Young Jonathan: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeYoung Jonathan: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 26 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3982. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): Mr Cunliffe the previous speaker asked a couple of questions: where are those high-tech manufacturing firms and where is that investment that is going to power our economy into the future? I am very happy to speak about a company from Taranaki which right now is developing a perpetual motion energy generator from wave energy transferring it into electricity.Hon David Parker: There goes a first! The National Party believes in perpetual motion—get the press release out!JONATHAN YOUNG: Look Labour members mock. They mock. They mock. When they ask those questions and they are answered they are not prepared to hear about the innovation and the technical excellence that is being generated in the regions. This company with the assistance of Callaghan Innovation right now is testing its invention off the waters of Hawaii with great interest coming from international investors all around the world. So I am quite surprised that Mr Cunliffe who spouts off does not know any of this because he seems to know everything else.This is a very disappointing Budget for the Labour Party. It is a very exciting Budget for thousands of New Zealanders. We saw from the Leader of the Opposition’s reply and even from the replies that have come into this House today what a real lack of substance there surely is in the attack on this Budget. You would think that the No. 1 attack against this Government which we have seen for 6 long years is that this Budget is one that looks after the big end of town—as I have heard Mr Cunliffe talk about so many times. But this Budget is exactly the opposite. Without wanting to be cliché-ish Mr Little and Mr Robertson were left gasping for air and grasping at straws when they sought to attack this Budget. The strongest line of attack that has come has been that we have introduced a new tax in the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill.Kelvin Davis: A broken promise.JONATHAN YOUNG: It is not. As we know it is a user charge that principally protects our primary industries from the incursions of biological threat from offshore travellers. Is it not interesting that of those offshore travellers who come and go from our country half of them are not New Zealand citizens? So what we are doing is we are transferring the cost of the threat they bring to those industries. Is that not smart economics? And all the time we are protecting our primary industries which are so important. Those kiwifruit farmers up in the Bay of Plenty will applaud this legislation which will see increased resources for border protection. This is a responsible piece of legislation that enhances our border security. It shifts the burden of costs away from the non-travelling public—those who do not often go offshore and overseas—to those who just by the mere fact of travel create the potential threat.I come from regional New Zealand. I come from Taranaki a region that is hard-working that is skilled and that is successful. We would say that in past years our region has been very productive for this country. Right now due to international commodity prices we are seeing a decrease in production and profitability coming out of the Taranaki region but I am very convinced that in due course and in time that will bounce back and once again we will see the Taranaki region producing ahead of every other region in this nation.When I look back on the past 6 years that I have been in this House the Taranaki region has received strong support from this Government. We have a new hospital we have a new police station and we have roading projects that had been unattended and unsupported now having investment put into them. When I think about the investment into our transport system and into our roading system which creates greater safety and greater economic benefit for our region I think: “Why haven’t we done this before? Why in those long 8 years of surplus did that party over there which had the purse strings of office not invest? Why didn’t they spend? Why didn’t they spend that money?”.You know the first time that the Waiwhakaiho Bridge and the Northgate route was raised in a public forum was in 1968. All these years you were crowing about the fantastic surplus but you did very little with it. What we have done in the hardest of times what we have done in this Government during the time when Christchurch has demanded such support is we have continued to invest in the regions to enable the regions to become more and more productive. That is because not only do we have stronger financial management happening on this side of the House but we have a commitment to our regions as we have experienced in Taranaki.What this Budget has done is commit $790 million over 4 years to the families in this country who struggle the most. This is what took the Opposition parties by surprise. You would say that is the response of a party that cares for New Zealanders and Opposition members have never given us that credit. John Key the Prime Minister of this nation continues to surprise people. He has reached back into his past as a young boy who was raised just by his mum. As he described this Budget it is a compassionate but conservative Budget. It is conservative in that we still believe that the way out of poverty is work and we will put incentives in place to lead people and incentivise them to work but at the same time we care. We want to help those people who often for no reason or fault of their own find themselves in places of deprivation. Just this last weekend when I met with many of my colleagues the Hon Anne Tolley spoke about this at a conference. The resonance of agreement in that conference was outstanding. People felt that this Budget was going to make a real difference for New Zealanders. This is the very heart of our spending in Budget 2015.I often hear comments from civic leaders and sometimes from commerce leaders saying that in Taranaki we actually want more and that out of all the royalties that this region gives to this country we want some more of that back. Funnily enough this became a little bit of an issue in the election campaign of 2014. I think that at a time like this when at the very best we have wafer thin margins between surplus and deficit the bit extra that some of the people in my region want is a significant bit that those experiencing deprivation will not get. I found myself in September 2014 in election 2014 having to defend an egalitarian New Zealand against the call of the leader of the Labour Party who wanted Taranaki to get more and other regions to get less. I could not understand it. I could not understand the flip-flop.What people in New Zealand are starting to wake up to is that—Opposition members across the way there have always said that the Government is looking after the big end of town—this Government is looking after all New Zealanders. We understand that in this country success is something that should be universal. We will go and make the investment into people’s lives to enable them to start on the ladder of education and opportunity.I have to ask—and I am going back to some figures from a couple of years ago—when this previous Government across the way had those 8 years of surplus but it claims nine what did it do with the surplus for what I would say are the most deprived communities in our country? I am talking about the families who have somebody in prison. There are 24000 kids who have a father or mother in prison. Today all prisons have education screening with individual learning plans designed for them. The number of prisoners gaining qualifications has increased under this Government by 830 percent. Almost 3000 prisoners will start literacy which is a 155 percent increase. There has been an almost 1500 percent increase in places on drug and alcohol treatment programmes since 2008—