Cullen Michael: Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill — First Reading 
Cullen Michael: Future Directions (Working for Families) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:617;Page:13428] 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 That truly was the voice of the “rich” broadcast live to New Zealand. That member is the last member in this House who should be getting up to talk about welfare dependency. She is the only person in the country I know who earns over $100000 a year and who got paid parental leave at the full 100 percent rate of her previous earnings. She then opposed the paid parental leave legislation. 
Katherine Rich 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Dr Cullen is misleading the House. I did not get paid parental leave through the Government scheme. I think everybody knows that is a fib and he should withdraw and apologise. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Speaking to the point of order the point I was making was that the member continued to draw her full parliamentary salary and then opposed paid parental leave for others. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Unless the member is raising that as a matter of privilege the issue of misleading the House is a debating point. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: We have some questions for the Opposition. Will Opposition members vote against this bill? Yes they said. Oh make my day they have done it! Oh good. Firstly Opposition members will vote against an extra $100-odd a week in the hand for struggling working families on $25000 $30000 $35000 and $40000 a year. Why? Because they will not get any of it. It is as simple as that. If we had made sure that they got the money they would have voted for it because that is the Tory view. 
Secondly since the bill will pass will National repeal it if it becomes the Government? Dr Lockwood Smith is a man with no vested interest in families with dependent children. Will he repeal this legislation if National becomes the Government? He looks baffled by that suggestion. He has only been here for 20 years and he does not know what “repeal” means. Will National repeal it before lunchtime? No National members will be true Tories. They will have their lunch first and repeal it after lunchtime. We know that is what a National Government would do given half the chance. 
What were the alternatives? The alternatives were tax cuts. How do we deliver a benefit of over $100 a week in the hand to a person on $30000 a year with two children? She is only paying $100 a week in tax at the present time—or just over. So the first $30000 of income would have to be completely tax-free. How much do members opposite think that would cost? It would cost billions and billions and billions of dollars. 
Who would get the biggest gain? Well I would do extraordinarily very well out of it. I would get $300 a week out of doing that unless of course we raised the marginal tax rates on higher incomes and put up the 39c rate. What would we get by lifting the threshold on the top tax rate from $60000 to $70000? Nothing for those earning under $60000 and the princely sum of under $12 a week for all those earning $70000 a year and above. The fact is that we cannot deliver gains of $100 a week $120 a week and $140 a week to people who are struggling in this life because they do not pay enough tax to make it possible to deliver it that way. 
What has come through in this debate already is the terrible prejudice that National Party people have. It came through from the ACT party in question time yesterday. We have the hard-working family on $50000 a year and the family employed on $25000 a year. The National Party seriously believes that one’s income is an absolute reflection of how hard one works. Look at those members opposite! How hard does Pansy Wong work? I have never seen her working in the entire time she has been in the House. On the rare occasions she was working no one understood what she was doing at the time. There is no such relationship. 
Some of the hardest-working people in this country who do jobs that nobody in this House would want to do earn $25000 $28000 and $30000 a year. These people are below Dr Lockwood Smith’s horizon. His lofty gaze never comes down to their level. He assumes that somehow they are lazy incompetent people. They happen to be a large proportion of our population. They happen to be the strata of society I am proud to have come from. Just because I now earn over $200000 a year as Minister of Finance I am not turning my back on them—unlike members opposite a few of whom came from similar backgrounds and who argue for tax cuts just for them and nothing for struggling families. 
Those members wonder why there are social problems. They wonder why kids are going astray. They wonder why people are struggling when too many of our families do not have enough money when too many children are being raised in poverty. National would say that they should get off their butts and just earn more. They should have chosen their parents better as so many Tories do so that they could have inherited wealth instead of having to struggle up through the ranks of society as so many others have to do. 
We make no apology for putting more money in the hands of families who need it. That is what we were elected to do. We make no apology for the fact that families on $50000 and $60000 a year with two or three children will get some extra money in the hand as well because it can still be a struggle bringing up families on those sorts of incomes when modern rents modern mortgages and modern costs have to be paid. 
What National has never explained is why cutting the rate for those at the very upper end of society takes a higher priority than low to middle-income working families. Dr Smith has this strange belief that somehow or other the whole engine of the economy will move into a new gear if he plays a lower top tax rate. I have not noticed in the increase from 33c to 39c that the entire upper levels of New Zealand society—especially those who earn $200000-plus a year—have downed tools and stopped working. All the ones who promised to go to Australia have not gone. I still see them at every meeting I go to. They are still earning vast sums of money. I do not want to hear from them in the next few days that they regard it as improper that people on modest incomes should receive some assistance. 
But what we have done is increased the gains through employment compared with being on the benefit. We have not done it by swiping $25 a week from beneficiaries as the National Party did—pushing more people into poverty and into despair. We have done it by giving a helping hand so people can earn more by going out to work. By actually being employed they earn more as a consequence of this package. 
National members will vote against that because with that $1 billion they would prefer to buy a tax cut. What could they do? For $700-odd million of that they could cut the top rate of tax to 33c. That does nothing for the majority of New Zealand families with dependent children. They like to use an average based on the mean which is biased hugely upwards by the wealthiest families in the country. The median income for a family with dependent children in New Zealand is not $60000-odd a year; it is $49000 a year at the last measure. Therefore cutting the top tax rate would benefit well under half of all families with dependent children and most of those would get next to nothing out of it either. So where is the justice in that? Where is the reward for effort in that? Where is the commitment to the future of New Zealand in that particular approach? 
National has managed to summon up the courage to say it will vote against the bill—big deal—but it has not managed to get to the next step and say that if it became the Government it would repeal this legislation take the money away from the families that would get more and redistribute that money upwards to those at the top end of society. Because that is the logic of what Kathryn eponymous Rich said here this afternoon. It is what she believes ought to be done: this money should not go to low and middle-income families; this money should go to her and her ilk—on a combined family income of God knows what. I suspect it would be well in excess of $200000 a year. 
Well I am sorry. The evidence is that people at those sorts of levels in New Zealand have done pretty well in the last 5 or 10 years all by themselves through the workings of the markets. The people who have not done so well are those low to middle-income families. They face costs like childcare for going to work and this Budget and this bill will benefit them. 
If National wants to go to the hustings saying “We’ll be better for pensioners” when it cut the pension and “We’ll be better for everybody else” when it cut benefits and wages and reduced conditions of employment and if it wants to redistribute this package upwards to those who are least in need then I urge that party to really “bring it on” because I am looking forward to that fight so very very much indeed.