Mackey Moana: Budget Debate 
Mackey Moana: Budget Debate 
[Volume:626;Page:20913] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 We can tell there was nothing in this year’s Budget for Mr Brownlee. What a bitter bitter speech. I say to the people of New Zealand: “Let National and ACT anywhere near the Treasury benches and their first Act of Parliament will be to cut taxes for high-income earners in order to line their own pockets.” National has done this every time when in Government and this time will be no different despite the rhetoric. 
I am happy to stand and take a call in this debate on Budget 2005 and in doing so I would like to congratulate the Hon Dr Michael Cullen on what was a very important Budget for New Zealand. It was a Budget that finally attacked some of the long-term issues facing New Zealand that Governments of all stripes have put in the too-hard basket for far too long. I would particularly like to draw attention to the new funding in this year’s Budget which will continue to support regional New Zealand and rural New Zealanders. This Labour-led Government has a proud history of achievement for the regions in New Zealand. Anyone who lived in regional New Zealand under the National Government’s reign in the 1990s saw first-hand how the National Government sucked the lifeblood out of regional New Zealand. One could measure it week by week by the increasing number of empty shops appearing on the main streets of regional New Zealand or by the increasing number of students leaving high school and going to university knowing they were unlikely ever to return to their home towns or measure it by the increasing number of unemployed workers as business after business shut their doors. 
This National Government’s legacy has not been forgotten despite the leaps and bounds that rural New Zealand has made under this Labour-led Government. Many of my colleagues have highlighted the enormous benefit that will flow from increased spending on health education police and small business and in other areas. But I would like to outline a few of the announcements from Budget 2005 that have not been as high profile but will be of particular interest to the regions. Under Budget 2005 $36 million annually will ensure that thousands more rural New Zealanders will be eligible for assistance when accessing specialist health services thanks to the Government’s new travel and accommodation policy. This policy will significantly improve rural people’s access to specialist services. Currently about 30000 people nationwide get assistance under the current policy but this number will exceed 100000 under the new scheme. 
There are existing travel and accommodation subsidies but eligibility reimbursement and administration do vary between different regions. The new policy will standardise this service across the country and target those who have to travel long distances and those who regardless of their income incur high travel costs as a result of frequent specialist visits. It will also continue to support those who have a community services card. This is particularly important in regions like Opotiki where the previous National Government closed the hospital and promised such a scheme but true to form never delivered it. So what would the National Party do now? Would it scrap this assistance in order to pay for tax cuts for its mates? We do not know. 
The $137 million being spent to establish a new drinking water subsidy scheme will help to improve drinking water systems in small New Zealand communities and allow them access to the good-quality drinking water that people in urban areas take for granted. The Drinking Water Subsidy Fund will provide funding to councils and suppliers for technical advice and direct capital assistance which would otherwise have had to come from rates or water charges. This is great news for many small rural communities. 
The fund is one of a number of initiatives in this area that have been established by the Government to ease the burden of basic infrastructure demands on regional communities and ratepayers including $133 million appropriated in 2003 to help councils pay for sewerage systems and a $10 million fund appropriated last year to help communities to cope and position themselves for rising tourist numbers. These initiatives are helping rural New Zealand to cope with infrastructure pressures that come with the increased growth population base building developments and tourism which have underscored the recovery in the regions under this Labour-led Government. Would a National Government cut this funding to pay for tax cuts for their mates? We do not know. Maybe it would simply drive us into another recession in the regions and hope that as many people leave as they did last time National was in Government in order to reduce these pressures. 
These are just a few of the initiatives that will be of direct benefit to regional New Zealand and continue the fine tradition of Labour supporting rather than ignoring the regions. I welcome also the announcement in this year’s Budget of the extension of paid parental leave to self-employed women. The Labour-led Government introduced paid parental leave fronted by the Hon Laila Harré for the first time in New Zealand in 2002. Since that time 45000 people have accessed the scheme. The scheme was extended last year to cover more parents and the duration of the payment was increased from 12 weeks to 13 weeks and will be extended again to 14 weeks in December this year. The extension of the scheme to self-employed women will be of great benefit to many rural mothers and addresses a glaring gap in the scheme. I pay tribute to the Hon Ruth Dyson for the work she has done over the last few years to ensure we have a robust scheme for self-employed rural women and their families. 
 This poses an interesting dilemma for National Party members who oppose the scheme in principle but know that it is not a popular position to take so have been using the lack of provision for self-employed women as an excuse to oppose the bill thus far. What will they do now? Will they scrap this scheme to support new families to pay for tax cuts for their mates? I suspect not given that one of their MPs took leave on full pay from her job as an MP in order to have children. I have no issue with her doing that as I believe she has a lot to offer this House as a talented young woman and I am pleased she has managed to combine her family life and her career so effectively. It is the inconsistency that is hard to take. 
Increased funding to support trade negotiations has also been welcomed by local primary producers. Budget 2005 allocates a further $31.1 million over the next 4 years to conclude trade agreement negotiations and ensure we are better placed to access key markets for our goods and services. This goes hand in hand with a huge amount of new spending in biosecurity which has also been welcomed by this country’s primary producers. This Labour-led Government has boosted baseline funding of biosecurity every year since we have been in Government. Will the National Party cut this funding to pay for tax cuts for their mates? We do not know. Maybe National members think we do not need any biosecurity funding because in the event or threat of a biosecurity outbreak Dr Brash will just not tell anyone. I suspect that the National Party might have to drastically increase funding for trade negotiations once it starts being less than 100 percent honest with our trading partners. 
Regional New Zealand has suffered from three one-in-100-year national disasters in the last 18 months. Civil defence emergencies used to be a rarity but are now an annual occurrence. I welcome the extra $19 million in funding to help communities prepare for such events and thereby minimise their impact. I have no doubt that the National Party which has shown no commitment to civil defence in its time will scrap this money to fund tax cuts for its mates. The National Party has criticised the Government’s response to the recent floods in the Bay of Plenty. It has criticised the Government departments that are doing their best to ensure that evacuated families are looked after and has sniffed at the $250000 cash donation from the Government. National is a party that when in Government was asked to provide assistance to the people of Wairoa and Nuhaka in the mid-1990s after a series of weather-related natural disasters. In fact the district had endured so much damage to its roading system and had so much work to do that its roading subsidy that year which was normally 60 percent was at nearly 100 percent. 
The National Government under Prime Minister Bolger offered 30 Task Force Green workers and $15000. The money was not enough to cover the cost of the fence posts so that the Task Force Green workers actually had something to do. The then National Minister of Transport also refused to extend the roading subsidy past 1 July when it was due to drop back to 60 percent so that repairs on the roads could receive the higher subsidy in light of the huge amount of money that that small rural council had had to pay out over the year for roading repairs. Apparently it was tough luck that the national disaster happened to occur in the month of June right before the cut-off date. And how many National Ministers and members of Parliament went to Wairoa and Nuhaka in the wake of the natural disaster? Not one and when the issue was finally raised in the House they sent Katherine O’Regan—2 weeks after the event. 
The National Government with its “market will provide” blind ideology sucked the life out of regional New Zealand and given half the chance it will do it again. The transformation of regional New Zealand under this Government has been staggering. A guest speaker at a Gisborne Chamber of Commerce event commented on this change saying that during the 1990s a colleague of his had visited Gisborne and said that he felt physically unsafe. The guest speaker told us he had urged his friend to come back and be prepared to be amazed at the turn-round. Our unemployment rate in Gisborne is nearly at the national average which it has never been before the rate of Maori unemployment has plummeted and tourism is booming. We do not want to go back to the failed policies of the 1990s when it was the regions that paid the most harshly for the tax cuts for the rich mates of the National Party.