English Bill: General Debate 
English Bill: General Debate 
[Volume:646;Page:15274] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 Dr Cullen always gets angry if someone disagrees with him over the way that taxpayers’ money should be spent. Actually what is so frustrating for him is that most New Zealanders now disagree with him over the way that taxpayers’ money should be spent because after 8 years of arrogance and lost opportunities they want to decide for themselves. There is nothing that does our cause better than to see Dr Cullen on TV talking about tax. 
The whole Labour Party must be wondering what is going wrong when it believes it has given out so much that it thinks is so good out of the generosity of its social democratic instincts and the public are so ungrateful. I will tell the Labour Party why that is. It is because the public believe it is their money. That is why. They do not feel obliged to be grateful to the pink centre-left for giving them back what they earned by their hard work and be expected to give some grateful vote for it. The public have now come to the conclusion after 8 years of getting bits and pieces from a Government that now thinks it is the only one that can decide that they want to make up their own minds about it. 
We should judge Dr Cullen on his record. Labour members want to talk about everything except what happened while Labour was in Government. We listened to the Minister of Housing today. One would think she was a member of the Opposition. One would think that Labour was not there when interest rates doubled when houses became much less affordable than they have ever been and when people who loyally voted for Labour now know they will never be able to buy a house. In fact over the next 12 months people will find out that they will have trouble renting a house. So Labour has cooked up all these proposals. The Minister like all of the Labour Party mistakes announcements for action. Labour has announced some housing policies but there has been no action. 
But let us look at Dr Cullen’s record on tax cuts. “National’s dilemma … is that to cut taxes when the current account deficit is already above 6 percent of gross domestic product is to commit economic sabotage.” Who said that? It was Dr Cullen in 1999. What is the current account deficit? It is 7.9 percent. Who is advocating tax cuts? It is Dr Michael Cullen. That is a direct contradiction of the position he used to have. Here he is again: “We are in the extraordinary situation of having large surpluses high interest rates and a large current account deficit. We are also told that the only way to avoid a recession is to boost consumer demand through tax cuts and that this is somehow evidence of responsible economic management.” That was Dr Cullen in Opposition criticising National. 
Let us look at Dr Cullen’s record. We now have the largest surpluses we have ever had; the highest interest rates almost that we have had in 15 years; and the largest current account deficit we have ever had. What did he say the other day? He said that he wants to cut taxes because that might boost consumer demand. When he was in Opposition he used to call that economic sabotage; now he calls it adjusting to the economic circumstances. That is his record. 
Here he is again: “Voters are not fools. Dangle promises of tax cuts in front of them in an election year and they will think you are trying to buy their vote.” Do members know what? I absolutely agree. Hard-working loyal Labour voters who know that Labour’s record is one of lost opportunity have now found that in election year Dr Cullen is going to dangle tax cuts and they are saying “We’ll take your tax cut but not you.” They do not believe that Labour is sincere. They do not believe for 1 minute that Dr Cullen has changed his mind. If he can find a way of describing these tax cuts as small then he will cancel them if he ever gets re-elected but there is very little chance of that. 
That is what he did last time. He announced his tax cuts then when he got back into Government he said “Oh they’re small so I’ll cancel them because I can spend the money on other things.” Why would he not do that again? Can anyone give us one reason why he would not do that again? We should look at his record and Labour’s record which is that tax cuts are bad and spending is good.