Kaye NikkiHon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): What a statement from the honourable member Michael Wood: that this Budget is about a fairer New Zealand. Well let's walk through that actually. What is fairer about $2 billion extra in taxes when your party campaigned on no new taxes? What is fairer about having inherited a situation from an economic perspective where 10000 jobs were being created a month to see that slashed to 4000 jobs and business confidence tanking? What is fairer about half a million businesses in New Zealand facing an extraordinary situation—after the National Government left an economy that was doing well: jobs were being created lower taxes less regulation—that sees those businesses staring down the barrel of an uncertain environment in terms of foreign investment a difficult environment in terms of industrial relations. And it's not just a difficult environment; people are saying it's worse than the 1970s—increased costs in terms of petrol taxes and increased costs in terms of minimum wage?We all agree on raising the minimum wage. National did it every year that we were in office but if you do it at a pace that is so fast we see jobs lost. The 90-day trial was scrapped for businesses with employees over 20. What is fairer about that country that sees our economy now stalling? What is fairer honourable members in the House about the average middle New Zealand family being $2500 worse off in our estimates as a result of this Budget? They don't get universally cheaper doctor's visits. There were a lot of broken promises from Labour where they raised massive expectations in the campaign and the reality is they have not delivered them in areas like education and health. They have also then gone and put on these taxes borrowed more and the reality is there is nothing fairer about $2500 additional for New Zealand middle-income families.The thing that I would say to members opposite—and I would also say this to the Prime Minister is for a party that claimed to be one that cares about equity and aspiration and enabling young people and all New Zealanders to get ahead to be delivering a scenario whereby business confidence is tanking—actually take the area of education where there are more than 18 broken promises. We have a scenario where the Minister of Education goes on national television and says that donations are going to be scrapped within the first Budget—doesn't deliver that. We have a scenario where tomorrow teachers will strike. And we all accept that we dealt with very difficult situations including the global financial recession and the Canterbury earthquakes but to have a scenario where $2.8 billion was doled out to students instead of teachers is not a fairer New Zealand.Ultimately this was a Government that had huge opportunity handed on a plate and what they have done is they have squandered that opportunity. It is not necessarily the members of this House that will feel that; it is the mums and dads who go to work every day that will be paying higher taxes. They will see their mortgage rates potentially going up because this Government is spending more and they are wasting more money and because we have a situation where businesses aren't confident to employ people.Take the area of education—a situation where there was an opportunity to pay teachers more. There is an opportunity to do more in this area. They have bad priorities and to dole out what is equivalent to nearly a 15 percent increase for every teacher in New Zealand to all of the students instead is extraordinary.That's why on this side of the House we do not agree with this Budget. We do not think that this is a Budget for middle New Zealand. We do not think that this is a fairer Budget. We think this is the Budget of squandered opportunities. What do we believe in? Well we do believe that actually you get to be able to fund your public services in areas like education and health when you support those small businesses to get ahead. It is those businesses that create the jobs and that earn the income. When you support trade and when you support them ultimately we get additional tax revenue for the Crown and we're able to have choices to spend more on public services.The extraordinary situation is that we have a Government that has taken these brilliant and beautiful opportunities and squandered them through bad spending priorities—not all and I would say I think learning support is a great area and it's good that we saw that in the Budget. We've seen a bad set of priorities; we've seen a whole lot of broken promises—again hence why we also have the teacher strikes tomorrow because from their perspective and I've talked to a number of teachers and principals out there there was this massive expectation raised and there hasn't been the delivery in terms of this Budget around education.In fact one little fact for you is that in this Budget we've seen the compulsory sector share of the Vote go from 13.2 percent to 12.8 percent. So at a time when the Labour Party campaigned on caring about teachers and our primary and secondary school system they've actually managed to shrink that share of the Vote. Why is that? It is because they have New Zealand First tugging on their reins in terms of some of those spending priorities. We've seen hundreds of millions of dollars in this Budget given to diplomats rather than to teachers. We've seen a situation in this Budget where some of that slush fund that the Hon Shane Jones has is again being given to New Zealand First members to keep this Government and hold it together rather than to deliver on scrapping school donations as they promised or potentially many of the other education promises.I mean for instance we heard over the last couple of weeks that Ginny Andersen went out there and campaigned on lower teacher ratios and smaller class sizes. We know that that is very unlikely to be delivered because the Government can't even deliver 18 of its education promises and that is because—and I hesitate to use this language in this House and I will be very careful and I hope that Madam Assistant Speaker won't pull me up—the gap between what they've promised people was very very misleading. I'm not going to say dishonest"—I'm not going to say that they were dishonest. I am not saying that.But I am saying that when members go out to the public and say "We're going to promise billions and billions of dollars in health and education spending but because it's not in the Speech from the Throne it now maybe doesn't exist." at a time when they have more than 20 percent more cash than we had this is the extraordinary thing. They have more than 20 percent more cash than the last National Government had yet they've not delivered on about 18 education promises.They're taxing us more and they borrowing more and this is the extraordinary thing. As I have said at the outset to members this is a situation where this Budget is squandered opportunities for our country. At a time when National did the hard yards with a whole lot of other New Zealanders to lift us out from a decade of deficits and we did the best that we could with the envelope of cash that we had they got given the greatest opportunity ever and they've managed to mess it up. Thank you."