So National has an opportunity to go to the people and say: “This is what we mean by tax cuts.” Then the debate can begin. Then we can decide whether this nation wants the Government to become an even smaller part of the country—whether the Government becomes even leaner and meaner and cuts spending on health and education much harder than National ever did in the 1990s. [ 
Interruption 
] The member might remember that when the big benefit cuts took place at the beginning of the 1990s the amount of money taken out of the economy was $1.3 billion—only a quarter of what is needed. We would need four times the money raised by the “mother of all Budgets” in order to get anywhere near the amount of money National has already promised to give New Zealanders. So National has to decide whether it will front up. Will it be tax cuts by Christmas? Will it be tax cuts by 1 April? Will it be tax cuts in the first 3 years? Or will it be tax cuts only when we can afford them which is on the never-never?