Hutchison Paul: Budget Debate 
Hutchison Paul: Budget Debate 
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Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 I can be sure that no one is any the wiser for that sequence of unconglomerated verbiage! If ever there was a Budget where the Government giveth and the Government taketh away it has to be Michael Cullen’s Budget of 2004. After all on the one hand he has given billions of dollars as election bribes and on the other hand he has caused thousands of people to be locked into dependency. I would like to congratulate my colleague John Key on the excellent work he has done in showing up the sheer cynicism of this 2004 Budget that the Labour Government has perpetrated on New Zealand which will have the consequence of putting New Zealand back years. 
Let us just look again at those two-parent families with two young children living in Wellington one on $38000 a year and the other on $60000. By the time we have allowed for Dr Cullen’s so-called initiatives what has happened? The family originally earning $38000 has an income of $42860 and the income of the family earning $60000 has come down to $45000. But the real questions are where is the recognition of incentives for work where is the recognition of extra qualifications and where is the recognition that some jobs are more difficult than others. Under this Labour Government we see absolutely no recognition of any of those absolutely basic incentives that are likely to drive our economy. When we go to the more extreme example of one-income two-parent families with three young children living in central Auckland one grossing $70000 and the other grossing $38000 we see that after Michael Cullen’s Budget the difference between them in terms of net income is a mere $2800 and we realise the full significance and cynicism of this Labour Budget. 
What is just outstanding is that this is undoubtedly a Budget that locks many New Zealanders into dependence. It is not a Budget that shows any any semblance of being aspiring. The fact that we know that every Australian man woman and child is $175 per week better off than his or her counterparts across the Tasman should drive any responsible Government to ensure that economic growth and sustained economic growth are at the forefront of its policies. Yet in this 2004 Budget we see the very opposite. It is quite incredible that when we go back to Helen Clark’s Speech from the Throne in 1999 we read that she stated: “My Government … is committed to maintaining tight fiscal discipline and has begun with itself. Extravagance in the public sector will not be tolerated.” Yet we see in this Budget that billions of dollars will be put out over the next few years in order clearly to bribe those in the electorate whom the Labour Government knows it can bribe and who are susceptible to bribery. We see billions of dollars being put out to lock many thousands of New Zealanders into welfare dependency while at the same time only one in five households is being helped. 
I want to talk for a moment about the area of health. Vote Health now receives $9.9 billion per year—an increase this year of $332 million. Yet yesterday we heard the news that the Auckland District Health Board is considering firing up to 1400 employees because of its $48 million deficit. For over a year that hospital board has been under intensive monitoring and for over a year it has spent in the order of 13.8 percent of its total revenue on management and administration when the national average is about 25 percent lower at 10 percent. The Minister of Health must have known about that yet yesterday we reached this crisis where 1400 employees are likely to lose their jobs because of the total disregard for good management within the health service. Here is a Minister who knew about the crisis—the board has been under intensive monitoring for a year—but she has just let it evolve without doing anything about it. 
There is no doubt that this Labour Government is responsible for introducing one of the most complex health bureaucracies ever perpetrated on personkind. It is inefficient ineffective and layered with bureaucracies. That is one of the reasons why the Auckland District Health Board is in such difficulty as we meet here today. It is déjà vu from 1989 when the Minister of Health at the time Helen Clark fired her own dysfunctional health board of which her husband was a member. They cannot learn. This Labour Government is destined to drag New Zealand down into a mire of welfare dependency and poor economic growth. 
But it is actually worse than that because despite the Government injecting a massive amount of money into health—the total this year is $9.9 billion—we get less. We know that the number of major joint replacements in 1999 was in the order of 5200; the number came down in 4 years to 4481. There is more money and fewer services. 
It gets even worse than that as we see in a letter from the Minister of Finance Michael Cullen to Annette King in which he said: “Dear Annette Analysis of Ministry of Health data suggests that despite significant revenue increases volumes in the sector are static if not declining.” If ever there was an absolute indictment on a Government it is this. There is an absolute lack of effectiveness efficiency or quality in the area of health spending which is so important to the Government. What did the Minister of Finance say? He said in a letter to the Minister of Health: “Analysis of Ministry of Health data suggests that despite significant revenue increases volumes in the sector are static if not declining.” This is a very very serious indictment on this Labour Government. 
I go back to what the Prime Minister said 4 years ago: “My Government … is committed to maintaining tight fiscal discipline and has begun with itself. Extravagance in the public sector will not be tolerated.” Government members are certainly getting very very comfortable with their LTDs. Only 2 weeks after this Budget we heard that the Accident Compensation Corporation celebrated its monopolistic existence with a party costing $800000. That money could have been used for hip replacements and other very necessary health interventions. Instead the corporation flagrantly spent the money on an $800000 party. 
This Budget which has designated billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money for redistribution from one group to another has at the same time just locked many thousands of New Zealanders into dependency. It is not a Budget of aspiration. It is a Budget of desperation.