Bennett David: Budget Debate 
Bennett David: Budget Debate 
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DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 New Zealanders who are watching this debate and wondering where their taxpayer dollars are going have found out that they are paying for officials to write speeches for people like Rick Barker who cannot even get up and say what he thinks. That member has to have a written speech after being a member for Parliament for how many years? He has to get a forest cut down in order to read out something that some officials probably spent all day preparing for him. He does not believe in what he says; he has to read it out. He has to follow the lines that he has been given. If he really believed it in his heart he would not need to read it out from pieces of paper which has meant that a forest has been cut down for him. 
This Budget is a disgrace. It is a disgrace because New Zealanders are hurting. New Zealanders are hurting because there are rising food costs rising fuel costs and high interest rates. This economy is going into trouble. It is an economy going into trouble because of the leadership on the Government side of the House. 
Let us see why the Government is getting into trouble. The 60-odd people who form the majority of the House believe they know more about what to do with people’s money than they do. They back themselves as the investment advisers for New Zealand. Why should they be the investment advisers for New Zealand? They are a pack of ex-unionists who have never had to run a business in their whole lives and who come in here and sit on a safe salary and then decide what the whim of this country should be and what to invest in to make this country great? 
Well let us see how great those investments have been. We have a situation now where we are not growing at the OECD average. People are losing money on their houses and New Zealanders cannot afford to live the lifestyle that they were brought up with. Under this Government we have moved from having the status of a First World country to that of a Second World country. This Government has done that. Its economic management has taken New Zealand from being a country where people could grow up knowing they had the opportunities to live a lifestyle that was in the world’s top echelon to living a lifestyle where they cannot afford even a block of cheese they cannot afford to fill up their cars with petrol and they cannot afford to buy a house. 
Those people certainly cannot afford to have this Government any longer. This Government will take them to the bottom of this world order. It will take these people from having had opportunity and promise to being stuck in the South Pacific on some little island State with some kind of fantasy boundary around it that will protect them from the rest of the world. Well that is not the reality of the world. These 60-odd people who think they can govern the world economy with their great ambitions are dreaming. We can see how much they are dreaming. 
The Government bought Toll NZ off an Australian company that was doing a really good job of looking after it. What did that Australian company do the day after that? It bought a trucking company because it knows what will happen. It knows that the first time Fonterra gets a trainload of products ending up in Invercargill when they should have been in Tauranga those products will be going back on to trucks. More trucks will be on the road as a result of the Government’s management of the trains. It will happen; it is just a matter of time. These guys have seen the economic imperatives that this Government can deliver. The Labour Government has no idea about economics. It never has and it never will. The public know that they should come to the National Party if there are problems in the economy. They know that the National Party will change that turn it round and deliver the response that New Zealanders need in order to have the lifestyle we need. 
The country will turn to National in its darkest times and this is the darkest of economic times because the leadership on the Government side of the House has not delivered for ordinary New Zealanders. This leadership has led to New Zealanders not being able to live the lifestyle they want. That is a disgrace for a Labour Government but it is typical of a Labour Government. National will pick it up as it has in the past after Labour Governments have not delivered because they do not know what is right for this country economically. 
Let us look at what is in this Budget for students. What do they get? They get $5 a week. What is that? Is it two pies? Is it one Big Mac? They did not get even a block of cheese; they get just $5. They can borrow another $5. What does that say to the students? It tells them what Labour is about. Labour is about picking on people when and how it needs to to get an election result. It is not about what is best for New Zealand; it is about what Labour thinks will win it an election. That is all Labour is after. Students were not on the list this time. They were not identified as the group Labour wants to vote for it at this election so it has cast them away and thrown them out. Labour has said: “We don’t need your vote this time.” The students will vote against Labour this time because they know that they are getting nothing out of the Labour Government and that Labour is not delivering for that vote. 
Labour looks around and sees what it can pick as the votes it needs to win an election. It does not care about what is in the best interests of New Zealand. Labour does not know what is in the best interests of New Zealand. Rick Barker had to read his speech. If those members actually knew what was in the best interests of New Zealand we would get it from their hearts but we do not. All we get from them is their mantra read-out lines messages they want to get across and voting blocs they want to pay off. That is how Labour runs an election campaign. Those members look out to see who they want to buy off in order to get votes to get back into power and when they get back into power they feather their own nests. That is all they have ever done and all they will ever do. They do not care about what is in the best interests of New Zealand because if we look at the results of what they have done we see that they have taken this country from being a country that was successful dynamic and giving everyone a chance to being a country where just Labour has control. 
Labour wants to have control over individuals. It wants to have control over the money in the country it wants to have control over people’s ambitions and aspirations and it wants especially to have control over individuals. But that takes away the fundamental heart of a country. If the power of an individual to grow is taken away and if that individual is controlled by a centralised Government—as the Labour Government does—then that is the end of the ambition and aspiration a country can have. That is what has happened under Labour. It has taken away that aspiration and ambition. That aspiration and ambition has gone to Australia now. It is not here; it is moving. But National will bring it back. National will provide that aspiration and ambition. We will give New Zealanders the reason to stay here; we will give New Zealanders the chance to use their aspiration and ambition to make this country great. We will make this country the great place it always has been and should be again. We will not be there necessarily telling people that we know best. 
We will not be saying that we the 60 of us on this side of the House can govern this country beyond what people can govern themselves and that is the difference between the two political parties. On this side of the House we believe in people. We believe in the strength of people to achieve. We believe in the strength of this country to achieve. Members on that side of the House believe that they know best that they know how to make this country and that they know what the golden dream is for New Zealand. And when individuals go into the voting booths to make those choices in a few months’ time they will back themselves. They will not back the 60 people on that side of the House who think they know better than anyone else because the people on that side of the House do not know. They have been proven to not know and they cannot deliver the answers for New Zealand. But the National Party can and will. 
National has the leadership the aspiration the ability and the attitude to deliver for this country. Those are some things that the Labour Party will never know about. The Labour Party will never have any constructive influence on the building of this country because it cannot believe in the ability of our people to achieve. Because Labour cannot believe in our people it cannot truly govern. That is the problem the Labour Party has now. The economic environment has shown the problem of what that party is about. It has taken this country into a situation where we have not delivered for our people and the people out there need change. They want change and they will get change at the end of the year because there will be the opportunity to have a new vision a new leadership and a new attitude for New Zealand. National will deliver that. Thank you Mr Speaker.