Woolerton R Doug: Budget Debate 
Woolerton R Doug: Budget Debate 
[Volume:626;Page:20839] 
R DOUG WOOLERTON (NZ First) 
: 
 It always saddens me to speak in the Budget debate because there is never anything for the people in this country who earn the money. I know that everybody assists our exporters but the Government does not and that saddens me. 
I am looking at the Associate Minister of Agriculture the Hon Damien O’Connor who is sitting across the aisle. He is a man from the land. He is one of only two such people that the Labour Party has. He was brought up on a farm and he understands farming. He comes from a tough area of the country where dairying in particular is making great strides. I held out great hopes for him. I thought thank heaven above Damien O’Connor will surely get something for our downtrodden farmers. 
But what did I see? I searched the Budget. I looked through page after page late into the night. My wife had to wake me and send me off to bed. I went through the Budget once and then through it again. Could I find anything that would assist farmers? I found nothing—not a word not a sentence not a paragraph nothing. So I am deeply disappointed in Damien O’Connor. However the one thing going for him is that he is relatively young. I would hope that we can keep working on this Minister—that is if he stays there of course—and hopefully he will come up with something better in the future. He knows as I know that it is agriculture forestry and all of those things that earn the money for this country. It is those things that set the standard of living for the 4 million point whatever people we have in this country. 
People could be forgiven for not knowing this fact but this Government has overseen a time of record commodity prices record prices for dairying record prices for wool sheep meat and so on and so forth. Prices are being wrecked at the present time by the high dollar and high interest charges and I had hoped that something would be done about that in the Budget but there was nothing to ameliorate that problem either. Our exporters cannot compete on world markets with the dollar up around US70c-odd. We will see Fonterra with a lower price and 25 percent of our exports are right there going through that one successful company. Right across the export sector we are seeing the dollar wrecking our exports and making them uncompetitive. What would it be like if we could turn that around and have a competitive dollar that would admittedly make things more expensive to import but which would certainly help with our exports which is what guides our standard of living? 
The proof of what I am saying was in the March statement that said we now have a $9 billion trade deficit with the world. That is just staggering and it would be bad enough and serious enough if it was at a time of low commodity prices or some oil shock or some other crisis that might be around that this country has seen over past years but it is doubly serious when it is at a time of record commodity prices and we will be talking about that in our campaign. One would look to the so-called “farmers’ party” of past years the National Party to be yelling and screaming about this but we do not see that either unfortunately. 
We hear National members talk about tax cuts. My lasting impression from the other night was of one very dashing Mr John Key in front of a particularly handsome house with a particularly inviting swimming pool—many many millions of dollars worth I am sure—telling the poor average middle-class people of this country that the answer as far as the National Party was concerned was tax cuts. While I am sure that for Mr John Key with his flash house his flash car and all the rest of it the answer is tax cuts as far as he is concerned but for the farmers I am talking about the answer is not tax cuts. First one has to earn the income then one can decide what to do with it and tax cuts are a part of that. It is the dollar that is crucifying the farmers in this country at the present time and tax cuts will not fix that. 
Not only are tax cuts being talked about but our “friends” in the ACT party are running around stirring up apathy in the provinces talking about access issues. I must say that when and if access issues come before Parliament we will have things to say about that too. But the bill is not even before Parliament and we have ACT rushing around ranting and raving about access to streams saying that it will be an election issue and that people will be running all over farms. I am sure that will not be the case. All that the members from those two parties which profess to represent farmers in this country can do is rave on about access issues and tax issues when the real issue is the earning of the dollar which is not only good for farmers but is vital and important to the living standards of every single person in this nation. We simply cannot go on with a situation whereby the dollar or the circumstances within a country are making our products uncompetitive. 
I know that it is tempting to talk about issues surrounding the cost of doing business the Resource Management Act and all of those sorts of things and from time to time we will talk about those issues as well—in particular my colleague Jim Peters is attending to those issues—but first one has to earn the money and that is what I am talking about tonight. In this Parliament we pay far too little attention to those things that earn the money for the country. We can put off the day when the chickens come home to roost we can postpone that day we can gloss over that day we can borrow and we can do all sorts of things but at the end of the day when we are in a situation of a deficit and we have a situation where the imports in this country are far too great in quantity and in cost it is back to the farmers that we will go for the money to pay for not only our living standard but also to pay off past debt. What will we say to the farmers then? Will we say to them that we have appreciated them in the good times? Will we say to them that we will make things better for them? Will we say to them that we will give them a tax incentive or a tax break on their machinery? Will we increase the rate of write-down on their plant and equipment? No we do not say any of those things in this 2005 Budget. The 2005 Budget is about expenditure; it is not about earning money for this country and to that degree it is irresponsible.