Ryall Tony: Appropriation (2008/09 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
Ryall Tony: Appropriation (2008/09 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:649;Page:17797] 
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) 
: 
 This is supposed to be the appropriations debate where senior Government Ministers stand up and defend the record they bring to this Parliament. It is a little bit rich for Annette King to stand up in this House and talk about National’s plan to sell State assets. What about her sale of State assets when she was a senior Minister in the previous Labour Government? She is the Minister who sold Telecom the Shipping Corporation the Government Printing Office and Government Computing Services. She can leave the Chamber but the list of 17 State assets that Annette King wanted to sell— 
Hon Annette King 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. That member knows that it is out of order to mention a member’s presence or absence in the Chamber. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Well actually he mentioned neither. He said you could leave the Chamber. 
Hon Annette King 
: He did not say that. He said I was leaving the Chamber. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: No he did not. He said you could leave the Chamber. 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: Is the member disagreeing with the Speaker? Is she denying his ruling? 
Hon Annette King 
: Yes I heard what you said. 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: Oh OK. One thing she cannot deny is that she was a Minister in a Government that sold billions and billions of dollars of State assets. She does not want to participate in this debate any more. What about the $4 billion of Telecom sales? What about the Government Printing Office? What about the Shipping Corporation of New Zealand? What else was there? When that Minister was last in Government she sold 17 other businesses and she was also the architect of the shameful Electoral Finance Act. 
This is the appropriations debate. It is all about the role of the Government in the New Zealand economy next year and I would like to spend my contribution focusing on the things that matter to New Zealanders. Whereas the Minister opposite could have taken the opportunity to talk about this Government’s plan of action for the next year which is in this document she instead decided to focus on things that are irrelevant to the importance of living in New Zealand today. There was not a word from the Minister about the Government’s plan to deal with the economic pressures that ordinary New Zealand families are facing. 
I would like to share with members a quote from a maiden speech that I think is quite apposite for this debate. “For most people in my electorate the past few years have brought falling living standards. Although gross incomes may have kept up more or less with inflation real wages have not. Taxation slices heavily into average and below-average income today. Then out of that reduced net income our people must pay even more for their daily needs. Rents are up mortgage interest rates are up and so are food prices and Government charges across the board. Free quality public education is fast becoming one of those memories of the good old Labour days as is adequate public health care.” Does that sound familiar? That was Helen Clark in 1982. This leader spent her whole history campaigning to try to improve the lot of working people and there is not one difference from what she said in her maiden speech in 1982. 
Families are still under pressure in New Zealand today mortgage interest rates are higher and the cost of living has gone up. Does the Prime Minister even know the price of a loaf of bread or a pound of butter? Does she know the cost of a block of cheese? Does she know that ordinary families are struggling in this country today? Does she know the difficulty of trying to make ends meet with high mortgage interest rates? Does she know the difficulty that families are finding with high petrol prices? Those are things that she was concerned about in 1982 when she was a new member of this House but 26 long years later she is very much out of touch with the concerns of ordinary New Zealanders. She does not focus on the things that matter any more. For example instead of her Government dealing with the concerns of ordinary families about making ends meet what is she going to do? She has instructed Work and Income staff that they are now no longer able to refer to benefits by name. How will having benefits that dare not speak their name like the sickness benefit and the invalids benefit help anybody get off a benefit? Judith Collins asked an excellent question today. What happens if someone comes in and says that he or she wants to apply for a sickness benefit? Well Work and Income staff cannot actually say “Yes I can give you the forms for the sickness benefit.” All they can say is “I can give you the forms for income support.” Is this not ridiculous? How politically correct a nanny State is it? 
Sue Moroney 
: It’s Tony Ryall’s fairy tale. 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: Sue Moroney says that it is ridiculous. Well it is actually happening in Work and Income offices today. Staff are not allowed to mention the name of the benefits. 
What about the “Wassup!” badges? Instead of trying to encourage young Maori to do well and to admire the great leaders that they have the Ministry of Education gets them walking around with badges that say “Wassup!”. That is not important; that is not focusing on the things that matter. What about this other thing the Government is doing with the Public Health Bill? That is nanny State on steroids. Do members know what it is doing now? Ministry of Health officials came before the Health Committee and said that this bill will allow them to set up codes of practice for what parents should put in their children’s school lunch boxes. The Government will set up codes of practice for what parents can put in their children’s school lunch boxes. I think Mrs Turia was there when the officials said that they were the sorts of things that codes of practice could be set up for. Do members know what will happen? If the Ministry of Health does not think that parents are obeying a code of practice it can regulate to make parents obey their code of practice. 
This Government does not focus on the things that matter. One thing that matters is rewarding hard-working New Zealanders through lower personal taxes giving people the opportunity to get ahead by keeping more of their pay in their pocket every week. This Government said for 8½ years that New Zealanders could not have tax cuts because it would mean cuts to health and education. Well what has happened? Dr Cullen has all of a sudden said that there are tax cuts. We ask where the cuts to health and education are. The fact is that New Zealanders can have tax cuts—they can have more tax cuts—without diminishing our important public services. 
What about educational standards in New Zealand? Is the Government happy that so many young New Zealanders leave school without being able to read and write to their chronological age? One in five young New Zealanders are leaving primary school without being able to read and write to their chronological age. That is the thing that matters. There is nothing in this appropriation bill about national standards or about supporting families to help their kids get more skills in reading writing and maths. There is nothing in this that does anything about that—there is nothing about national standards. 
What about Helen Clark’s speech where she talked about inadequate public health care? Does anybody in this House really think that the New Zealand public health service is all that it could be? Does anyone think that the public health service is all that it could be? I am not one of these people who stands up and says that the health service is as good as it gets like that Minister of Health there and the Ministers in the failed Health Ministers’ graveyard do all the time. Our health service could be doing a lot better because we have fantastic medical staff and fantastic health staff who need to be released from the huge shackle of bureaucracy that has grown up around the health service so that they can care for patients. We heard in Parliament today that since the middle of 2001 over 2000 new district health board managers and administrators have been employed. We will find in the House tomorrow—when the Minister of Health comes down and admits that he was comparing numbers that cannot be compared to try to say that we have more doctors in New Zealand—that we actually have fewer new doctors in our hospitals than managers and administrators who have been employed over this time. 
These are the matters that really make a difference to ordinary New Zealanders: the chance to get ahead lower taxes making sure that kids have a good education and making sure that there is a good quality health service so that they do not have to go the emergency department and wait 3 days on end. Will people being treated on hospital trolleys in corridors actually become the standard of care in New Zealand hospitals? That is what is happening today. What about the code black at Dunedin Hospital? Staff were simply unable to deal with people coming in the door. There was a code purple in Auckland where staff were unable to deal with patients walking through the door. Is that the sort of public health service that New Zealanders want? What is in the appropriations bill about that? What has been in the speeches of members opposite about providing for New Zealanders the quality health services and the quality education service that they need and the chance for their families to get ahead through lower taxes? 
Helen Clark spoke about those in her maiden speech in 1982. She talked about the fact that ordinary people were struggling to make ends meet in the face of higher charges and higher prices. She cared about it then—what does she think 26 years later? Is she focusing on the things that matter? Is she focusing on what will help families get ahead? No. She is too busy focusing on getting re-elected solely for the purpose of having a fourth term—solely for the purpose of being able to say “Been there done that.” She is not focusing on what she could achieve for the people of New Zealand and that is the failure in this appropriation bill.