Hipkins Chris: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 06 June 2013. Volume:690;Page:10888. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very happy to take the final Labour Party call in this year’s Budget debate. It is a Budget that demonstrates very clearly that this Government has its priorities all wrong. This Budget like so much of what the National Party does is about John Key’s mates not Kiwis’ mates. That is what this Budget is all about. This is a Government that has totally and utterly failed to adapt to the changing global economic environment. The merchant banking outlook has failed the world economy and clinging to it harms not helps us here in New Zealand. Yet this Government refuses to confront that reality and deal with that reality.The Labour Party accepts and acknowledges that things have changed. Economic growth has to be based on the real economy and on businesses that create products and services that bring real growth and real jobs to New Zealand not on speculation. The National Party is all about speculation and divvying up and selling off what previous generations have built up for New Zealanders. It is not growing anything for the future. It is divvying up and hocking off what we have been left by those who came before us. It is not creating the brighter future that John Key promised to New Zealanders. It is not leaving a brighter future legacy for future generations of New Zealanders. It is content simply to divvy up and hock off what we have left. That is not going to lead to a better New Zealand for future generations of New Zealanders.This is the same National Government that is doing backroom deals to trade the misery of pokie machines for a convention centre. This is not a Government that is focused on looking after those at the bottom of the economic pile. It is interested only in those at the top—its mates the people who benefited from the tax cuts the people who have given money to the National Party—not the people at the bottom of the economic heap who are facing ever-rising costs of living. They are losing their jobs yet theNational Party does nothing. They are suffering from increases in GST yet Bill English rubs his hands together and happily takes that money so that he can continue to dish out tax cuts to those at the top of the heap.But the single biggest thing that this Government has failed to deal with in this year’s Budget Bill English’s fifth Budget as in all of Bill English’s Budgets is the fact that New Zealand has the largest deficit in the world. New Zealand has the largest deficit in the world—even bigger than Greece’s. So when Bill English talks about Greece and how New Zealand should not follow the road that the Government in Greece is following what he fails to acknowledge is that in fact we are in worse shape than Greece. We have a bigger deficit than Greece’s and Bill English is not doing anything about that. He is leaving for future generations of New Zealand masses and masses of debt—masses and masses of debt—because rather than growing the real economy the productive economy that will lead to more jobs for New Zealand and more income for New Zealand in the future Bill English is interested only in hocking off what little we have got left. That is totally wrong.This is a Government that has got its priorities all wrong and I guess the reason for that is that this is a Government beset by scandals and by distractions—from John Key’s cup of tea deal which has landed up in John Banks now being in the dock in court through to Peter Dunne rorting the parliamentary system so that he can pretend to be a party leader and claim over $120000 in extra funding every year by pretending to lead a party that does not even exist. Then we have got the Aaron Gilmore saga. He lifted the veil on the arrogance that pervades the National Party because those people think they are better than the rest of New Zealand. They genuinely believe that they are better than the rest of New Zealand. And the reason the National Party got rid of Aaron Gilmore was not necessarily because of what he did but because of what it betrayed about the true state and the true attitudes of those who are in the National Party. But actually give Aaron Gilmore credit. At least he paid for the drinks that he was shouting at a National Party conference unlike Phil Heatley who was quite happy to clock it up on his ministerial credit card. At least Aaron Gilmore put it on his own credit card and paid for it himself unlike Phil Heatley and unlike the member Bill English the Minister of Finance whose first decision as Minister of Finance was to work out how much more he could rort out of the housing allowances available to Ministers of the Crown. His biggest priority was working out how much more he could pay his cleaner. He was not interested in cleaners on the minimum wage—he was not interested in them at all. He was interested in getting more cleaning for his house. It did not matter about all the minimum-wage cleaners who are out there who have been completely ignored by this Government. Then of course we had the Pansy Wong scandal. Pansy Wong resigned from Parliament in a corruption scandal. Richard Worth resigned from Parliament in a scandal but we are not allowed to know what that was. John Key lost confidence in Richard Worth but will not tell anybody why.This is a Government that has accumulated scandals. Over 5 years it has accumulated more scandals than any other Government in that period of time—more than any other Government in 5 years. Bill English John Key and their colleagues have been accumulating baggage and accumulating scandals and it has distracted them from their real job of governing in the best interests of all New Zealanders. This is a Government that is stuck in the past that is stuck in a rort—in a rort that is right; I was going to say “a rut” but “a rort” is just as good because that is what it is. The Government is in a rut rorting the system and it is not interested in what is happening to ordinary everyday New Zealanders.Let us look at the Government’s education budget. What did it do in education? It cut funding to Te Kotahitanga one of those programmes that has got a proven track recordof delivering for people who have not been succeeding in the education system. The Government cut that and it gave $19 million to charter schools. It increased the funding for private schools and cut funding for teacher professional development. That says a lot about its priorities. Here is another one that is a cracker—not many people have picked this up yet—it cut $4 million out of special-needs transport. This is the money that transports kids with special needs from their homes to the schools. The Government cut $4 million out of that budget—$4 million came out of that budget. Five million dollars—$5 million—came out of the budget for teacher training scholarships. This is a Government that really does not care about a quality teaching workforce. It is deregulating. We do not have to have qualified teachers in charter schools. It cut the funding for professional development for teachers and it cut the funding for teacher training scholarships. This Government is not interested in a qualified registered teaching profession—oh no not at all. It ignores the fact that quality teaching is the biggest in-school influencing factor on student achievement. Of course it ignores all of the out-of-school influences on student achievement so why should it be focused on the in-school ones given that it will not do anything about the out-of-school ones either?In this year’s Budget of course the Government found more money for Novopay—that absolute shambles that Bill English Hekia Parata and Craig Foss signed off on despite the fact that it had 147 known defects. No one—none of those three rocket scientists who signed it off—thought to ask: “Oh there are 147 known defects. What are they?”. No one actually thought to ask what they were. None of those Ministers on their $250000 a year salaries bothered to actually read the briefing papers they got given. Bill English’s signature is scrawled on it. He did not date it surprisingly but I suspect that that is because he did not really read it. They signed off on it without even reading it and without asking the basic questions and New Zealanders continue to pay for their mistakes. Millions of dollars—millions and millions of dollars—are going into Novopay to clean up the mess made by the incompetence of the three Ministers who signed off on Novopay without checking out the details first.As for the money the new money that the Government promises in this year’s Budget we find when we read through it carefully that a whole lot of that money comes from lower than expected rolls in primary and secondary schools. So it is not new money at all; it is money that the Government is just taking from one part of the education budget and moving to another. It is smoke and mirrors stuff. But what is clear overall is that this is not a Budget that demonstrates a Government that is committed to education or committed to the things that work. It is not a Budget that is focused on the needs of ordinary everyday New Zealanders. It is a Budget that is focused on John Key helping out his mates not helping out Kiwis’ mates. It is about Key’s mates not Kiwis’ mates. New Zealanders deserve so much better from their Government. That is why after the next election when they have a Labour Government they will have a Government that is focused on the future that is focused on positive policies that will make a real difference—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.