Collins Judith: Budget Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Collins Judith: Budget Debate 
[Sitting date: 16 June 2004. Volume:618;Page:13687. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 This Budget is supposed to be called Working for Families. Well one could not find a bigger joke. What a sad sad indictment on Working for Families because the only people working for families in this Budget is someone else’s family working for someone else’s family. That is what this is all about. As the National Party’s spokesperson on families I thought maybe there would be something here for families but I have to say it was a very disappointing Budget. It is a Budget that did not understand that one of the things that families do when mums and dads are together with their kids is to teach the kids about working. Parents teach their kids about responsibility and about not taking handouts from the Government and taxpayers unless they absolutely have to. They teach their kids that they have to go to school get qualifications and try to take the pay rise with the responsibility that goes with it. They do not say to their children: “Don’t take a pay rise because you might have to do a bit more and you will lose a bit of the benefit.” 
But that is what this Budget is all about. It is a Budget that says to someone who is earning $60000—a one-income two-parent family with two children—“Actually you’re a bit of a mug really to be working harder. You’re a bit of a mug to be getting extra qualifications because if you got just $38000 a year at the end of the day you would lose only $2376.” That is exactly what this Budget states. What happened when the National Party deputy spokesperson on finance pointed this out to the Hon Steve Maharey? What did he say? 
John Key 
: So what! 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: He said “So what!”. And what did Helen Clark say about this when it was pointed out to her? She said— 
John Key 
: They’ll act irrationally. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: “They’ll act irrationally.” Well they certainly will. What they will do is be like everyone else. They will sit around and say that they are obviously mugs to work the extra hours get the extra qualifications and pay 90c in the dollar in marginal tax rates. Or there is the extreme example—actually not that extreme—of someone who also happens to be paying off a student loan as a lot of people on $60000 a year would be. Those people pay 99.2c in the dollar at their highest marginal tax rate. Why even bother? Those people can hang out for the next National Government next year or they can get rid of this Government even sooner. All they need to do is take out United Future. Those members should sort it out too and just leave. Come over to the other side I say to Larry Baldock and stop hanging out with those guys. If one lies down with dogs one gets up with fleas. 
One thing I was worried about was the fact that early childhood education is one of the biggest expenses for young families. It is incredibly important that young children in our country get early childhood education. When the Government announced that it would provide all this extra money for early childhood education and that every child aged 3 or 4 years old would have free education I thought that was fantastic except when I looked at the fine print and realised that it applied only to children at the community-owned centres—that is the kindergartens the kohanga reo and those sorts of centres. Those centres are the only ones the policy applies to. The  
New Zealand Herald  
did not even pick that up. It got it wrong and later had to make a correction. In my electorate there are areas where people cannot get kindergartens even started because the Minister has told them that their decile rating is too high. Those people are being told to pay extra taxes to pay for other children to go to pre-school but their children cannot afford to go. They cannot afford to go because their parents are being taxed to death by this Government which does not care one ounce for families. All the Government does is to spend other people’s money to try to make it feel a bit better about it. It is an absolute disgrace. 
Sixty percent of the children in early childhood education are in private centres. I can tell the Government that the cost of that to their parents is huge. Often it is between about $8000 and $10000 per year. That is what parents are paying. So for a lot of mothers in particular that means they are working for about $2000 in the hand per year. Under this Government—under these new rules—they may as well not even bother as they will probably get less than that. It would cost them to work. That is what this Government is doing for them. Yet the Government says constantly that it is trying to get more women involved in the workforce—doing what? It is not helping women to get into the workforce. All it is doing is helping women to go out and work for nothing—effectively as slave labour—and to make a decision to not work or to not look after their children. That is what this Government is all about. 
These guys just do not care. Government members do not care about the ordinary working families that currently pay their wages. What is even worse is that the Government is turning a whole lot of good New Zealanders into people who have to take a handout. These are people who have survived and have supported themselves. [ 
Interruption 
] Clayton Cosgrove’s constituents are being picked on because they want to be able to support their own families. People in this country do not want to have to take handouts. This Budget is all about turning good New Zealanders—people who are proud and independent—into beneficiaries and unfortunately United Future is supporting the Government in this. 
I think it is a disgrace that the only parties that voted against this Budget were National and ACT. All the other parties in this Parliament rolled over and said: “Tickle my tummy and make all these people beneficiaries.” 
Jim Peters 
: We haven’t done it yet. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Well those parties have said they will support it. That is what they did. Let us see where those parties go in the end. The only parties that have been staunch against this nonsense are National and ACT and I say good on them. This Government has stood around and turned some more people into beneficiaries. This has to have been the biggest beige Budget ever. What a disappointment—a beige Budget. When I look at a Budget I like to wonder what sort of colour to give it. This is a beige Budget and it is so boring. After the first flurry of newspaper reporters all writing the wrong things as they did on that first day after the Budget announcement—all obviously having read Steve Maharey’s press releases and having got them wrong—they stopped writing about the Budget. The reason is that the polls told us that the people of New Zealand thought this was a giant yawn of a Budget—a beige Budget. 
The best thing this Budget does is to give people an extra takeaway meal per week. That is all it does for families. That is all it says to New Zealand. It says to New Zealanders that all the Government needs to do is to give them an extra $20 per week in the next 2 years—and I ask Mr Key whether that is right—if they are lucky and that that will help them out. Having taken a billion and a half dollars in extra taxes what will the Government do? It will give an extra 20 bucks in the hand to some people. For the people who are struggling away for the people who are taking two jobs and getting lumbered with secondary tax and for the people who are trying to cope on one income what does the Budget do for them? Nothing much. Four out of five families get nothing out of this Budget. It is the biggest waste of money one could ever come across. Does the Budget do anything to help business? Does it do one thing for business? The only businesses that may possibly benefit are The Warehouse and Restaurant Brands New Zealand. They are the only businesses that might benefit. 
The Budget was a cynical vote-buy. Why does the Government not just give people an extra voucher? That is about all this Budget is. Nowhere in this Budget is there anything to help people to get a bit of aspiration. Nowhere does it give people an incentive to get out there and work hard. Nowhere does it give people an incentive to get some extra education. Nowhere does it help people to get some extra trade certificates. Nowhere does it do that. Instead it gives us a whole lot of nonsense about how everyone can now have free pre-school education. The trouble is that there are not enough places for children. Many people tell me that if they can even get their child into a kindergarten it is a miracle. Having said that what hours are available?