Hutchison Paul: Budget Debate 
Hutchison Paul: Budget Debate 
[Volume:647;Page:16502] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 We have just heard the last dying dirge from the departing member from West Coast - Tasman. I wish to concur with the National Party leader John Key in his reply to Michael Cullen’s Budget. He said: “this House has no confidence in the Government led by Helen Clark because New Zealanders have had to wait far too long to see any changes to personal tax thresholds or any lowering of personal tax rates and over nine Budgets this Government has presided over a decline in New Zealand’s standard of living compared to the rest of the world.” 
We have just heard Lindsay Tisch make the comment that 9 years ago an incoming Labour Government said it would lift New Zealand into the top half of the OECD. What happened? We have fallen two notches down to the lowest quartile of the OECD and that condemns New Zealand and New Zealanders to a much lower standard of living relative to other people who are in the OECD. It means that our ability to afford good health services good education services and good welfare services will be substandard. Over and above that New Zealanders actually work long hours but unfortunately under this Labour Government productivity has remained statically low. This is in stark contrast to the French. The French work fewer hours but they have far greater skills and use technology to a far greater extent and consequently they have far greater time to enjoy their very fine wine and cheese—something that at the end of the nine Budgets of Michael Cullen New Zealand workers are not able to do in a timely fashion. 
Why has New Zealand’s productivity been so low? What is the legacy of this Labour Government particularly in the field of education? After these 9 years we know that something like 50 percent of young Maori males leave school without having even achieved National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 1. A quarter of our 15 to 18-year-olds leave school without any qualification whatsoever. So this indeed is the legacy of the Labour Government and now what is it doing? It is emphasising the need for numeracy and literacy foundation learning in our polytechs and wananga. That must be an absolute indictment on the fact that Labour has neglected primary and secondary schools and there is a whole cohort coming through at the ages of 18 17 and 16 who cannot even read or write. 
That of course brings up Labour’s even more disastrous record in tertiary education. In the fine print way under the radar screen and totally ignored by Labour in all of its Budget spin-doctoring it failed to mention that in Budget 2008-09 spending by the Tertiary Education Commission is going up a whopping 44 percent. 
Lindsay Tisch 
: How much? 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: It is 44 percent! This is the same Tertiary Education Commission that presided over what the OECD has described as a “continuous series of reforms”. Those reforms are estimated to have cost in bureaucracy alone $419 million. At the end of those reforms things were so bad that Steve Maharey has set the commission on another set of tertiary reforms. We should remember that these were the reforms that encompassed the now infamous soft courses such as twilight golf singalongs massage for marsupials homeopathy for pets “pendulism” and many many other extraordinary things. 
These extraordinary occurrences under Maharey cost the New Zealand taxpayer approximately $1 billion in precious education money that could have been spent on quality education. Now the Labour Government wants to seal in the disastrous educational record by having those who presided over it—the Tertiary Education Commission—awarded another 44 percent of its budget so that the bureaucracy will swell in just the same way that it has in the last 5 years and it can preside over more such waste. 
At the Education and Science Committee meeting just a few weeks ago we heard how the turnover in 2006-07 was something like 25 percent and we heard that the consultants they had hired estimated a certain amount and overspent it by 300 percent. Now this Government is awarding this same organisation 44 percent more. Yesterday Helen Clark had the gall to comment that Labour is fuelling the Tertiary Education Commission by this extra 44 percent “in order to bring better quality tertiary education”. After 9 years she has had her chance. She has had her chance; it is a little bit too late. 
This is the same Helen Clark who in 2002 ignored the advice of the Knowledge Wave Trust. It was pretty clear that if her Government really wanted to drive economic growth it would focus on the appropriate macroeconomic settings which also included concentrating on research and development. What has it done? Steadily as a percentage of GDP this investment has gone down under Labour. In fact in 2005 the Speech from the Throne which was written by none other than Helen Clark said that science and innovation are critical to driving New Zealand’s economy. In the 2006 Budget what did the Government do? It spent $3 billion of the new money on areas that arguably will only cement in intergenerational welfare dependency and of the new money a mere $19.4 million went into science research and development. Three billion dollars went into intergenerational welfare dependency and a mere $19.4 million went into the area that Helen Clark said was critical for driving New Zealand’s economy. 
Here in the ninth year of this desperate dying Labour Government it suddenly spends $10 billion in every direction that it thinks can conjure up a vote. It has abandoned the top half of the OECD it has abandoned closing the gaps it ties up the New Zealand economy in massive knots of tangled unfettered bureaucracy and it freezes the chances of economic growth that is vital if we wish indeed to have good health good education and good welfare for New Zealanders in the future. But worst of all it not only has totally failed to do what it set out to do 9 long years ago but has abandoned the most vulnerable in New Zealand. 
I want to read out a press release from IHC. It states: “The Budget has ignored the 35000 most needy people in New Zealand. People with intellectual disabilities consistently have the lowest life expectancy lowest income poorest education outcomes and worst health of any other group in society. This budget offers nothing for people with intellectual disabilities. In fact it doesn’t even mention them.” 
Labour has blown the books. It has failed to improve our international economic position and now it does not even mention the most vulnerable in our society. It should be ashamed.