Volume 699 Week 73 - Thursday 22 May 2014Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeVolume 699 Week 73 - Thursday 22 May 2014[Sitting date: 22 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18245. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Thursday 22 May 2014Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.Prayers.Business StatementHon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General) on behalf of theLeader of the House: I can advise the House that when the House resumes on Tuesday 27 May the Government will look to progress the Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill the Food Bill the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) and the Credit Contracts and Financial Services Law Reform Bill. Wednesday is a members’ day.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Can I ask the actingActing Leader of the House whether there is any intention to progress the Veterans’ Support Bill in the next week.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General): I was hoping that he would ask me about all my Treaty legislation. There is more on the Order Paper now than there ever was under that party’s—Mr SPEAKER: Order!Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: —administration. But the—Mr SPEAKER: Order! Can the Minister just answer the question.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: I do not know.Questions to MinistersBudget 2014—Business Growth Agenda1.SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki) to theMinister of Finance: How does Budget 2014 contribute to building a more productive and competitive economy through the Government’s Business Growth Agenda?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Associate Minister of Finance) on behalf of theMinister of Finance: Budget 2014 contains a range of initiatives across the Business Growth Agenda. As everyone now knows we have entered a period of significant growth for the New Zealand economy that is lifting job numbers and incomes. The challenge for the Business Growth Agenda is to keep reducing some of the longer-term capacity constraints in areas like skills and innovation so that the New Zealand economy can continue to grow at a faster rate than it has in the past for an extended period. One important area is building our international markets. Budget 2014 provides funding of $69 million over the next 4 years for New Zealand Trade and Enterprise to boost its presence in China South America and the Middle East and to lift the number of companies it works with intensively from 500 to 700.Simon O’Connor: How does Budget 2014 contribute to lifting research and innovation in New Zealand?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The Budget continues this Government’s long and extensive initiatives in the research and development area. This Budget contains an additional $58.6 million over 3 years for additional contestable science and innovation funding which will take the total annual Government investment to $1.5 billion by 2015-16. High-quality scientific research is of course critical to increasing innovation and economic growth. The Budget also contains two tax measures to benefit businesses investing in research and development. Loss-making start-up companies will be able to cash out all or part of their tax losses from research and development expenditure whileall businesses will be allowed tax deductibility for research and development black hole expenditure which is currently neither deductible nor able to be depreciated. These tax changes will help us meet our goal of increasing business research and development to 1 percent of GDP.Simon O’Connor: How does Budget 2014 contribute to lifting the skill levels of the New Zealand workforce?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The Budget contains additionally nearly $200 million of initiatives over the next 4 years. Tuition subsidies for science agriculture and selected health sciences will be lifted which comes on top of funding increases for engineering and science in previous Budgets. Additional funding also means the Government will be funding 10 centres of research excellence from 2016-17 up from the six that were recently selected through the competitive process. The Government will also spend an additional $20 million expanding the very successful apprenticeship reboot programme by an additional 6000 places bringing the number of places to 20000.Simon O’Connor: How is the Government’s successful share offer programme helping to pay for new infrastructure investment as part of the Business Growth Agenda?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The Government’s successful share offer programme raised around $4.7 billion which is being invested in new priority public assets and infrastructure without taxpayers having to borrow this money from overseas lenders. Budget 2014 allocated another $1 billion for these investments which will be made through the Future Investment Fund. That brings allocations from the fund so far to almost $3 billion leaving nearly $1.7 billion in the fund for spending on more new assets in the next two Budgets. Future Investment Fund allocations in this Budget included $67 million for the new Grey Base Hospital on the West Coast $172 million for the upgrading and building of new schools including the Pegasus Bay school in North Canterbury $75 million for Christchurch housing $40 million for Crown Irrigation Investments and $30 million for the Hobsonville housing development. All of these things would not have been possible unless we had had the programme of the mixed-ownership model.Hon David Parker: If as he claims the economy will become more competitive and productive why is it that imports are forecast to grow far faster than exports for the next 4 years increasing our external deficit to $16 billion by 2017?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I think the member needs to look at the progress that this Government has already made despite various prognostications by certain commentators including Treasury. This year the balance of payments deficit is down to about 3.5 percent of GDP and forecast to go lower. If the member thinks that it is as good as it gets well it is a heck of a lot better than the 8 percent when he was in charge.Climate Change—Economic Impact and Greenhouse Gas Emissions2.Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) to theMinister of Finance: Does he stand by all his statements?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Associate Minister of Finance) on behalf of theMinister of Finance: Yes. He particularly stands by his statement which was originally made by the Prime Minister in fact that Budget 2014 is a confident Budget for a confident country.Dr Russel Norman: Does he stand by his statement in this House on 14 May last year that “It is important for New Zealand … that it is regarded as a good credit risk.”?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: That sounds like a very good statement that the Minister of Finance would make.Dr Russel Norman: Given his acknowledgment that a good credit rating is important for New Zealand is he concerned by the warning from Standard and Poor’s last week that New Zealand’s sovereign credit rating is at risk due to climate change?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: No and the reason for that is that the Government’s books which are the primary concern of the Standard and Poor’s organisation are moving positively into the black. We will have the opportunity to repay debt and we will reduce our debt as a percentage of GDP to 20 percent by 2019-20 on schedule. In relation to any concerns about climate change this Government is undertaking a very strong programme to mitigate the effects of climate change and become a less carbon-intense economy over time while not jeopardising our ability to raise moneys and pay off debt.Dr Russel Norman: Is he aware that Moritz Kraemer Standard and Poor’s chief sovereign risk analyst has identified climate change as one of the century’s two defining macroeconomic trends that are likely to put downward pressure on countries’ sovereign credit ratings?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: That would depend on how the countries respond to those risks. Countries always have risks. If the member wants to go and look at some of the more recent data he will see that New Zealand’s carbon intensity is continuing to decline. In other words the amount of carbon we produce as our economy grows is reducing as a percentage of GDP. That is a good thing and suggests that we are doing a good job as a country in mitigating the risk identified.Dr Russel Norman: Given the Minister’s answer can we assume that he is not aware that Standard and Poor’s has listed New Zealand’s credit rating as particularly vulnerable to climate change because of the proportion of our population living on the coast and because of agriculture’s role in our economy?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The answer to the first part of his question is that no we cannot assume that. Secondly if the member is suggesting that New Zealand knock the agricultural economy on the head to meet the needs of climate change I imagine that Standard and Poor’s would have a view of that and it would not be positive.Dr Russel Norman: Will he now finally acknowledge the seriousness of climate change for New Zealand when not only are the world’s leading climate scientists saying that our environment and our communities are at risk but one of the world’s largest rating agencies is also saying that our credit rating could suffer as a result of climate change?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I reject the implicit arrogance in the member’s question that the Government does not understand the importance of the risks of climate change. Actually this Government is focused on meeting all the fiscal risks that New Zealand faces and if he goes and has a look at the data he will see the reducing intensity of New Zealand’s carbon emissions as a percentage of our GDP. That is something to be celebrated and I am confident it will continue under this Government.Dr Russel Norman: Has the Minister gone to look at the data—for example the Ministry for the Environment’s most recent data—which shows that the projections for New Zealand’s net emissions are that they will increase by 50 percent over the next decade under current settings of this Government and does he believe that that is a responsible projection for New Zealand?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: We discussed in the previous question the issue of projections. What I can tell the member is that what has occurred under this Government is a decreasing intensity of carbon emissions as our economy grows. The member may not like to know that but that is true. We also have an increasing percentage of for example our electricity generation in renewables and this Government’s record on the environment—again not something the Greens want to talk about—is very good and compares favourably with the previous Government.Dr Russel Norman: In light of official reports from his Government showing a big increase in projected emissions ahead will he take advice as to what should be the response of the Government to the Standard and Poor’s report which has identified New Zealand as vulnerable due to the number of New Zealanders likely to be impacted by sea level rise and due to the large contribution agriculture makes to our economy and that agriculture is particularly vulnerable to climate change?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well this Government takes advice on those sorts of risks every day and we have for example in the Business Growth Agenda a group of Ministers in the natural resources area who grapple with these issues on an ongoing basis and actually make decisions every day that mitigate those risks and we will continue to do so. But if the member is suggesting as I believe he may be that we quickly shut down the agricultural industry so as to avoid that risk I suspect that is not something we will agree about.Economy—Regional Development Timber Processing Industry andWage Growth3.Hon DAVID PARKER (Deputy Leader—Labour) to theMinister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment: Does he agree with the Mayor of Clutha district that the loss of the 180 jobs in the wood processing industry is a “hammer blow” to the region?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment): No. I understand the mayor being concerned at the loss of an employer in his district but despite the tendency of a number of people to talk down the Otago economy the region is doing very well. The latest household labour force survey shows a net increase in Otago of 8000 jobs in the last year—8000 jobs in the last year. Unemployment in the Otago region is one of the lowest in New Zealand at 4.6 percent compared with the national average of 6 percent. The ANZ Regional Trends report released on Tuesday said that Otago has the highest level of business confidence and one of the fastest economic growth rates in the whole of New Zealand. That is not the Opposition’s spin but actually what is happening under this Government.Hon David Parker: Has he not read the ANZ Regional Trends report which for the adjacent province of Southland shows that “Southland recorded the largest decrease in employment dropping 4.0 percent in the quarter to hit a 10-year low. The region’s unemployment rate deteriorated hitting a 10-year high …” or is that just because its local MPs are Bill English and Eric Roy?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I would have thought that Mr Parker as a former resident of the Otago region would know that the Clutha district is in the Otago region and not in the Southland region but unfortunately Mr Parker is not aware of that which is probably why he was never able to hold on to the seat of Otago—because he never even went there.Hon David Parker: Why has he refused to set any targets for regional development growth in his department’s annual statement of intent?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Firstly again the member may not be aware but I would have thought he has been around long enough to know that that is developed by the agency not by the Minister. The good news is that every region in the New Zealand economy is growing and every region if he looks at the ANZ Regional Trends is growing strongly. That is the reality. Mr Parker may obsess about writing down a number but the real question and where the rubber meets the road is job growth and GDP growth in the regions. The reality is that we are seeing in Otago very strong growth which is very good for that region and I am very pleased for it. I think it is probably time the Opposition declared an Otago crisis.Hon David Parker: Why has his Government deserted the wood-processing industry nationwide with net job losses of around 3000 since 2008 when those job losses show that the sector so seriously needs an economic upgrade?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: It “so seriously needs an economic upgrade” that an investor went out 2 weeks ago and spent a billion dollars purchasing assets in the forestry processing industry. Of course they see a strong future in that industry and it is ridiculous for the member to suggest that that is otherwise. Yes individual companies have difficulties from time to time and the company that was the subject of this question has had financial difficulties for some time. Mr Parker may be of the view that the Government should rescue every investor from the challenges that they may or may not operate in but this Government knows that the job is actually encouraging investment across New Zealand industries and—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The question is now answered.Hon David Parker: Why is real wage growth forecast to average less than 1 percent—Hon Steven Joyce: Oh rubbish.Hon David Parker: —for the next 3 years according to his own Budget—it is not rubbish—which is lower than increases in GDP per capita and is this because under National the benefits of economic growth can never be expected to flow through to working New Zealanders?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The member is absolutely wrong. The way you build incomes for New Zealand families is to encourage investment and growth across New Zealand. That is what this Government is doing. We can see that in the growth figures in the export figures and in the employment figures. We can see it in the balance of payment figures. We can see it in New Zealand’s net international liability figures. We can see it across every measure of the New Zealand economy. The Opposition may not like it but actually we are growing incomes for Kiwi families.Clare Curran: What specific actions has he planned to increase the economic value from the volume of the timber and wood-processing industry in Otago and Southland given that his own department says growth in the region “will depend on the application of capital and technology to natural sources.”?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: There is a range of things. I know the member has not read it but we have 350 serious initiatives in the Business Growth Agenda. For example one growing—Hon David Parker: They’re not working.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: They are working—4.6 percent growth in Otago. Oh yes they are working. And the reality is that we have—Clare Curran: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. With respect my question was regarding specific actions his department would undertake for a specific industry—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member asked what specific actions and the Minister rose to his feet and said there were 350 of them and talked about the Business Growth Agenda and its application. [Interruption] Order! I am on my feet. On this occasion the Minister has addressed the question.Budget 2014—Child Health Services4.Dr JIAN YANG (National) to theMinister of Health: What investment is the Government making in Budget 2014 to improve health outcomes for children?Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): The Government is investing $90 million over 3 years from 1 July 2015 so primary school - aged children can go to the doctor for free at any time of the day or night and get their prescriptions for free as well. This builds on the success of the free general practitioners visits and prescriptions forchildren under 6 including free after-hours visits. Thanks to our prudent management of the health budget we can now extend this policy to all children under 13 and that is what careful financial management of the country’s finances can deliver for Kiwi families.Dr Jian Yang: What recent reports has he received on the new policy to provide free general practitioners visits and prescriptions for under-13s?Hon TONY RYALL: This policy has been widely welcomed in the health sector including by the Medical Association the Paediatric Society the College of General Practitioners and the New Zealander of the YearKaitāia general practitioner Lance O’Sullivan. I have also seen a report that somewhat begrudgingly described the extension of free general practitioners visits and prescriptions as an “attractive policy”. That was from the Leader of the Opposition David Cunliffe.Barbara Stewart: What will the Government do to improve the effectiveness of the rheumatic fever campaign given that a recent study has shown that fewer than one in three children prescribed antibiotics for rheumatic fever had taken the full course?Hon TONY RYALL: The Government is investing $20 million in expanding the rheumatic fever programme in this year’s Budget. One of the items that that money will be invested in is improving adherence and looking at new and innovative ways that we can encourage that.Dr Jian Yang: What other initiatives announced in the Budget will support the good health of New Zealand children?Hon TONY RYALL: It is more good news for Kiwi families in this year’s Budget. Very positive announcements—the $20 million for the Rheumatic Fever Prevention Programme extension which I talked about earlier; $6.3 million to provide bilateral cochlear implants for children; and $40 million for the new Healthy Families NZ anti-obesity programme to help encourage more New Zealanders to eat healthier and exercise more.Barbara Stewart: What is the Ministry of Health doing to ensure that general practitioners consistently prescribe adequate courses of antibiotics for rheumatic fever—for example 10 days rather than a lesser amount which is sometimes the case?Hon TONY RYALL: The Ministry of Health is working very actively with the general practice community in order to improve services for kids who present with sore throats. One of the things we are funding out of this $5 million a year—$20 million over 4 years—in this year’s Budget is the expansion of drop-in sore throat clinics. Most of these are based in general practice. They are free which is designed to encourage people to present and then get the various antibiotics and medications that might be required after that.Mr SPEAKER: Supplementary question the Hon Annette King.Hon Simon Bridges: A blast from the past.Hon Annette King: Sit down sonny.Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is the sort of disorder that is created by an interjection from my right-hand side and it will cease.Hon Annette King: In light of the New Zealand Medical Association saying that it needs more detail of the policy how many consultations per child per year on average did he base his announcement of $30 million a year to pay general practitioners for free doctors visits for children under 13 years of age?Hon TONY RYALL: As the member knows we will be entering negotiations with general practice on that so that information would be commercially sensitive at this stage. But what I have got to tell that member is that I do not know why she is so opposed to this policy because when I was meeting with general practitioners in her electorate at lunchtime they were very supportive.GCSB—2011 Briefings and Appointment of Director5.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to thePrime Minister: Was a staff member from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet present at the briefing on Operation Debut held on 14 December 2011; if so was that same person present at his meeting with Simon Murdoch and Ian Fletcher on the 12th of December 2011?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development) on behalf of thePrime Minister: I am advised that the answer to the first part of the question is no; it then follows that the answer to the second part of the question is also no.Grant Robertson: Is it correct that the Government paid the cost for Ian Fletcher to come to New Zealand for the meeting on 12 December?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I do not have that particular piece of information to hand this afternoon.Grant Robertson: I seek the leave of the House to table a screenshot of a Queensland Department of State travel expense form which shows a $1060 contribution from the New Zealand Government to Ian Fletcher’s travel.Mr SPEAKER: Is this something that has been freely broadcast to all New Zealanders?Grant Robertson: He doesn’t know about it.Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is not the question I asked. Is this something that has been screened on public TV to all New Zealanders?Grant Robertson: It has.Mr SPEAKER: Then that information is freely available.Grant Robertson: In light of the fact that the New Zealand Government did pay $1060 to Ian Fletcher for him to come to New Zealand on 12 December why did the Prime Minister say yesterday that Ian Fletcher “happened to be in New Zealand” for the meeting?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I appreciate Perry Mason’s efforts in this regard. What I can tell the member—Hon Tony Ryall: “CSI Karori”.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: —“CSI Karori”—is that the 12 December 2011 meeting occurred between the Prime Minister Mr Ferguson and Mr Murdoch the then Acting Director of theGovernment Communications Security Bureau (GCSB).Hon Annette King: You’re struggling.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I am not struggling at all thank you very much. That information is well known.Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. In Mr Joyce’s attempts to answer that question he did not address the question I asked which was about why the Prime Minister yesterday said—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member is making a reasonable point. There was too much noise throughout the question and the answer. I invite the member to ask the question again.Hon Tony Ryall: Have another go Grissom.Grant Robertson: We will come to you too.Mr SPEAKER: Order! Just ask the question.Grant Robertson: In light of the fact that the New Zealand Government did pay $1060 for Ian Fletcher to come to New Zealand on 12 December why did the Prime Minister say yesterday that Ian Fletcher “happened to be in New Zealand” for the meeting?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Because he did happen to be in New Zealand for the meeting.Grant Robertson: How can any of the Prime Minister’s claims about Ian Fletcher’s appointment be taken with any credibility when he claimed in this House that his only role in appointing Ian Fletcher was to accept the recommendation of the State Services Commissioner when in fact he organised a meeting with Ian Fletcher 3 days after he approved the appointment panel for the GCSB job he personally called Ian Fletcher and told him to contact a member of the appointment panel and Ian Fletcher was the only person interviewed for the job? Is it not about time that he stopped telling lies to New Zealanders—Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! That question is out of order.Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! Every member has a right to raise a point of order and it will be heard in silence.Hon Trevor Mallard: My understanding of the precedent of the use of the word “liar” is that in the past it has always been with regard to statements in the House. There was not a suggestion that the statement that the Prime Minister made was one made in the House.Mr SPEAKER: Order! I need no more assistance. That sort of question will lead to disorder in this House and on that basis it was ruled out of—[Interruption] Order! If the member wants to add to his record of leaving the House by talking when I am talking to a point of order we will ensure that that happens.Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! Again this is a point of order. It will be heard in silence.Grant Robertson: I draw your attention to the answers that Mr Joyce gave on behalf of the Prime Minister which deliberately avoided answering the question. We had to force him to answer another question. All of his answers were in fact out of order. They all began with an insult to me as a questioner. So if you are looking for where disorder starts in the House it starts with Mr Joyce—Mr SPEAKER: Order! In my opinion the Minister addressed every question apart from one. I gave the member the opportunity to then ask that question again to which to my satisfaction the Minister then addressed that question.Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: If it is a relitigation of this matter I will take that very seriously.Hon Trevor Mallard: While Grant Robertson made his point of order Mr Joyce interjected five times and was not reprimanded.Mr SPEAKER: Order! I called for silence throughout that point of order. If the Hon Steven Joyce did interject through that point of order then I now require him to leave the Chamber. I did not hear the interjection so I leave it for the member to confirm whether he did interject.Hon Steven Joyce withdrew from the Chamber.Budget 2014—Schools6.COLIN KING (National—Kaikōura) to theMinister of Education: How will Budget 2014 continue to support schools?Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): Budget 2014 continues to support schools through new investments big and small. Over and above the $359 million flagship initiative investing in teachers and school leaders we are investing a further $284 million into building new schools and classrooms on top of the $1.1 billion into Greater Christchurch. Operational grants will be increased by a further 2 percent at acost of $85 million and $4.7 million is being invested for children with high health needs to safely attend school learn and achieve.Colin King: How do operational grants support schools to be successful?Hon HEKIA PARATA: Operational grants are about 20 percent of total Government funding to schools. The operational grants support schools to be successful by giving them choice and flexibility in how they deliver the curriculum programme they have decided upon together with their parent communities. This means that we will be spending $1.23 billion on school operational grants alone over the next year to support schools likeOngaonga from the central Hawke’s Bay which is in the gallery today.Mr SPEAKER: Order!Grant Robertson: How is it fair that the Budget gives additional funding for charter schools meaning that for at least one charter school its per student funding will be more than $40000 a student whereas State schools have to struggle by with an increase that barely meets the cost of inflation?Hon HEKIA PARATA: Partnership schools of which there are five out of over 2500 schools are receiving funding that amounts to two-tenths of 0.1 percent of the $10 billion.Grant Robertson: How is it fair?Hon HEKIA PARATA: How it is fair is because our system has been failing a certain cohort of our population for many a long year. If we continue to do all the same things we have always done we will get the same results we have always got. This Government is not prepared to accept that. It wants five out of five children being successful.Health and Safety Workplace—Bullying Discrimination and Harassment7.BRENDAN HORAN (Independent) to theMinister of Labour: What measures is the Government taking to address the problems of bullying discrimination and harassment occurring in New Zealand workplaces?Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Labour): Bullying in the workplace is unacceptable. This difficult issue can adversely affect people’s personal health and can seriously impact business productivity. Our employment health and safety law provides explicit protection for employees from bullying discrimination and harassment. Additionally in February this yearWorkSafe New Zealand in conjunction with the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment issued best-practice guidelines on workplace bullying. The guidelines seek to support those involved in responding to situations before they get out of hand.Brendan Horan: Would those guidelines provide protections to ensure that a member of Parliament or a party leader cannot bully—Mr SPEAKER: Order! This is a question to the Minister of Labour. Further supplementary questions that the member asks must relate to a ministerial responsibility of the Minister as Minister of Labour. I invite him to ask his question.Brendan Horan: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am referring to workplace bullying.Mr SPEAKER: I will listen very carefully to the question but the member is at risk. If I consider he is asking a question that does not have direct ministerial responsibility I have two courses of action: either to leave it to the Minister to answer it that way or I have the option to rule it out of order.Brendan Horan: Would those guidelines provide protections to ensure that a member of Parliament or a party leader cannot bully or intimidate a ParliamentaryService employee into conducting unlawful activities—for example accessing the emails of another member without that member’s permission?Richard Prosser: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I believe this question is out of order. I draw your attention to Standing Order 375(b) relating to the responsibility of the Minister and also to Standing Orders 377(1)(a) and 377(1)(c) which state respectively that statements given as fact must be able to be authenticated and that statements must not contain discreditable references to any member of Parliament.Mr SPEAKER: On the occasion I am going to invite the Minister to answer it. He needs to answer it very carefully in line with his ministerial responsibility.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: It is difficult to answer such a question in the abstract and I do not comment of course on specific cases. I suspect the matter the member refers to if it were made out is one for the Parliamentary Service.Brendan Horan: Would those guidelines mean that an employee who made a complaint to her employer about abusive emails and text messages from her boss should be able to respond to that person’s public denials without fear of legal action; if not why not?Mr SPEAKER: In so far as there is ministerial responsibility—the Hon Simon Bridges.Richard Prosser: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Referring back again to Standing Order 375(b) and the matters of administration for which the Minister is responsible I believe that the Minister as the Minister of Labour is one of a number of Ministers responsible for the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and thereforeWorkSafe New Zealand but he is not specifically solely responsible and the question should have been directed to a Minister in his or her capacity as the Minister responsible for the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment.Mr SPEAKER: No I do not accept that part. We allowed the first question through marginally on the question around guidelines. This is a further explanation or request for an explanation from the Minister about those guidelines. The question stands.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Effectively my answer to the earlier supplementary question still stands. I am sure that Parliamentary Service is aware of best-practice guidelines on bullying and is incorporating them as appropriate. As a general statement of principle bullying is unacceptable no matter where or when it occurs.Brendan Horan: Does the Minister believe that an employee locked out of her office by her boss should be allowed to challenge that boss’s public denials and the denials of his colleagues without fear of legal action?Mr SPEAKER: That is an opinion question and again in so far as there is ministerial responsibility I call the Hon Simon Bridges.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I think that is a matter of opinion and indeed one that requires a legal opinion. I will repeat really all that I have said. Bullying is unacceptable no matter where or when it occurs.Mr SPEAKER: Supplementary question—Jacinda Ardern. [Interruption] Oh sorry—Brendon Horan. It is actually not that easy a mistake to make but I still managed to do it. [Interruption] If the member wants to ask his question he had better get on with it.Brendan Horan: Would those guidelines mean that MPs might have to take responsibility for their treatment of staff rather than hiding behind Parliamentary Service and gagging clauses—Mr SPEAKER: Order! That question is definitely out of order. Any issues regarding Parliamentary Service are addressed to the Speaker as the appropriate Minister.Police Resourcing—Funding and Alternative Approaches8.JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) to theMinister of Police: Does she stand by her statement in relation to Budget 2014 that “The Police’s core operating spending is being maintained”?Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice)on behalf of theMinister of Police: Yes.Jacinda Ardern: Was the Police Association correct when it stated that “police are receiving around $40 million less to do the job than they spent last year. We are no longer frozen we are going backwards”; if not what is the difference in output expenses between the two Budgets?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: The association is correct that there is $40 million which was a result of one-off funding delivered by the Government for certain things. Those matters that it was funded for were from the Justice Sector Fund to enable a restructuring of human resources and finance; the retention of a road policing underspend which helped deliver the lowest road toll in 60 years; the completion of the police’s deployment to the Solomon Islands; and one-off funding for the police to implement the Criminal Procedure Act. The core operating spending is actually being maintained at $1.46 billion and there has been no cut at all in the core operating spending or funding.Richard Prosser: Will she adopt the New Zealand First policy of minimum double staffing of patrol cars at night which will see a significant reduction in assaults on our police or do flat and reducing Budgets prevent this?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Well I do not believe that the Minister would be adopting that because that would be an operational matter for police but I can tell the member—and I hope this will assist—that when this has previously been looked at under a previous Minister it was rejected by the police for very sound reasons. It would have meant in fact that there would be a lot of police unable to service areas because of shift requirements holiday requirements and others.Jacinda Ardern: Was the extra funding from the Justice Sector Fund that the Minister referred to which is to pay for basic human resources proof that she has significantly underfunded the police in 2013 and has done so again?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I am sorry but the member has misheard. I said that the funding from the Justice Sector Fund was to enable a restructure of human resources and finance. That is not actually basic human resources work.Jami-Lee Ross: What additional resources has this Government provided to police to fight crime and keep our communities safer?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: This Government has funded police to recruit an additional 600 police officers and we have rolled outsmartphones and tablets to all front-line officers. This new technology has freed police up from paperwork and got them out on to the street delivering the equivalent of 354 additional officers—Hon Member: How many?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: —354 additional officers. We have also implemented a new policing model which is focused on preventing crime rather than simply reacting to it and the results speak for themselves. Over the last 4 years crime has fallen by over 20 percent and the recorded crime rate is the lowest that it has been in a generation. Under the previous Government crime was increasing.Jacinda Ardern: Does she believe that responding to crime quickly good resolution rates and crime prevention have a role to play in keeping crime down; if so how does Budget 2014 support those initiatives?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Well clearly they do.Richard Prosser: Can she confirm that the police have cut back on the amount of live ammunition allocated to each police officer’s annual firearms training to no more than 30 rounds per officer per year because of cost cutting due to flat Budgets and does she believe this level will provide police with an adequate degree of competency in the use of firearms?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I really would not know about that.Jacinda Ardern: In light of her previous answer can she confirm that this Budget includes a $3.5 million cut to general crime prevention a $7 million cut to investigations a $7 million cut to primary response and a $10 million cut to road policing and is she seriously telling the public that it can expect the same level of service from the police with cuts like that?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: As I have already said to the member this Government is about results. The police have shown that by using technology and by having a Minister who backs the police and does not consistently deride them—as that member would should she ever have the opportunity—the police can in fact produce results which means that the crime rate itself is now down to the lowest it has been since 1978 before that member was even born.Jacinda Ardern: In the wake of such significant cuts to the police budget and the risk of increasing operational failures that will affect the public is she content that in contrast to that the Diplomatic Protection Squad’s funding has increased by 63 percent since she took office?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I am sure the member is aware that the way in which the police allocate their funding is an operational decision for the Commissioner of Police and is not something undertaken by the Minister. That member shakes her head but unfortunately I am right and she is not.Tourism Promotion—Funding Impact and Adventure Tourism Safety9.JOANNE HAYES (National) to theMinister of Tourism: What recent investments has this Government made to grow the tourism sector in New Zealand?Hon TODD McCLAY (Associate Minister of Tourism) on behalf of theMinister of Tourism: Just this week we announced that the Government’s Tourism Growth Partnership is investing $3.84 million in six innovative tourism projects that will create jobs in New Zealand. This is in addition to the $23 million in co-funding for the applicants making a total of $26.84 million of new investment in the tourism industry. The six projects areRotorua’s Skyline Gravity Park Auckland Airport’s food and wine cluster project New Zealand Ski’s virtual guest services platform The Orange Group’s project to target Chinese visitors the Christchurch Adventure Park andBachcare’s online holiday rental project. These projects represent a potential industry investment of $6 for every $1 invested by the Government. This is a great return.Joanne Hayes: When the Minister made this announcement atTrenz New Zealand’s largest tourism trade show this week what was the mood of the industry?Mr SPEAKER: In as far as there is ministerial responsibility the Hon Todd McClay.Hon TODD McCLAY: The mood of the industry is purely a ministerial responsibility. The industry is in good heart. This year 250 New Zealand tourism businesses exhibited atTrenz and 250 buyers from around the world attended. The industry is benefiting from having a high-profile Minister who is promoting New Zealand tourism around the world and a Government that has invested heavily in targeted markets. Recently as Associate Minister I met with a number of key representatives of the British travel industry in London. Many of them expressed a realsense of optimism in having New Zealand as a tourism destination and lauded Tourism New Zealand’s outstanding overseas promotional work.Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! A point of order has been called so the normal rules apply.Hon Trevor Mallard: Thank you Mr Speaker. I would just like you to point out to the Minister that he was answering on behalf of the Minister of Tourism and the activities of the Associate Minister should not be taken into account in that answer unless he says “on behalf of the Minister the Associate Minister did something”. He has got the wrong person.Mr SPEAKER: I appreciate the point that the member is making. Ministers should recall that when they are answering on behalf of a Minister they need to initiate their answer with that comment. But I am sure on my interpretation of that answer he was actually interpreting the actions of the Minister rather than those of the Associate Minister.Joanne Hayes: When the Minister was atTrenz last year he committed an additional $158 million towards tourism over the next 4 years. What progress is he seeing?Hon TODD McCLAY: We are seeing great progress. There were 2.78 million visitor arrivals in New Zealand in the year to April 2014 which is 6 percent higher than in 2013. This includes growth from Australia of 5.5 percent; from Asia which is up by 8.3 percent; from Europe which is up by 6.8 percent; and from the Americas which is up by 8.8 percent. This Government’s support for a far more proactive and coordinated tourism strategy is really starting to pay dividends. In the most recent international visitor survey the total visitor spend in New Zealand was up by 9 percent to almost $7 billion. A recent New Zealand Institute of Economic Research report showed that within five of our major tourism markets the promotion of New Zealand was found to have had considerable impact on the choice of people—more good news for the New Zealand tourism sector.Darien Fenton: Has he not broken his promise that he made to grieving families to clean up safety in the adventure tourism industry when progress on the safety audits has stalled because of his Government’s failure to properly resource safety audit providers?Hon TODD McCLAY: No that is not correct. The Prime Minister and Ministers have worked very hard in this area. Indeed the Government is committed to assisting the adventure activities sector to meet its obligation and deadline of 1 November to register under the Health and Safety in Employment Regulations. Approximately 460 adventure tourism activity operators are subject to these regulations andWorkSafe New Zealand which administers the regulations has developed solutions to help these operators meet this deadline of 1 November.Accident Compensation—Levies10.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) to theMinister for ACC: Why did Cabinet not approve ACC’s recommended levy reductions for 2014/15?Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister for ACC): As paragraph 5.21 of theCabinet Manual states discussion at Cabinet and in Cabinet committees is confidential. This reflects a longstanding convention from which I do not intend to depart. However to assist the House if the member would like to consult my Cabinet paper which has been publicly released that paper reflects considerations provided to Cabinet.Iain Lees-Galloway: Can she confirm that according to the Cabinet paper she prepared on ACC levies she warned Cabinet that “reductions to ACC levies impact on the Government’s fiscal strategy to balance the books.”?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Yes of course because under section 300 of the Accident Compensation Act 2001 the Minister must have regard to the public interest in making these recommendations.Iain Lees-Galloway: Can she confirm that under ACC’s proposed levy reductions which her Government rejected vehicle owners would have saved $50 per vehicle this year?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I think that is evident. It has already been released publicly.Iain Lees-Galloway: Can she confirm that the employers’ and employees’ accounts are already over 130 percent funded and that even under ACC’s proposed levy reductions the motor vehicle account would still have been fully funded by the end of the 2014-15 financial year?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: That is in fact forecast but having said that this Government inherited a very difficult situation with ACC and it is very important for businesses and for levy payers that in fact the levies are continuing to go down not going up and down as they did under the previous Government.Iain Lees-Galloway: Why does the 2014-15 Budget predict only $480 million in levy reductions in the following financial year when ACC has determined that $650 million worth of reductions can be made without impacting on the sustainability of the corporation?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Presumably that would be because the ACC board does not have to take into account the same matters that the Minister for ACC does.Iain Lees-Galloway: Is not the real reason that Kiwi workers business people and families are handing too much of their hard-earned money to ACC that her Government has failed to reach a surplus by growing the economy and getting people into work?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Although it is very flattering to be told it is my Government it is actually not my Government. I am a member of the Government.Waste Management—Product Stewardship11.DENISE ROCHE (Green) to theMinister for the Environment: Why is she continuing to consult on product stewardship schemes instead of implementing mandatory schemes now?Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for the Environment): Among other reasons because I am required to do so by law.Denise Roche: Why is she consulting again now when the ministry has already consulted on this issue in 2009 and there was an industry-backed e-waste scheme ready to go in 2008?Hon AMY ADAMS: Because that is not correct and because I am required to do so by law.Denise Roche: Will the Minister act on the results of the latest consultation given her predecessors ignored the results of consultation in 2009 and 2005?Hon AMY ADAMS: We are carrying out a discussion document because we want to create a discussion. We want to hear the results of that discussion and of course I would be very interested to hear the results that come from it.Denise Roche: Would she agree that if her Government had funded the TVTakeBack scheme properly and done the work on product stewardship for TVs when it first had the opportunity we would not have thousands of TVs sitting around waiting to be recycled now?Hon AMY ADAMS: No.Denise Roche: When will this Government stop wasting time and money and endless consultations and actually use the tools of the Green Party’s WasteMinimisation Act to implement positive solutions that are supported by industry will create jobs and will help the environment and save taxpayers’ money?Hon AMY ADAMS: It is not the Green Party’s Act.Canterbury Recovery—Protection of Migrant Workers12.CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National) to theMinister of Immigration: What recent announcements has he made to help combat the exploitation of migrant workers helping on the Canterbury rebuild?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister of Immigration): Yesterday the Minister of Labour Simon Bridges and I announced more than $7 million over the next 4 years from Budget 2014 to boost the number of labour inspectors and immigration officers dealing with the Canterbury rebuild. The money will be used to fund an additional six labour inspectors and seven immigration staff including three compliance officers and two investigators. This will result in much greater capacity to educate about to prevent and then to prosecute exploitative practices.Chris Auchinvole: Why is this extra funding necessary at this time?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: The Canterbury rebuild is one of the Government’s top priorities and as the rebuild gathers momentum it is very important that we provide the tools needed to stamp out unlawful practices and provide assurances that maintain our international reputation. These extra inspectors augment the law changes announced last year that introduced tough new penalties for migrant exploitation by employers but I note with interest that the Labour Party and the Greens have said that they will vote against the bill currently before the House that would implement these changes.Darien Fenton: How will this announcement help Filipino migrants CarlosClaveron and Emmanuel Francisco who paid $15000 to an immigration adviser in return for a job paying $18 an hour but then had their pay cut by $3 a hour when they arrived in New Zealand yet months later the labour inspector is telling them there is nothing they can do?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: It will help people like those Filipino workers in a number of ways. Firstly it will help by ensuring that they have appropriate information—both them and their employers—on what is appropriate practice in New Zealand and that where employers fall below that standard there are appropriate avenues of inquiry including the actions that the member has taken. I also imagine that there would be a part to play for trade unions in supporting workers like them through that process and I am quite sure that the member would be referring workers to them.Budget DebateDebate resumed from 21 May on theAppropriation (2014/15 Estimates) Bill.Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice): What a fantastic Budget we have had. What a fantastic Budget.Grant Robertson: How would you know? You weren’t here. You were on leave.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I loved being here last Thursday to be here for the Budget but Mr Robertson missed me so much he was dreaming about me. But it is all right I was here.Grant Robertson: It was a nightmare.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: He says it was a nightmare because he is worried that I will come for him one day. Having said that it might just happen.When this Government was elected in 2008 we picked up a mess that Labour left us—Labour and its leftist friends. They left us a 50 percent increase in Government spending in their last 5 years high interest rates nearing 11 percent—Jami-Lee Ross: How much?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: It was 11 percent Mr Ross—11 percent. The cost of living increase was over 5 percent inflation of 5 percent an export sector going backwards and a country in recession for the last 4 years. I should also note that it was a country where crime was getting out of control. We had about 70 murders in 1 year as opposed to the usual 45. It was a country where people did not respect the Government and they were desperate to get rid of it and they did and they gave us the honour of being able to be their Government.This Budget is the Budget that brought us back into surplus. We inherited a recession that had been in place for a whole year before we came into Government. It was a recession that had been in place for a year before the rest of the developed world went into recession. It was a recession where New Zealand led the world into recession under a Labour Government—a Labour Government. The only thing I would say is thank goodness it was not the Greens-Labor Government of Tasmania because there would have been a recession 5 years before everyone else. We inherited a decade of deficits—a decade of deficits. We were told—all the forecasts said—that this country would have deficits for 10 years. Actually this year we are out of recession. We are out of deficit.Hon Annette King: And you increased GST put taxes up—put taxes down for the wealthy and up for the poor.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: We have also been able to produce a lot more than that because balancing a Budget is not just about saving money or spending money Mrs King. A balanced Budget means actually producing better for our New Zealanders.In my own justice portfolio I have to say that working with the justice sector Ministers Chester Borrows and Anne Tolley and the Attorney-General we have had the most wonderful time working together to make sure we bring the crime rate down. The crime rate in New Zealand per 100000 New Zealanders is now the lowest it has been in 35 years—that is since 1978. Some of us can just remember 1978 unlike Ms Ardern who was still a twinkle in her daddy’s eye. In that time what we have been able to do with the work of the marvellous New Zealand Police the Department of Corrections the Ministry of Justice and the courts is bring that crime rate down and retain that. The last 4 years of the National-led Government have led to a 20 percent cut in crime a massive decrease—a massive decrease.Andrew Little: No it hasn’t.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Mr Little does not like that but I am sorry that is true.In addition let us look at ACC. My colleague the Hon Nick Smith inherited an utter mess from Maryan Street. What a useless Minister for ACC she was. She was only slightly better than the other useless Minister the Hon Ruth Dyson. Having said that we had to deal with the levies and in fact this year and for the last few years we have been able to drop the levy rates. We are now in the position of being able to tell Kiwis that after a decade of Labour running down ACC and removing any confidence in the system we have been able to retain it. We are able to say that actually ACC is now one of the most competitive services in the world compared with anything even remotely comparable with that. What we have been able to do is say that we can deliver sustained levy cuts. There is no point delivering a cut one year and then putting the levy up the next year—absolutely hopeless.In this Budget we have also been able to say something for transport. I want to deal with transport for this reason. This Government is delivering $200 million for the southern corridor. For those of you who are not intently interested in the southerncorridor like I am that is the southern motorway. So that is really from Hill Road in my electorate down through to Drury in my electorate. I have to say it is a marvellous thing that we will be widening that southern motorway. That will save people so much in terms of money and time. It will save the environment. It will save so much in terms of productivity. That will be one of the biggest differences for people in the southern region of Auckland and also for those travelling from Hamilton—those who have to use that area. That is one of the biggest things that I am most proud of in this Budget.I am not quite as proud of that as I am of what the Hon Tony Ryall has been able to produce in health I have to say particularly the free general practitioner visits and free prescriptions for all children under 13. In my opinion that is the standout result of this Budget. It is a fantastic result for New Zealand families all over the country. I know that in my electorate of Papakura people are so excited by that so thank you Tony Ryall.What we have been able to do is to do much better than just spending money. Where we have been able to we have used the money more efficiently. We have also been able to ask professionals who are involved in these areas how they would spend the money. They have come up with all sorts of ideas. If you look at the rheumatic fever work that Tony Ryall has done that is the sort of thing where—in many parts of my electorate there are decile 1 2 and 3 schools; not all of them but many of them. One of the things that teachers say to me is making a huge difference for children is the fact that this Government has put social workers in all of those low-decile schools. That is the sort of thing that I think this Government can be immensely proud of. We have not been able to do it just by ourselves. We work with our support parties: the Māori Party United Future and the ACT Party. I would like to acknowledge the help they have given us to be able to bring this about.Unfortunately when I look at some of what has happened over the last few years I would ask what it is that the Opposition has in fact supported. Well actually not a lot. Did it in fact support any savings that this Government could make to get the country back into surplus in any of the previous five Budgets? The answer is no not one. Did Labour for instance support the welfare reform that has seen so many New Zealanders get themselves back into work and get a sense of actual independence? No is the answer. Did Labour ever support tax changes to reduce tax rates paid by every single New Zealander across this country? The answer is no. Did Labour support 90-day probationary periods which were so good for small businesses to get people some confidence to get back into work and for small-business owners to have the confidence to give people a chance to give people an opportunity? The answer is no it did not care.Did Labour support Resource Management Act reforms so that people can build their houses faster and support the growth of businesses? Well the answer is no. Did Labour support housing accords so that we could have special housing areas? They are in my electorate by the way as well—three of them now in my electorate of Papakura. Well the answer is no. Did Labour support the making of theHobbit movies in New Zealand so that 5000 jobs could be created here? No. That party’s members are the Hobbit-haters. The only party members even worse than them in their record of not supporting the Government’s moves are the wilted and bitter Greens.Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): What a great Budget for New Zealand families. Up and down the country people know that the John Key Government is making children and families a priority in this Budget and is absolutely determined to back those families. New Zealanders have got every reason to be optimistic about the future on the basis of this Budget. Through very sound financial management by the Minister of Finance the Prime Minister and the rest of the Cabinet this country is now in the black and is on a roll. This country is moving forward and we have options for how we can invest our finances now that our country is back in the black. This Budgetstands in marked contrast to what you are seeing all around the world. Just look across to Australia where the health budget has been cut by $10 billion.Hon Member: How much?Hon TONY RYALL: $10 billion. Australia’s growth projection is not as rosy as here. Things are much tougher over there and the Government is having to make decisions that could not be made under the Labor-Greens outfit that ran Australia up until a year ago. Look at France where the socialist PresidentHollande is cutting $17 billion out of health expenditure. A socialist President has cut $17 billion out of health expenditure. That is part of $90 billion worth of cuts that have been announced in France by a socialist President. So all around the world Governments are still taking significant expenditure actions but here in New Zealand because of the sound financial management of our Government we are able to produce a Budget that is in the black. And it is a Budget for families—a Budget for families and a Budget for investing in the future of New Zealand. It is marvellous to be serving as the Minister of Health in the John Key Government which is putting $1.8 billion into health over 4 years.Chris Auchinvole: How much?Hon TONY RYALL: $1.8 billion. That is made up of new money and savings in order to make sure that we can expand health services for New Zealanders and meet the cost pressures that we face. And let me just talk about what sound financial management in the health service can deliver. When I became Minister of Health deficits in district health boards were expected to be $200 million. We are now on track to get that down to $10 million or $20 million because of sound financial management of our system. We are able to have $90 million going into making general practitioner visits and prescriptions free for children under the age of 13 from 1 July 2015. That is 400000 children and their families who are going to expect a benefit from this investment. It is an important preventive health measure as parents will not have to think twice about taking their kids to their doctors and it will relieve pressure on our busy hospital emergency departments. We are putting an extra $110 million into hip knee and other elective surgeries to build on the record increase in elective surgery that we have had under this Government.We should remember that the previous Labour Government doubled the health budget but the number of people who got operations actually dropped. How does that work? How do you double the health budget and fewer people get operations? It just does not make sense. We want more New Zealanders to get hip knee and other elective procedures and that is what this funding will be focused on.One of the things that has been overlooked in this Budget so far is the Government’s very smart anti-obesity investment in Healthy Families New Zealand—$40 million over the next 4 years. It is a complete reform of the way that we address the underlying causes of poor health in New Zealand. Far too often resources are spread too thinly in this public health area. This Healthy Families New Zealand project working across 900000 of our population will be building a dedicated health promotion workforce that will be engaging with early childhood centres schools sports clubs eateries and caterers and helping them help their communities at a grassroots level to take responsibility and take action to improve the health and well-being of their communities. And we know it works. It is based on a programme that has worked very successfully in Victoria. It is going to make a big difference to many New Zealand families and many communities such as South Auckland west Auckland and parts of the South Island as well.We are also putting in $33 million for faster cancer treatment. What we are going to be doing here is addressing one of the major concerns we have picked up from cancer sufferers and their families around New Zealand. Being diagnosed with cancer is a timeof extreme anxiety for anybody. There are a lot of concerns about what the future may hold. This investment is going to allow us to put dedicated specialist psychologists into each of the six cancer centres around New Zealand to help support cancer sufferers and their families. It will also allow us to have dedicated counselling and social support staff—up to 20 of these support workers—throughout the country to ensure that patients who are diagnosed with cancer and their families receive more support and counselling. We have more than 20000 New Zealanders diagnosed with cancer every year and this is a very important part of how we support those families in their cancer journey. I think that is a top spend by our Government including extra investment for breast and cervical cancer screening programmes to ensure that more New Zealand women receive high-quality screening services. In fact we now have digital mammography services throughout New Zealand. That is providing a much better quality of services for New Zealand women.We are making a huge investment also in the training of our medical workforce. An extra 38 medical students will be able to go into our medical schools this year and we are funding $18 million to provide more postgraduate training opportunities for the extra graduates who are coming out of medical schools. We are growing more of our own doctors here in New Zealand and it is a great investment that our Government has made.We have got one major cut in health that Labour never criticises and that is the cut of 1000 managers and administrators. We have taken out 1000 managers and administrators from the health service and we have used that money to back the investment that we have made in well over 1000 extra doctors and over 3000 extra nurses at the bedsides of New Zealand patients in our hospitals. There are over 1000 extra doctors and over 3000 extra nurses at the bedsides of our public hospitals. It is a huge investment that is allowing us to provide more elective surgery faster better cancer treatment and more elective surgery—40000 more operations like hip knee and other elective operations.Chris Auchinvole: How many?Hon TONY RYALL: There were 40000 in the last year compared with what we inherited under the previous Government.I have got to say that one thing we have found about this Budget is that Annette King and Russel Norman do not know how to read a Budget. We have got the Greens going around the country saying that we are cutting the health budget over the next 3 years. That is completely wrong. What Russel Norman has not taken into account is the fact that the numbers he is looking at do not take into account the extra money that will come in next year’s Budget and the next year’s Budget and the next year’s Budget. So he is going around the country trying to tell people that we are reducing the health budget. We are increasing it year on year on year. When we started this job it was much lower than where we are now. We are building on Budget 2013 with $1.56 billion worth of health investment this year. But it is not just about the money; it has got to be about the results for patients. I make no apology for the fact that this Government has put a lot of pressure on the public health service to deliver more and we have delivered more care for patients. We do not send women to Australia for their breast cancer radiation treatment which that party did and made excuses for. We are treating them all here in New Zealand faster than that crowd ever did. We are providing more hip knee and other elective procedures than that party opposite ever did. We are delivering the results that make a difference to make this the best country to be young and to grow old in.DENISE ROCHE (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. This is a split call between me and my colleague Holly Walker. I was disappointed last week to be in the House on Thursday and Friday to speak on the first bill that the Government passedunder urgency. I was disappointed because although we voted for the bill to extend the parental tax credit to the parents of newborns to 10 weeks and raise it from $150 to $220 and to extend paid parental leave a bit it was a bill that did not go any way towards addressing the poverty of the babies born to our poorest families. It is estimated that about 15000 families and their babies will be discriminated against in the coming year with this tax credit. Although the extension to paid parental leave is a step—a little step—in the right direction the Child Poverty Action Group’s Susan St John says that the $64 million per year that it will cost would have been better spent on giving those families whom this Government has ignored—the sole parents the students those on ACC those people on the very lowest incomes—the parental tax credit.The latest census information highlights that the gap between the very wealthy and the very poor continues to grow in this country. The deprivation index shows the differences in incomes in all themeshblocks in New Zealand. InŌtara north the median income decreased between 2006 and 2013 by 17.8 percent. Meanwhile in the nearby suburb of St Heliers the median income grew by 25 percent over the same period. We all pay the price for inequality. The research shows that adults suffering serious financial hardship are nine times more likely to experience psychological distress and six times more likely to have experienced an unmet need for a general practitioner in the past 12 months. They are more likely to smoke and suffer from a range of diseases including obesity and obesity-related diseases like type 2 diabetes and rates of childhood obesity in deprived areas are 19 percent compared with 3 percent for those in the least deprived areas. Although the introduction of the free general practitioners visits for children under the age of 13 is great some families cannot even afford the bus fare to get to the doctor. That is why the Greens have a policy and a suite of initiatives that we would like to introduce that would bring health care to the primary schools to where those kids are and save those families from more expense.We see this Budget as a missed opportunity. We could take an investment approach to our people. One of the best ways to do that is to ensure that there are decent jobs for people and decent wages so that people can live on what they earn. But what we see are no measures to do that. In fact the Government’s own forecast suggests a real wage growth of only 0.8 percent and its forecast for GDP is 2.8 percent which means that wages will continue to fall behind and there is no plan for a fairer sharing of that wealth. Meanwhile the cost of living continues to increase and last year 46 percent of wage earners did not get a pay increase to keep up.When we look at the appropriations it is clear that with a bit of political will we could make real meaningful changes that would benefit our lowest paid. Take the parliamentary cleaners for example. They earn less than $15 an hour and it would take a measly $210000 per year for all 30 of them to earn a living wage of $18.80 per hour. If you compare that with the budget for MPs’ IT and the $7 million for maintenance you can see that we are looking at buildings and not at people. We believe that we can do better. We believe in a fair future where people can have good lives and with that we need a smart Green economy that works for everyone. Thank you.Debate interrupted.Amended Answers to Oral QuestionsQuestion No. 5 to MinisterHon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development): I seek leave to correct a statement made on behalf of the Prime Minister during question No. 5 this afternoon.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Is there any objection to that course of action being taken? There is none. You may proceed Mr Joyce.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: In response to a supplementary question from Mr Robertson this afternoon I stated that the Prime Minister had a meeting with Mr Ferguson and Mr Murdoch in December 2011. The reference to Mr Ferguson was inaccurate. The meeting of course occurred between the Prime Minister Mr Fletcher and Mr Murdoch.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you Minister.Budget DebateDebate resumed on the Appropriation (2014/15 Estimates) Bill.HOLLY WALKER (Green): I want to use my 5 minutes in this Budget debate to talk about the arts. From a quickHansard search of the debate so far I think I might be the only person in the whole debate to have done that so far.Hon Christopher Finlayson: Oh you wait Holly.HOLLY WALKER: I am pleased to see that the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage is here.This Budget allocates $282 million to arts culture and heritage. To put this in context this represents 0.33 percent of total spending in the Budget and 0.12 percent of GDP. It gives a sense perhaps of the value of the arts to this Government. The biggest and indeed the only increase in the Budget for arts culture and heritage is associated with marking the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings next year—$3.6 million for the National War Memorial and $700000 for commonwealth war graves. It is absolutely right that we mark this anniversary appropriately. That complex chapter in our history needs to be appropriately recognised and we need to have meaningful national conversations about what these events mean 100 years on. We saw some of this begin to happen on Anzac Day this year. So you will find no argument from the Greens against the inclusion of that extra funding to mark this important centenary. However funding the commemoration of Gallipoli is not the same as funding the arts. If we remove those items related to World War I commemorations from the Budget the spending on arts culture and heritage has actually fallen by 1.5 percent in Budget 2014.This is not as the Minister asserted a year ago a golden age for the arts in New Zealand—far from it. I recently conducted an online survey of people working in the arts culture and heritage sector because I wanted to know directly from those working in the area what the major issues facing the sector and facing them were. I was delighted and slightly overwhelmed to receive over 1200 responses most of which contained substantive policy suggestions and constructive engagement and ideas for fostering the arts in New Zealand. It seems that the creative sector was very keen to be heard and not one person who filled in my survey said it was a golden age for the arts.What they did say could be grouped into three clear themes.Hon Christopher Finlayson: Name them.HOLLY WALKER: I will. The first was resources. Artists are very—Hon Christopher Finlayson: No the people—HOLLY WALKER: There were 1200 of them Minister. It would take the rest of my call to list them all.The first theme was resources. Artists are very worried about funding for their work. They feel that there are insufficient funds to go around and that the process of cobbling together funding from multiple sources can be time-consuming confusing stressful and demoralising. The second theme was recognition. Artists feel that the arts are not adequately recognised both as a vital part of our economy and for their intrinsic socialcultural and democratic benefit to the public. Choosing the arts as a vocation is not a well-respected career path in New Zealand. Despite the fact that we all benefit from the fact that some people make that difficult choice it is not reflected in their experience particularly when trying to deal with Work and Income. To have your choice of career respected whilst accessing the financial support needed is very difficult for people in this sector.The final theme was reach. Artists said that as well as funding and promoting the arts themselves effort needs to go into building audiences and customers for their work because there is no point in making creative work that disappears off into a void. Fostering participation and appreciation of the arts is just as important as fostering creative work itself. So those are the threeRs. We could add another one as well—the regions—because another strong theme that emerged was that outside the main centres artists found it very difficult to forge a career in the arts or get recognition for their work.I was keen to see whether any of these things would be reflected in the Budget. Unsurprisingly I am sad to say they were not. There were no new resources as I have said. It was actually a fall in funding for the arts if you take out the Gallipoli commemorations. There was no recognition. Not one person certainly not the Minister has put out a press release about what the Budget does for arts and culture. And there was nothing to assist artists to reach new areas. In fact there was less funding in that area due to the funnelling of funds into the new Screen Production Incentive Grant in the previous financial year. Finally for the regions—well we saved the worst for last. Not only does the Budget contain nothing to foster community arts in provincial and regional New Zealand but it slashes funding for regional museums by 25 percent. That is a quarter less funding for regional museums just like that.The Government’s attitude towards the arts was best revealed in the now infamous comment by the Prime Minister John Key in a written endorsement to the New Zealand Literary Heritage Trail: “While our literary heroes may never challenge the glory and respect given to our All Blacks we still need role models to inspire us.” I have news for the Prime Minister: our literary heroes indeed all our creative heroes already challenge the All Blacks but they will not do more of it with the help of this Budget.Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for the Environment): The resounding sense that I am left with in the week after the reading of Bill English’s sixth Budget is the extraordinary contrast that it represents. It represents a contrast between a party and a Government that are first of all united that are effective and that are a team that is 100 percent behind their leader and the Opposition benches. It contrasts a party that is 100 percent focused on the things that actually matter to New Zealanders and to their families with parties that—[Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. Can I just advise the House that members who do not have the floor do not have the right to interject on each other while another member is addressing the House. Courtesy is contagious members.Hon AMY ADAMS: As I was saying the Budget contrasts a party and a Government that is 100 percent focused on the things that actually matter to New Zealanders and their families with a party that is content to spend its time focused on trivia on scaremongering and on conspiracy theories. It contrasts that with a country that is back in black after the terrible years of the global financial crisis the terrible economic legacy that we were left by the previous Government and of course the difficulties of the Christchurch and Canterbury earthquakes. It is a country that is back in black after picking up the 2009 Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update in whichTreasury said that thanks to 9 years of Labour we were facing never-ending deficits. Treasury never believed when we took office that New Zealand would ever get back into surplus—ever.Andrew Little: You’re just making it up.Hon AMY ADAMS: Read the pre-election update. Treasury said that we were facing never-ending deficits thanks to the Labour Government and its 9 years of economic mismanagement. But what we have is a country that is back in black and we are back in black in contrast to what we are seeing in Australia. As our Prime Minister has said on many occasions if you want to know what a Labour-Greens Government would do to your economy would do to your population would do to jobs and would do to families it is called Australia which is now facing ballooning Budget deficits and critical slashing of public expenditure. By contrast we are a Government that every year year on year has put more money into education and into health and has seen far better results.This is Bill English’s sixth Budget and did he not do a tremendous job? This Budget is a contrast to the wish list of Labour’s alternative Budget. It is a contrast to the unspecified uncosted waffle that we see from the Opposition. If it had anything serious to offer to New Zealanders by way of contrast it would have told us. But no it would far rather spend its time slinging mud down in the gutter with the rats. You have to wonder when the Opposition parties are going to learn. When are they going to learn that actually the measure of a Government’s success is not how good it is at taking money off New Zealanders and spraying it around? If that was the measure of success if we judged our Governments by how much money they pulled out of the pockets of New Zealanders and threw around then no doubt Labour would be the party we would want. If that is your test of success—who takes the most money out of your pocket and who can spend the most—then you would go to Labour.Andrew Little: Why did you delay the ACC cuts by a year?Hon AMY ADAMS: Actually the reason the polls are telling the story that they are—Mr Little for all your shouting—is because what actually matters is the results you get for New Zealanders. When New Zealanders come and talk to me they do not talk to me about what the non-departmental appropriation in the Police spend is. They ask me: “Are we safe on the streets? Will my kids get a good education? Can I get a new hip or a new knee when I need it? Will my kids get a job?”. Those are the things that they talk to me about. On every single one of those this Government and everyone in it can stand proudly and say “Thanks to 6 years of prudent economic management absolutely your children have a much better chance now of getting a job. Absolutely you have a far better chance of getting a new hip or a new knee if you need it. Absolutely your children are going to be in a much better position of getting the world-leading education that all five out of five of our students deserve. Absolutely you are safer on the streets.” That is what matters to New Zealanders and even in these tough times that is exactly what we have delivered.One of the most important things I think we have done and that you are now really starting to see pay off is setting what we call the Better Public Services targets where for the first time we said to our public sector agencies that what we actually really care about and what we are going to measure you on is whether you are making a difference in the things that matter. We have said to the health sector that what we want to know is whether people are getting elective surgery sooner whether they are getting cancer treatment in New Zealand and whether they are getting breast cancer treatment and rheumatic fever treatment. Are your children getting access to the education that they need are there good reporting standards for parents and are more children getting into early childhood education places? And they are. We have said to the police that we wantto know whether New Zealanders are safer. That is what we are going to judge you on as an agency. They have responded stupendously well. That is actually what matters.Any party that stands up and says “We can do better because we would spend more money.” misses the point entirely. People care about whether we are delivering better results. We can stand here 6 years in and say: “We have absolutely better health absolutely the safest streets for 33 years absolutely better education and absolutely more chance of getting a job.” That is what New Zealanders care about. This year’s Budget now shows a record of more than $15 billion going into our health sector. As Minister Ryall has just said it is not about the number but what it shows you is that we are also getting 40000 more hip knee and other elective surgeries every year. Forty thousand people a year are getting the surgeries that they need but were going to be denied under the Labour-Greens Opposition.I want to talk for a minute about Canterbury the area that I am from. I want to reflect on the fact that Gerry Brownlee is doing a tremendous job in what has to be one of the hardest portfolios in our Government. For a period of time I was lucky enough to act as his associate. I have now passed that responsibility to Nicky Wagner and I know she will do a tremendous job. But let us look at Canterbury. This Budget puts another $50 million into helping the Canterbury recovery. That takes our total to $15.4 billion of support for Cantabrians. We are standing behind our second-largest city. We promised we would and we are. I want to take a moment to look at some of the statistics out of Canterbury. As of now we are looking at 53500 houses fully completed under the Earthquake Commission programme. Another 47000 emergency repairs have been completed. We are currently seeing 90 homes a day completed under the Earthquake Commission programme—90 homes a day. In fact the Government is spending $9 million every day on rebuild receipts in Canterbury—$9 million a day.Let me talk for a moment about the environment because this Budget continues this Government’s real commitment to making sure we actually get results in the environment—not talk not rhetoric not running us down in the international media for political points but actual results. This is a Government that is delivering the most rigorous national system of freshwater management the country will ever have seen. We were committed to that from day one of coming into Government and all the way through it has been a core part of our programme. This year’s Budget commits another $20 million of new funding to making sure that that water programme is delivered and supported. If there is one thing that we have learnt through this process it is that you have got to have good information underpinning good community processes if you are going to get good resilient results.What we have seen from other previous Governments that like to talk about the environment was that they talked a big game but did nothing—nada zero. Were there ever any mandatory requirements on councils to lift water quality? Not one. Was there ever a study of what the allocation picture was in New Zealand? Not one. Did they even ask the question of what water was coming out of our water bodies and what contaminants were in them? No of course they did not. They just sat back and said: “That’s a council issue but isn’t it terrible?”. This Government is delivering. It has put another $20 million inin this Budget alone. This is a Government that is going to see real environmental achievements thanks to the support of John Key the National-led team and Bill English’s sixth Budget. We are back in black and that means that New Zealanders have choices and the opportunity to get ahead and that is why they are continuing to support the John Key - led Government.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable member Andrew Little—an opportunity to make a contribution.ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. It is an opportunity that I relish and seek to serve the good people of New Plymouth and Taranaki well in. I want to start by saying this: there is nothing greater in this country than National Party members’ capacity for self-delusion. They have come here day after day since last Thursday spinning a yarn that even they know to be totally untrue. They talk about the state of the economy. They forget that the last Labour Government produced nine surpluses in a row built up the Cullen fund built up the ACC fund to nearly $11 billion over its time restored the health of that organisation and delivered the lowest level of unemployment in the OECD. They forget all that.They forget Bill English’s own endorsement that said that because of the state of the economy New Zealand was well poised to face the consequences of the global financial crisis. They forget conveniently that New Zealand suffered a drought in the period 2007-08 which caused the economy to slow down. Apparently it is the Labour Party of New Zealand that controls the weather in this country! The Labour Party is held responsible for that. National Party members—all of them who have stood up to speak—know that they have spoken absolute rubbish about the state of the economy that they claim to have inherited in 2008. The truth is that the last Labour Government conducted itself and its economic stewardship with aplomb.The other misleading area that the members of this Government keep talking about is justice and the crime rate. Well that balloon was popped some weeks ago at a symposium organised and hosted by no less a person than the Minister of Justice. One of the imported experts from Britain said that there is nothing that is happening in the crime statistics that politicians can take responsibility for and that there were other factors that were driving the lower reported crime rate—not the least of which was the fact that most cars now have security systems car alarms and all that sort of stuff.But here is the other thing. We know that in this country something else is happening. That is that the way crimes are managed at the front line is changing. You talk to any front-line police officer you talk to any police prosecuting sergeant or you talk to any Crown solicitor and they will tell you that it is not too flash and that the pressure is on them. The pressure is on them to reduce the number of charges to wind back the charges to prosecute less and to try to get that guilty plea for the more minimal charge. That is what is happening in New Zealand today.What that means for the victims of crime in this country is that they are not getting justice because the people who are inflicting their evil ways upon victims are not being properly called to account. Soon at some point in the future because of the measures of this Government and the justice sector—it will not be too far away—a person who has a record of criminal offending that is not properly recorded in our crime statistics or on his or her crime record will appear before a judge on a bail application the judge will have flawed information on which to make a risk assessment and will let the person out and that person will reoffend while on bail and potentially inflict very serious harm on an unwitting citizen.That is how much this Government cares about justice and the victims of crime in this country. It does not care at all. It does not care at all. You have only to look and see what is happening with justice spending in this Budget: $40 million less and legal aid slashed—and not just family legal aid which is what we were told was going to be cut because the new magic family law system was going to solve all family disputes in an instant but actually criminal legal aid is being cut back as well. This is not a Budget for justice; this is a Budget for injustice.I want to talk about jobs wages and the regions. I spend my out-of-Parliament work time in a region that is claimed by this Government to be loved by it and a region that it considers to be very important. But this Government is doing nothing for the regions. Itis doing nothing for Taranaki. Its sole achievement after 6 years of being represented by a National MP in New Plymouth is to expand a 100-metre bridge when so much more is being asked for and demanded by people. The expansion of a 100-metre bridge is all that the people of New Plymouth have to show for after 6 years of being represented by a National MP.What we see in New Plymouth and Taranaki now is good businesses closing and jobs going. These are jobs in heavy engineering the mainstay of the Taranaki economy for so long—jobs out of Fitzroy Yachts jobs out of Fitzroy Engineering Group jobs out ofTenix and jobs out of Pace Engineering. That industry is under severe pressure because this Government does not care about the regions. It does not put money into the regions. It does not care aboutTaranaki’s roads. It does not care if people in regions like Taranaki are unemployed and lose their jobs.While we are talking about unemployment and young people talking about the young unemployed let us talk about the comments of the MP for New Plymouth in the House just the other night when he claimed that things were going gangbusters—he said that things were going well. Well the reality is that they are not.Taranaki’s unemployment rate is higher than the national average. It was 6.5 percent in March this year and jobs are still being lost.You look at what the Government is not investing in that is crying out for investment. Roading is one of them. People might make a bit of a joke about me banging on in this House about State Highway 3. It is a crucial arterial road for Taranaki and it is totally neglected by this Government—totally neglected. The Government has nothing to say about it and even less to do about it. The road is crying out for attention. It is a road on which countless people have died in the years during which this Government has been in power and nothing gets done about the underlying problems. Nothing gets done about the poor paving the poor roading the poor alignment the lack of shoulders or the crumbling cliff faces on the cavernous areas that the road goes through. This Government does not care about it. That is an area that needs attention.A Government that cared about regions like Taranaki would not stand aside and just cheer on what the private sector is doing in the oil and gas industry as important as that is. It would know that it has a responsibility to do things as well to look after the roading to look after the port to look after the other infrastructure in that region to get alongside those big infrastructure businesses like the port and others and to make sure that the investment is continuing that people are being kept in good work and that the heavy engineering industry is being supported.The Government would care about its manufacturing policy and make sure it had a manufacturing policy that meant that complex sophisticated gear goods and structures could continue to be manufactured here rather than shutting down our heavy engineering industry the same way that it is doing with forestry and sending good jobs overseas which is what it is doing. This Government’s performance in the regions is atrocious. This Government’s performance on jobs in the regions is appalling. That is why this Government is running out of time and why people in regions like Taranaki have given up and no longer have confidence in it.I want to talk quickly about wages. There is one thing that this Government does not talk about because it is guilty of not doing it and that is lifting wages in this country. Last year 46 percent of wage and salary earners—nearly half of the entire New Zealand workforce—did not get a pay rise at a time of a growing economy. Oh the Government members are very good at standing up and crowing about 3 percent economic growth. They are very good at crowing about the fact that there are more hours being worked and that earnings have gone up but ask about what is happening with people’s wagerates and whether people are getting a pay increase. They have got nothing to say about it because they do not actually care. They do not actually care that with a growing economy that is the very time people should be getting pay rises. Nearly half the workforce in New Zealand cannot get pay rises because our system is busted broken and people cannot get them. Now in regions like Taranaki we see not only that those who cannot get pay rises do not get them but that good people—the ones who are getting decent pay rises—are now losing their jobs.This Government’s record is appalling. This Budget has nothing to do for it nothing to say about it and the members opposite from this Government should hang their heads in shame. The Government’s performance is appalling. It has no economic development plan. It has no regional development plan. It does not care about the regions. The regions are suffering. But come September that will change because the people in the regions know that there are people on this side of the House who care about the fortunes of the regions who care about what happens to jobs and families and good citizens in the regions—regions like Taranaki—and who will be a Government that will do something about it and lift wealth share the wealth share the national income and make this a fairer and more just country.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General): I want to begin by paying tribute to Shane Jones. He was an opponent not an enemy. I very much enjoyed getting to know him when we both went to Israel together on a parliamentary exchange in 2007. He was a great orator he was a staunch defender of growth and progress and he was a very hard worker. He was what I would say was a great social democrat in the Peter Fraser tradition as opposed to those in the Labour Party caucus today who are lefties in what you could call the Michael Foot or Tony Benn tradition.Sitting on the left-hand side of Shane yesterday was Hone Harawira who is hopefully about to accept the torch from Shane to work hard for his people in the north but I do not really hold my breath for that. Shane really did work extremely hard for the good folk up in the north and I want to acknowledge publicly the tremendous assistance he gave me over my 5½ years as Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations in TeHiku o te Ika and more recently withNgāpuhi. Hone Harawira comes down to Parliament and gives hellfire and brimstone speeches but in contrast to his reputation as a headline hussy Shane really got stuck in and worked well behind the scenes because he knew the potential benefits of Treaty settlements in the north. I want to say to his successor Kelvin Davis that I will be very happy to work with him in a bipartisan way to see a settlement withNgāpuhi.I say also to Mr Little—one of the few on the other side of the House whom I happen to respect—that I do think he has absolutely ignored the regional benefit assistance that comes from Treaty settlements. If you look at the Taranaki region for example and if you look at the forthcoming settlements withNgā Ruahine and TeĀtiawa you have got almost a couple of hundred million dollars going into the New Plymouth region. That sort of money is not to be sneezed at. Moreover iwi are playing a very important role in housing—for exampleNgātiWhātua’s Weymouth social housing project. An important aspect of our regional development from a Māori affairs point of view is the work that we are doing on the reform of the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act. If we get that right then it will be worth billions of dollars to the country. So all this pro forma Labour Party research unit nonsense about how we ignore the regions does not stand up to any kind of scrutiny regardless of how you look at it.This Budget has been accurately described as a Budget for families. That is clear from the extensions to paid parental leave and the increase in the new child tax credit. The Budget is most important however because Mr English has kept the home fires burning—indeed he has fanned the flames. He has made New Zealand a better place toraise a family again. He is bringing New Zealanders home. Under the previous administration a football stadium - full of New Zealanders—over 40000—were leaving for Australia every year. Now not only are more New Zealanders staying; with net immigration to Australia only 200 in April we are seeing the return of sons daughters brothers sisters and grandchildren who had never seen their grandparents before.This is a Budget that will be welcomed by families and its benefits are clear—support for parents and the reunion of loved ones. I can fully understand why the Labour Party is not all that happy with it. In fact the other day in the House on Tuesday afternoon I said to Paula Bennett my bench mate that the Labour Party members seemed very unhappy that afternoon. She said: “Well they’ve just had a caucus meeting—they’ve had to spend a couple of hours in one another’s company.” I think that is the truth of the matter. All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.Andrew Little for example is very unhappy because he wants to be Labour’s candidate in the marginal seat of Rongotai and enjoy my company in the campaign and of course because he wants to be leader. Under the previous leadership of Phil Goff David Shearer and David Cunliffe they have all been unhappy. Every time they dump their old leader and anoint a new one there is a fresh wave of new tribulation. David Cunliffe is unhappy because Shane Jones is jumping ship. Phil Goff is unhappy because he did not jump ship a little while ago. I must say that I am not a psychiatrist so I do not understand why Trevor Mallard is always unhappy. Labour used to be unhappy that the Greens were fringe extremists tarnishing their centrist brand; now Labour is unhappy that the Greens are about to overtake it as the party of Opposition. Labour used to be unhappy under Phil Goff and David Shearer. Labour was being led by a man under the thumb of his advisers afraid to be himself—Sue Moroney: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I appreciate that the member has run out of good things to say about his own Government’s Budget but this is the Budget debate and I have not heard in the last 3 minutes—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Look there have been some wide-ranging views expressed in the last 14 hours. The Minister is coming to a conclusion—oh no he is not—but I invite the Hon Christopher Finlayson to continue.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: David Shearer was a man under the thumb of his advisers and constantly undermined by Grant Robertson—well that is the one constant thing in the Labour Party. But the Labour Party wants me to talk about policy. I have been talking about Treaty settlements the reform of Te Ture Whenua Maori Act.Let us come on to an area that Holly Walker and I are interested in because Grant Robertson was not interested in it as the Labour spokesperson. It was nice to see Jeanette Fitzsimons in the gallery this afternoon. Those were the days when the Green Party was the nice party. I regret it has descended to be the nasty party but I have to tell you that it is also the erroneous party. I want to say—Hon Tony Ryall: Why do you say that?Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: Why do I say that? I say that because for example on Budget day Holly Walker tweeted that the regional museums’ funding had been cut by 25 percent. No she was wrong. She had simply misread the appropriations and did not realise that last year’s actual spend included money carried through from the previous year. The actual annual regional museums’ funding is exactly the same. I called yesterday—I have to tell Holly Walker—for applications for over $6 million in funding.She also tweeted that the heritage funding was down by 23 percent on Budget day—wrong again. She had misread the appropriations. She did not realise that heritage wasnow in two separate appropriations with one dedicated to the World War I centenary commemorations and that the amount had increased overall. World War I commemorations are among the most important pieces of work that I am working on at the moment. I know the Greens do not like any kind of recognition along those lines but these are important matters and it is important I say to Holly Walker that we look after this particular period in our country’s history very carefully. I have to say to Holly Walker that the arts continue to go from strength to strength. It truly is a golden age of the arts. Te Papa has received further capital spending from the Future Investment Fund recognising the national museum and art gallery but Holly Walker ignored this. We have provided $8 million in capital spending this year after the neglect of the previous Clark administration to deal with important issues of depreciation and we are working steadily on the Te Papa North concept which is going to be fabulous as well.The National War Memorial Park is being fully funded. This is going to be exciting. The extension is nearly complete along with the under-grounding in order to provide a peaceful and contemplative place and to stop car fumes from polluting Mt Cook School as had been envisaged by the previous Government. I will say to Holly Walker and she should listen that the National War Memorial Park will also have numerous cycle paths. I know how important they are to the Greens. This Budget really does have something for everyone.This golden age follows on from the successful reform of the Arts Council recently and of the Historic Places Trust and in my outreaching and bipartisan way I acknowledge the contribution of Catherine Delahunty there. There is the review of the orchestral sector the partnership between the Government and the Film Archive—which Holly Walker ignored—and the fiscal implications of that New Zealand’s tremendous guest of honour year at the Frankfurt Book Fair and the saving of the film sector from trade union thugs and making it internationally competitive. There is so much to talk about in the arts and that is why I was so disappointed that Holly Walker’s figures were all wrong. She has ignored the fact that the arts are doing very very well under this Government. If I have got any advice to offer Holly Walker for whom I have enormous affection and respect may I say that she would be much better off concentrating on her lobbying legislation rather than wasting the time of the House raising ignorant and incorrect facts about this wonderful area that I am so very proud to be the Minister of.Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): The Minister of Finance opened this debate by saying what a privilege it was to deliver his sixth Budget. In response New Zealanders will make sure he is unable to deliver a seventh because his Government’s budgetary policies are taking us down the road of traditional macroeconomic policy: short-sighted in time mired in 20th century ideology and limited in 21st century vision. I say this to the Hon Chris Finlayson and he should listen: it is the great-uncle of all Budgets cynical in tone and mercantilist in nature.The Budget has one laudable component: it aspires to eliminate the current account deficit and enter a new era of surplus. That is a necessary aspiration and the Government is on target towards a wafer-thin surplus which it is claiming as the ticket to electoral victory this year. This nutrient-thin cake is sugared with the icing of vanishingly small social handouts to families. This is designed to have the Government appear as a benign patriarch—a better and brighter future for all New Zealanders. That future according to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance revolves around growth.The transparent shortcoming of this election Budget is that it is intrinsically flawed. It is flawed because it wilfully disregards the difference between sustained growth and a sustainable economy. The Government cites as its overarching objective the goal ofwhat it calls sustained growth. What could be better than sustained growth? The concept conjures up a poster image of jobs health and education all in the context of stable interest and exchange rates and a wizard-like balancing of the books.Now and again the Minister used the phrase “sustainable growth” in lieu of “sustained growth” without seeming to know the difference. That is a problem because the concept of sustained growth is flawed. A sustained trend simply means a continuing trend. We can have sustained growth. That just means it is aspiring to go on for ever. We can have sustained growth for a while that is unsustainable—so-called sustained growth that goes on and on until it breaches the carrying capacity to sustain it.We cannot have infinite material growth on a finite planet. That in fact is already occurring at the global level. The ecological footprint breached Earth’sbioproductive capacity in the early 1980s. That curve has continued upward ever since. That curve has continued with the growth in global population and per capita consumption continuing remorselessly. It is a new form of sustained growth—sustained but not sustainable.What does that mean for the national economy our macroeconomic planning and our budgetary judgment for 2014? It means that when we come to formulate our priorities we must begin with the goal of sustainability rather than sustained growth. It may be that sustained growth can occur within the context of sustainability but if it cannot it must not be the goal.National’s four priorities in this Budget were identified as responsible management of public finances a more productive and competitive economy delivery of better public services and the Christchurch rebuild. By way of contrast let us consider one overriding Budget priority—responsible management of the nation’s economy in the context of global sustainability. Let us consider four supporting goals to that. One responsible public finances towards a balanced net international investment position; two higher economic productivity; three better public services for greater social equity and higher quality of life as measured by the genuine progress indicator; and four the Christchurch rebuild.Bill English ended his last Budget statement with the comment that “New Zealand is among the first developed countries to achieve a return to normal economic settings.” but the global economy is on anything but normal economic settings. Bill English may wish it were but it is not and never will be again. Until we regard ourselves as ecological stewards in our budgetary planning until we regard ourselves as being responsible for sustainability above all else those economic settings will never again be normal. That is what is so deeply flawed in this 2014 Budget.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Jan Logie—5 minutes.JAN LOGIE (Green): This Budget delivered a small fiscal surplus but today I would like to share with this House some stories from the community on the human cost of this Government’s decision to prioritise tax cuts for the wealthy. This Government has offered crumbs to some of the poor and has told the newborn babies of beneficiaries that they are not even allowed up to the table let alone allowed their fair share of the pie.Disabled people are amongst the poorest people in New Zealand. Last year the Government changed the law to deny equal human rights to family members caring for them thereby compounding their family poverty. This year within the income support budget we have seen further cuts specifically targeting people with disabilities. In 2012 the Government slashed the disability allowance by $37 million—9.2 percent—by removing funding for some medicines and alternative treatments cutting funded services for beneficiaries and reducing numbers getting the allowance. Last year we saw the disability assistance budget underspent by $2 million and now the Government is cutting that budget line again by a bit more than $5 million. This is despite risingcosts. It costs more to achieve a normal standard of living if you have a disability. In fact research shows that it can cost over $2500 a week more just to have a normal standard of living if you have a significant disability. There are obviously other funding sources for people but not for everyone and there are widely acknowledged gaps between health ACC and Work and Income.Many people whom I have spoken to who have disabilities say they have lost considerable amounts of money per week from their benefits over the last couple of years. There is a general consensus that what they receive from Work and Income does not cover anything like the real costs of living with a disability. To get the disability allowance you need to provide receipts. But if you cannot afford to cover the cost of the item in the first place you cannot claim for it. Further some things have now been deemed standard costs and not disability costs and they will not be paid for. Disabled people are now having to regularly visit their doctor to verify their disability which they then have to pay for and their doctor’s diagnosis is not uncommonly overridden by Work and Income staff “employed experts” who may have no expertise at all in that health area.I have heard from one person who told me about getting a urinary tract infection because he is supplied with only four leg bags per annum when the recommended minimum is eight. There are other people I have heard from who have developed infections and pneumonia because they do not have internal temperature regulation and they cannot afford to heat their homes properly. I have heard from people who have disabilities who are significantly underweight because they can afford only one meal a day. I have been told by a health practitioner that they had a patient with mental health problems who was so stressed by the Work and Income system that it had induced a psychotic episode that put them into hospital. I have been told by more than one person that they have been told against the policy that they can claim up to only two incontinence pads a day. Where is the dignity? It is clear from the stories that I am hearing that although problems are not universal they are common enough that to be sure real harm is occurring. These are stories of some Dickensian nightmare.The Government is reducing budgets in the face of hardship. Although some Work and Income staff are doing their best the reduced funding lack of expertise and an entire goal to reduce the Government’s welfare liability instead of supporting people in need means people are suffering severe indignities. The Government’s line in response to these challenges is usually that the Greens would just leave people to rot on the benefit. This is not true. We would ensure that people can live in dignity and we would implement a proactive equal employment opportunities policy an agenda to remove the barriers to employment. We believe that most New Zealanders would be happy to pay for that.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I understand the next call is a split call. I call the Hon Maurice Williamson.Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga): It is a split call and because it is only 5 minutes my intention is to focus on only one issue and that is the issue of Bill English and his six Budgets. Budget 2014 did not just happen; Budget 2014 was the result of 6 long hard-working years to get the country to where it is. It is quite clear that when we came into office the world was about to go through the most catastrophic global financial crisis that it has had ever since the Great Depression.Members on the other side and members of the Post Primary Teachers Association and the teachers union are often going on—I actually think quite rightly—about how you cannot judge a teacher just by the results of their classes because if they happen to be teaching a decile 10 class with rich parents and lots of resources it is a lot easier than if they are teaching a decile 1 class where the kids do not have those resources. I hearabout that all the time from the other side. That same comparison works with finance Ministers. If they are preparing Budgets when there are times of abundance and surplus and world growth as Michael Cullen had—no wonder he was able to produce such surpluses he did not know what to do with them. He had to set up things like the Cullen fund because the world was just growing.But New Zealanders know that in 2008 a global financial crisis hit the world and countries much bigger than us much stronger than us took a battering. Go to Europe and have a look at its big economies that just had their guts ripped out from them. My credit today goes to a finance Minister of a very small economy of only 4 million people who took a look at the future and said: “We are going to have to do some amazing amazing accounting work to keep our books in balance and to finally get some surplus.” He said he was not going to do the harsh “Let us put all the pain and suffering back onto the people of New Zealand.” so he took the rough edges off it he got under way with his first Budget in 2009 and the sixth Budget in 2014 is a resulting culmination of that.But it was not even that easy. He only just got going into that 6-year cycle when along came the biggest disaster this country has ever had called the Canterbury earthquakes. Billions of dollars of damage was done to the economy on top of the global financial crisis. The good news is—and I say it is really good news—that the vast bulk of the voting public out there understand the circumstances that the National Government has had to work under to get us to where we are. They understand that the pain could have been way more severe but Bill English’s prudent fiscal management cut the rough edges off it. They know when they look across the Ditch to Australia just what an appallingly managed economy can look like and they see the pain and the suffering that is going on. And now the time has come for them to make a decision about the future.I have told this House many times and I will say it to members again: elections are not won and lost on 457 different items; they are lost and won on one major split. Is it “Is the Government tired and clapped out and is it time for it to go?” or is it “Don’t put it all at risk because this lot have done a good job.”? I have been around this place a long time. I have seen when those “time for a change” tsunamis come. I saw one come in for Labour in 1990 and no matter what it did it got wiped out. Trevor Mallard went Phil Goff went Annette King went—it just wiped them out. I have been on the receiving end of one in 1999 under Jenny Shipley. No matter what we did we got wiped out. But do I detect anything like a “time for a change” move out there? No I do not. In fact there is not even the embryo of a “time for a change” move but there is a huge concern about the “Don’t put it all at risk.”Bill English has delivered to this National-led Government the most amazing set of six Budgets and put us in a spectacularly good position for the future. The general public of this country will thank him for many years to come for being the best ever Minister of Finance under the worst possible conditions he could have ever experienced.Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (Minister of Pacific Island Affairs): It is a pleasure to rise to speak to this Budget debate and along with my colleague who has just resumed his seat the Hon Maurice Williamson congratulate the Minister of Finance Bill English and our Prime Minister on another effective Budget for New Zealanders. It is a Budget that has family and children at its centre. It is a Budget that leads to a surplus in 2015. And it is a Budget that at its core focuses on the issues that really matter to all New Zealanders and they are health education jobs housing economic growth and above all living within our means.There is $173 million on paid parental leave. That is for supporting children when they are at their most vulnerable and families during what may be difficult times andwe are there to support them. There is the $90 million on free doctors visits and prescriptions for kids under 13. Over 400000 kids will benefit and 45000 of these will be Pacific. Again we are there to support them.The feedback I have been getting in Maungakiekie and from Pacific communities is that this Budget is good for our families and can help with tight family budgets. It shows that National cares about the vulnerable it cares about those who are in need and it cares about those families who are struggling. We know that healthy kids are better able to learn grow and develop. That is also why we are investing a further $150 million into early childhood education. You see our children deserve the best start to life and this Government is delivering on that promise. For Pasifika that means the number of early childhood education centres has increased by 9 percent to 96 early childhood education centres across this country. The number of children enrolled has increased 12 percent in the last 5 years and now there are over 3100 children participating in early childhood education. The number of teachers for Pacific children has gone up 30 percent under this National administration and there are now over 1900 early childhood teachers across this country.This Budget is about more jobs. We expect another 172000 jobs by 2018. In only this last year we have had 84000 jobs added and created in our country and again 7900 of these are for Pacific people. What that shows is that a job promotes self-reliance it promotes independence and it promotes the ability of all New Zealanders to feed clothe and develop and nurture their families. Average wages have gone up $3000 in the past 2 years and they are forecast to increase by another $7600 by 2018. For Pacific people the average weekly earnings have gone up 14 percent or $94 in the last 5 years. There have been low increases in the cost of living. We know that wages will have grown by 13.9 percent by 2018 and inflation will grow by only 9.8 percent. This Budget is about families and our children. This Budget is about New Zealand getting to surplus and it is about the issues that matter to all New Zealanders.On 20 September New Zealanders will have a decision to make. Will they vote in a Government that has a record of success and a vision for a great New Zealand or will they vote in a rabid Opposition that is divided and devoid of good ideas? I say they will vote in the National Government again. They trust this National Government to look after all New Zealanders: those who are vulnerable those who are in need and those who require help. Thank you.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I understand that the next call is a split call—the Hon Damien O’Connor.Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): Today the Parliamentary Library had a promotion of agricultural industries. As we walked into Bellamy’s I could not help but borrow this iconic symbol the sheep to raise in this House today. This country was built off the back of the proud sheep. Wool was worth the value of gold in the 1950s and is still a core part of one of our biggest industries the meat industry. But the sheep unfortunately is not the brightest of animals. Like the National Party it has this terrible tendency to follow its leader blindly. When the leader is an international money trader it is little wonder that that party fails to come up with any vision or any long-term plan for the future of the New Zealand economy.Can I say that this is a Budget of wasted opportunities and nowhere is that more apparent than in the meat industry itself. Can I say that the Budget fails to do anything to drive down our overvalued New Zealand dollar. It fails to do anything to curb ever-increasing interest rates and bank profits which continue to climb. The Budget desperately manipulates figures to come up with a so-called surplus. The social and economic deficit in this Budget will become apparent over the next few years.From a rural perspective the jobs we desperately need are still in many ways linked to our proud sheep. But thankfully we are a little more intelligent than National. What we are seeing in the sheep industry is that carcases are now being exported to China. We seedryland areas being converted into dairy. We see that pasture-fed protein is now changing to grain-fed protein. That is a lost opportunity because the Minister for Primary Industries in the Government continues to be a sheep instead of becoming the shepherd. It is about time Minister Guy became the shepherd and gave some guidance to an industry where thousands of workers up and down this country are fearful of their jobs because of the declining meat industry.Communities are at risk. Thousands of Māori workers and thousands of other Kiwis up and down New Zealand who have kept our country going are now at risk because of the declining industry and the fact that that Government did nothing. The Government threw money at the meat industry; it offered no guidance. Its Primary Growth Partnership grant system in the Budget has allocated the best part of $350 million to the meat industry with little or no accountability. The Auditor-General is investigating that now and I look forward to the outcome of that. The Primary Growth Partnership grants are an insult to every taxpayer because the Government is giving money to its mates and pretending that it is going to do something to revive the meat industry and give security to those workers up and down this country.This country desperately needs a Labour Government with vision a Labour Government—Hon Tau Henare: Ha ha!Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Mr Henare would do well to go and read not Labour Party propaganda or wisdom but theNew Zealand FarmersWeekly of this week. Labour’s monetary policy is sound. Until we sort out our monetary policy no export industry can have security and no export industry can invest in the way it needs to and know that it will get a fair return. If I can quote from the wisdom of theNew Zealand FarmersWeekly it said that the dollar “is 5-15% higher than is justified by the country’s earning potential.” and is costing us $9 billion a year in export earnings. That would pay off a lot of this debt of $56 billion. In summary can I quote that “Labour’s plan is not perfect.”—we do not claim that—“But it should reduce dependence on foreign lenders and their expensive money and push the currency down to more export-friendly levels. And for that it deserves farmers’ backing.” The reason the National Government will not intervene is because it is led by a money trader and that Government like this thing here is a bunch of sheep and will take this country down the gurgler unless we change the Government and put Labour in power.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The Hon Nanaia Mahuta—5 minutes.Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato): National’s Budget 2014 is more rhetoric than reality. The very rich are getting richer and the very poor are finding it much harder. I am from a little town calledNgāruawāhia—many of you might know it—and we just tell it how it is. Many of us in this House have heard stories from nurses from teachers from social workers from road workers from subbies from people at the checkouts. They are asking why they are working harder for longer for less. They know actually that the National Government has not provided the brighter future that it promised.On 20 September 2014 people will be turning out to hold this Government accountable. This Budget has not delivered to them. In fact people are sitting at home listening to this debate and saying that actually it is easy to balance the books when you sell off State assets. It is easy to balance the books when you sell off State assets but what have we got to show for it?I want to highlight several things about this Budget. There is no long-term plan for New Zealanders that will deliver a brighter future that is more sustainable delivering better jobs for higher wages. This Budget does not address the serious challenges of inequality and poverty that families across the country are feeling in very real ways. This Budget does not leverage towards opportunities where the Māori economy can make a significant contribution. Where the rubber hits the road and where normal people at home judge whether or not this Budget is successful is on the issue of jobs.Let us look around. In our regions there have been a number of job losses which do not just affect individuals; they affectwhānau. In places like Northland the Bay of Plenty Gisborne andManawatū look at the statistics. They tell a very different story to the one that the Government is trying to have you believe. The regions are suffering. There have not been solutions to grow more jobs in those places where families really need the opportunities. They need to be backed.In the area of our kids yes the Budget did provide for free health care for under-13-year-olds but that is only if you can access those services. Go to places along the East Coast in MekaWhaitiri’s electorate Ikaroa-Rāwhiti and you actually have to get to the place where the doctor is to be able to access those free health care services. Go toKāwhia—people will tell you the same thing. Go to Manurewa where the doctors are already oversubscribed from dealing with a number of vulnerable users and they will tell you they are already under pressure. Will this funding deliver extra doctors in our clinics? Can the Government answer that? If you are going to provide free health care for under-13-year-olds where it matters then it has to be about delivering into areas where there are high needs and vulnerability and to those communities where there are a number of factors that limit access to free health care.In the area of homes what we see is a solution from the Government where it is transferring the responsibility for social housing to the third sector. It is transferring the responsibility for social housing to the third sector and stepping back and away from that responsibility. To me that does not sound like upholding the opportunity for people to have affordable rentals; that is passing on the problem. And that is what is happening here under this Government and its Budget. In fact what is also happening in the space of housing is that homeownership is a distant prospect for low and middle income earners who are scrimping and saving to try to get a 5 percent deposit let alone a 10 percent deposit. It is a very real challenge.If this Government is going to stand up and promote a Budget that is delivering on the fronts of jobs kids and homes on all three counts it has failed miserably. There are serious challenges. You cannot just put a plaster on a wound that is beginning to fester. That wound is inequality and poverty. This Government will be judged on 20 September by the way in which it helps the most vulnerable in our society. Alongside my colleagues in the Labour team I say that they have failed miserably.Finally on the issue of Treaty settlements can I say that if this was a Budget that delivered opportunity to leverage off Treaty settlements we would see far different solutions than the ones coming from the Government. The Government is rushing through Treaty settlements. There will be aspects that will come back to challenge this Government and make it accountable for what it is doing in this space. The Budget has failed those most in need abysmally and the Government will be held to account.Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Police): It is a great privilege to stand and take a call in this Budget debate today. We in this National-led Government are very proud of our 2014-15 Budget. We are very proud of its family focus including $500 million of support for New Zealand families which has found favour with New Zealanders right across the country. In my own electorate of East Coast which has many families struggling to make ends meet and too many communities with very high socialdeprivation the free doctors visits for children up to the age of 13 have been welcomed. I would say that they have been extremely welcomed and I have had numerous phone calls into my office. Also as an area where many women are working one two or in some cases three seasonal jobs the expansion of the criteria for paid parental leave has also met a great need as we seek to support newborns and their mums in those early weeks and months.We in this National-led Government are extremely proud of our Prime Minister and our Minister of Finance who have steered this country through some of the toughest economic times ever seen since 1931. We have been very lucky to have the leadership that we have had from John Key and Bill English. We in this National-led Government are very proud that we are to be finally back in surplus ahead of most of the developed world without having to have made the savage cuts that we have seen our friends around the world have to make in countries like the US the UK and then just recently our closest neighbour Australia.How wise our leaders were to resist the calls from the Opposition—Labour and the Greens—to spray millions and millions of dollars around to artificially stimulate the economy to create jobs. They were largely make-work jobs that Opposition members were talking about. That was what they were begging us to do at the time. They are not saying that now of course. Now they are saying that they would have done the same as us that they would have been fiscally responsible etc. But actually in this House they opposed every single change that this Government made to try to restrain Government spending which had got out of control under the previous Labour Government. But look let us face it: the Opposition never lets the facts get in the way of a good story.This Budget delivers so much to our communities in ways that we know will make a tremendous difference like $22 million to budgeting services. What a great job our budgeting services around the country do. I know that in Gisborne andWhakatāne as a result of our welfare reforms their offices have been working with more and more families. They have welcomed the extra resources because that enables them to make huge changes and differences in the lives of some of New Zealand’s families.An amount of $33 million will go to help the most vulnerable in our community the children who are at the greatest risk of being bashed of being beaten and in some cases of being killed. I was delighted that the Minister for Social Development today announced those extra Children’s Teams. Two of them are coming into my electorate—one in Gisborne and one inWhakatāne. Both communities have a dreadful record of vulnerable children being hurt by those who should be taking care of them.We in this National-led Government are proud that Budget 2014 builds on the hugely successful results in recent years in reducing crime and reducing reoffending to make sure that we have fewer victims out in our communities and that more New Zealanders can feel safe in their homes in their communities and in their workplaces. I want to put it on record here today that the police and corrections will continue to target their resources to where they know they will make the most difference and they will work smarter. They will work smarter because that is what it is all about. It is very clear that the Opposition does not understand that. It thinks that if you throw more money at something it is going to get better results. We know that that is not the way it works. We know that we can deliver better public services by actually working smarter. Certainly in the justice sector we are seeing that on a daily basis—working together and working smarter. The Opposition does not understand that.Can I say here today that the police’s core operating budget is being maintained at $1.46 billion in 2014-15. I know that the Opposition has tried to make much of some expenditure from last year that has not been carried over into the 2014-15 year and has described it as cuts. Well that is just not true. Restructuring human resources andfinance implementing the Criminal Procedure Act a road policing underspend sending more people off to the Solomons—these are things that happen just once so why on earth would you carry over the funding for that into another year? I know that it is really difficult to read Budget figures when you are in Opposition and they are just looking for a quick headline but actually the facts are that the police’s baseline funding has been maintained. And we have seen over the last 4 years as the police budget has been maintained that they have worked hard to reduce recorded crime to a 30-year low. We have seen a reduction in crime of 20 percent and they have done that by working together and working smarter.We have heard the Labour Opposition criticising the police for that. Opposition members minimise the effort that the police have put into reducing those crime rates by saying that it is happening all around the world. Well I can tell you that it is not happening around the world to the extent that it is in New Zealand. We are world leaders. Our police are doing a fantastic job and they deserve the support of every member of this House to pat them on the back. People out and about tell me that foot patrols—having more police wandering around in the central business district keeping an eye on what is happening and out and about in vulnerable neighbourhoods—make them feel safe and actually stop crime from happening in the first place. This is about how we work smarter and support our police to deliver safe communities.Budget 2014 also supports the Prime Minister’s Better Public Services targets to reduce reoffending rates by 25 percent by 2017. Corrections are doing a fantastic job. They have increased drug and alcohol rehabilitation places both for prisoners and for those who are serving community sentences alongside providing much much greater access to education and skills training because we know that those are the things that will make a difference to the lives of those people as they finish their sentences and go back into our communities. Seven and a half thousand prisoners leave prison and go back into our communities. The Government invested $96 million over 4 years to increase that rehabilitation and we now have 9300 fewer victims of crime a year as a result of a 12.5 percent reduction in reoffending. That is making an enormous difference to the lives both of the offenders and of the people in their communities.We in the National-led Government are proud of our justice sector and we back it. We applaud its hard work and its dedication and we encourage the sector in its desire to work smarter and to deliver better results and safer communities. We know that cash is not king as our colleague Shane Jones talked about last night. Cash is not king. When it comes to public services it is the results that count. It is better results for New Zealanders and in the justice sector it is better results so that people can feel safe living in their communities. I am proud to be part of a National-led Government standing and delivering the 2014 Budget.Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): It is a privilege to be able to just wind up this Budget debate as the Government looks to a confidence vote with some confidence. I was very pleased to hear MinisterTolley’s speech because she along with other Ministers has done an excellent job over the last 6 years now—almost 6 years—of providing better public services when we have had a tight budget and we have done it again this year. At a time when the Government is spending less new money by a large factor than the previous Labour Government we are seeing improvements in those kinds of issues that are at the core of the purpose of our public services. This is a Government that seeks to resolve problems and reduce misery not fund a system that feeds off it.That is where the Labour Party is. The Labour Party believes in State monopolies that fund services that feed off misery. Labour does not want problems solved because if you have less misery you have less Government. That is a key to this Budget.Under this Budget the Government will spend 30 percent of GDP—down from 35 percent just 4 years ago. We have been able to control expenditure not by slashing and burning but by understanding the core drivers of criminal behaviour of educational failure and of social dysfunction and starting to act on them. I say “starting” because it is pretty clear that the changes we are bringing about in public services are only just getting going and the benefits are only just starting to flow. There is so much more to be done. That is why we have a surplus. We have a surplus because what works in our communities works for the Government’s books. Less crime less spend—you get a surplus. More educational achievement less remedial teaching—you get a surplus. That is what is working. That is in the context of a growing economy.We are having a confidence vote. This is a confident Budget for a confident country—a Budget for a country that knows where it is going from a Government that knows what it is doing. That is why it is going to win the confidence vote in this Parliament. It is because it is in the context of an economy that is growing and New Zealanders beginning to understand that all New Zealanders can share in the benefits of that growth. This time around it is New Zealand families with young children. That is the product not of any particular big decision in this Budget or in the previous five from the John Key - led National Government; it is a product of considered and consistent change over time always working towards sustained economic growth that can deliver dividends to New Zealand households year after year. New Zealanders do not really measure growth in terms of GDP. They measure it in terms of better job security—and it is a lot better now than it has been for a long time—and whether their incomes are likely to rise. If we achieve if New Zealand achieves—Andrew Little: You’ve got a pretty bad start so far—46 percent can’t get a pay rise.Hon BILL ENGLISH: It is interesting that the member keeps quoting that because that is about the average in most years including when he was in Government. In any given year when Labour was in Government 45 percent of the workforce did not get a pay rise. But I will tell you what they were doing. I will tell you what was happening. They were paying interest rates of 10 percent for first-home mortgages. The cost of living was going up. Inflation by 2007-08 was 5 percent and today it is less than 2 percent. So they had no wage rises interest rates were going through the roof to 10 percent and the cost of living was going up by 5 percent.Andrew Little: What are you doing to lift wages?Hon BILL ENGLISH: OK well let us discuss some of the member’s proposals that came up in this Budget debate. Here is one. Here is a question: what is the Labour Party’s immigration policy? All I would say is: “Don’t ask Labour because it doesn’t know.” I think as Phil Twyford said it was going to cut immigration to a net 5000. So I expect that this weekend at the ethnic functions in Auckland Labour members will be getting up in front of the Indian community and saying “There’s far too many of you. We’re going to cut the number. We’re going to slash the number—no more Indians.” Then because they are true to their word they will be going off to the Chinese celebration and saying “Ah too many Asians in housing auctions around Auckland. They’re all Chinese. We’re going to slash the numbers.” And then they are going to go down to the Pasifika function. That is right and they are going to say “No more family members from the Pacific Islands.” That is because Phil Twyford and David Cunliffe said on the radio: “We are going to slash immigration in order to control the housing market.”Hon Tony Ryall: That’s what that means.Hon BILL ENGLISH: It is not just what it means; it is what they said. It is what they said. Labour’s immigration policy is to slash migrant inflows. I think it is a bit weird. I think it is a bit weird from a party that has traditionally regarded itself as therepresentative of the migrant communities. But we will be there Ms Collins will be there Sam Lotu-Iiga will be thereKanwal Bakshi will be there and they will write down what Grant Robertson says to those people. But then it is not weird when you think about what they are saying to low-income New Zealanders.Chris Auchinvole: What are they saying?Hon BILL ENGLISH: I will tell you what they are saying to low-income New Zealanders. They are saying—I thought you might be interested—“We’ve got this really bright new idea which is to increase KiwiSaver contributions so that the Chinese buyers don’t have to pay higher interest rates.” OK? Or: “So that the Indian buyers do not have to pay higher interest rates.” So we have asked a simple question: by how much would you need to increase KiwiSaver contributions in a compulsory scheme to offset a 1 percent increase in interest rates?Chris Auchinvole: And what do they say?Hon BILL ENGLISH: They do not know so we have done our own calculation and it is 15 percent—15 percent. So the Labour members in the weekend are going to be out in theŌtara market saying to women who have the second job in a household and are doing 25 hours’ cleaning in the middle of the night during the week in order to feed their family: “You have to join compulsory super and we are going to take 9 percent of your gross income off you. That’s not enough because when the Chinese drive the interest rates up we’re going to put it up to 15 percent.” and we will be listening. What a stupid dangerous unfair policy. Apparently slashing immigration and forcing low-income people to save money they do not have is Labour’s response to the Budget. I used to think Labour was lazy but I did not think it was that silly. I really did not.I am looking forward to campaigning in South Auckland with the growing interest from the Pasifika vote. We can stand up and say that jobs are growing wages are rising and Labour will stand up and say “We are going to slash your take-home pay and make sure your family cannot come to New Zealand.” But do you know what Labour will do? It will say something completely different. As usual we will have no idea what its policy is because in here in the office buildings and on Radio New Zealand National it says compulsory superannuation and slashed migration but when the members get out in the suburbs of Auckland I do not know what they will be saying. They will be sounding like Martin Luther King. That is what they will do—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I am sorry to interrupt the member. This debate has concluded. The question is that the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition the Hon David Cunliffe be agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat all words after “that” be omitted and replaced with: “this House has no confidence in a Government that has failed to put people first; that has widened gaps where too many of our children grow up in poverty; that has failed to provide enough good jobs and has lowered incomes; a Government that has no vision for our nation’s long-term well being but is mired in politics as usual.”Ayes56New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 6; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Noes64New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 50 Noes 71.The result corrected after New Zealand First votes originally being announced as Ayes 7.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the Appropriation (2014/15 Estimates) Bill be now read a second time.Ayes64New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes56New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 6; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Bill read a second time.The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 64 Noes 57.Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3)Second ReadingHon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (Associate Minister of Local Government) on behalf of theMinister of Local Government: I moveThat the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a second time. When the previous Minister of Local Government introduced this bill he followed on from the good work of his predecessors particularly the Hon Dr Nick Smith. Dr Nick Smith initiated the Government’s Better Local Government reform programme back in 2012. I now add to those credits the fine work that the Hon Chris Tremain did in 2012 and 2013. That included the preparation and introduction of this bill.This bill is the final legislation in the Better Local Government programme. This bill is to support local government in becoming better with better accountability and being better at managing assets which will lead to New Zealanders living bolder better and brighter lives.In 2002 the Local Government Act introduced a new purpose statement. This compelled local authorities to take a fresh look at their activities and priorities. It encouraged them to re-engage with their communities. This was so that their needs and preferences would have first call on scarce resources. We are seeing the benefits of this more sensible approach to expenditure which most councils are taking and it is a better way to work. The first bill provided new and improved mechanisms where local communities could initiate investigations of alternative local government arrangements for their areas.Several communities are exploring those alternatives even as I speak and we will see the fruits of that in coming years. That bill also provided an updated and expanded range of options for Ministers to support and assist councils that were struggling.The second bill builds upon that work. It increases the range of options through which local authorities can achieve efficiencies. This is at the scale at which services and facilities are better delivered. For some councils and communities the best option may be to follow the reorganisation path to amalgamation or restructuring.The bill expands the options for local authority reorganisations so they are better able to support their vision for the community. The Local Government Commission can consider establishing local boards as part of the governance arrangements for new and existing unitary authorities. These may have features similar to those in Auckland but can be tailored to local circumstances. The bill makes it clear that reorganisation schemes can deal with council-controlled organisations. They can also put in place joint committees where these are warranted.For circumstances where reorganisation is not justified or not possible the bill makes it easier for councils to find alternative solutions such as working together and sharing services. The bill’s provisions encourage councils to cooperate and collaborate to improve and provide better services for their ratepayers.The bill also includes measures to enable councils to achieve efficiencies in other ways. For example it provides councils with more flexibility about how they consult their communities. This bill enables councils to design and use engagement processes that are appropriate to varying circumstances and community interests. All this should be done at less cost. The new significance and engagement policy will provide a clearer guide about how and when communities can expect to be engaged.This bill reduces the number of occasions where the costly and time-consuming special consultation procedure is implemented. It facilitates the wider use of technology with which councils can communicate with their communities and the bill also improves consultation on council long-term plans and annual plans.It provides for consultation on specialised documents with a focus on the issues that are important to ratepayers. They should not focus on draft plans containing hundreds of pages of detailed information that is understood by few. The bill also seeks to improve the strategic management of local authority infrastructure. Local authorities own more than $96 billion in fixed assets. This is mostly an infrastructure used to provide basic services that families and businesses rely on every day.The majority of councils manage their assets well on a day-to-day basis but all communities need assurances that their critical infrastructure is managed strategically and sustainably over the long term and that it is resilient to natural hazards. This bill therefore strengthens the emphasis on asset management planning as a key aspect of council obligations. This will ensure prudent stewardship of resources. To support that principle clause 34 of the bill requires local authorities to include in their long-term plans an infrastructure strategy covering at least the next 30 years. The strategy will identify the significant infrastructure issues that will be faced by the local authority over that period. It should also disclose the options for addressing the issues and the implications of those options.The Local Government and Environment Committee has made a number of changes to provide clarity about the purpose and expectations of that strategy. Submissions and other feedback revealed concerns about the uncertainty involved in anticipating what will or is likely to occur up to 30 years in the future. Some councils feared that they would be held to account if their projections subsequently proved to be wrong. That is not the purpose of these strategies; they are not accountability documents and they are not plans.The changes to the bill make it clear that what is sought is an outline of the scenarios for the provision renewal or replacement of major infrastructure. These are the assets that the local authority considers most likely to be needed over the 30-year period. Rather than detailed costings what is expected is estimates that indicate the impacts of projects. This will mean that councils and communities are aware of them and can plan how to manage them. The select committee also emphasised this by allowing strategies to group blocks of 5 years for the last 20 years covered by each strategy.One means through which local authorities raise money to pay for infrastructure to meet growth is through the development contributions. Development contributions are one of the costs of building new houses and therefore affect their sale price. It is therefore important that development contributions are fair and no higher than they need to be. This Government does not want future generations priced out of homeownership. However local authorities should not be prevented from investing in the infrastructure necessary to help our communities grow. A balance is required.This bill introduced measures to ensure that development contributions are better focused and more transparent and that they support development to meet demand for new housing. The bill does this in a number of ways. The range of community infrastructure for which development contributions can be charged will be narrowed. This change reflects the principle that new homebuyers should pay for only the basic infrastructure that is required for the completion of that development. Infrastructure that will benefit the whole community including larger community assets such as sports stadiums should be paid for by the whole community. For some territorial authorities this will require them to find alternative revenue sources to replace development contribution funding of facilities not defined under this legislation. In those cases we expect that communities will enter into debates as to whether they are prepared to pay the extra funds that will now be required for those projects.I believe this to be healthier than obscuring the true cost with a veil of unclear development contribution levies. However the select committee heard from councils that have already completed or were building such projects in anticipation of future funding from these development contributions. It would be unfair to ratepayers and to those who have already paid development contributions for that stream of revenue to be cut off at this late stage. That would leave an unavoidable shortfall that ratepayers would have no choice but to fund. The select committee has avoided this by inserting a transitional grandparent clause in the bill. This provides that a territorial authority can continue to require and collect development contributions for a project that is completed or substantially completed. These assets may in fact be outside the scope of the new definition of community infrastructure.Many of the other changes are more technical. The select committee received 120 submissions on the bill predominantly from local authorities and the development industry. There was strong support for the bill’s objectives and there were many useful suggestions for improvement. I want to thank all those who made the effort to make a submission for their input and I wholeheartedly commend this bill to the House.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—TeAtatū): This bill the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) is yet another paper tiger from National and its ongoing mission to project the image to the New Zealand public that it is actually doing something about the housing crisis. We have come to expect this from the Minister of Housing Nick Smith and now we see the Minister of Local Government taking a similar path. This bill deals with much more than housing affordability but I want to focus my comments on the development contribution components of the bill.Labour’s view is that this bill represents a wasted opportunity. This would have been a great opportunity for a thorough and fundamental review of the way that we fund infrastructure and services to support new urban development and new residential developments. Sadly because of the shallow and limited approach that this Government has taken on this issue as it has with so many other aspects of housing policy this bill will make we believe very little difference if any. It will make perhaps a small contribution to reducing the cost of building a new home. It is another example of National chasing a headline and trying to convey an idea and throw people off the scent really and distract them from the reality which is that very little of substance has been done by this Government on housing affordability. In a nutshell the changes to the development contributions regime are better than nothing but that is a very very low bar.What the bill does is essentially give developers the right to appeal against development contributions that are levied upon them by councils. It sets up a review process. Arguably that will give some transparency to the process and may impose a little bit of discipline on councils that it is argued by some are using developmentcontributions as revenue gathering. The second thing it does is limit the things that councils can levy development contributions for. It excludes community infrastructure. So from now on councils will not be able to levy development contributions for local parks and reserves swimming pools community facilities and local libraries. That is a distinction that National chooses to make—that community infrastructure is not necessary and that it is a “nice-to-have”. What it will inevitably mean is that some councils will find themselves in the position of approving developments and subdivisions and those new communities will not get the community infrastructure that they should be able to expect. It shows the values that National has—that it does not regard community facilities like swimming pools local libraries and community halls as being as important as water and electricity. That is National’s value system. That is the choice it makes. This harks back to Bill English’s comments the other day when he said that developers should be able to build more shoebox apartments. That is his idea—that people should be able to live in shoebox apartments and not have access to community facilities. That is National’s solution to the housing crisis.The big consequence of this bill is that the costs of infrastructure and services for development are going to get pushed over to the ratepayer. The Auckland Council submitted that what this bill will mean for them is an 8.5 percent increase in the average rates bill by 2021-22. So that means an average increase of 8.5 percent on the rates over the next 7 years.Hon Nicky Wagner: Not right.PHIL TWYFORD: That is what Auckland Council said. It provided the workings and the calculations. The impact of this bill is going to mean that the ratepayer is going to have to pick up the cost. It has been shunted from the buyers of new homes on to the general ratepayer. I think that is an irony because for the last 5 years this National Government has railed against councils and all their irresponsible lending and borrowing and irresponsible spending but what this bill actually does is to simply shift the cost that developers normally pass on to the buyers of new homes. Those costs are going to be passed on to the general ratepayer. That is an irony.Arguably that is a reasonable policy choice to consider. In the middle of a housing crisis it is perfectly valid to consider where you draw the line between the user-pays approach that is embodied in development contributions and the rest of the community paying for infrastructure and services that support new development. That is a reasonable policy choice to consider. But I do not want the National Party members in the House today to leave here thinking that they can simply shovel the costs from the buyers of new homes to the general ratepayer. Someone has to pay all right? That is the reality. Someone has to pay for this infrastructure and what National is doing is simply getting the ratepayer to pick up the tab. This measure is National just kicking the can down the road. It pretends to be serious about tackling the drivers of expensive housing but in fact it is doing nothing. It is just kicking the can down the road. If National was serious about tackling the cost of infrastructure and services it would have done a much more fundamental review of how the costs of new development are shared out and how they are dealt with.I want to just put on the record for the benefit of this debate three areas that National could have addressed if it was serious about this problem. The first is that it could have considered the idea of spreading the cost of infrastructure and services for new development over the lifetime of that infrastructure. What happens with almost all the other costs is that they get loaded on to the price tag for a new house. They get capitalised into the value of that house and structured into the market price of new housing in this country. That is what happens. Although development contributions contribute only 4 percent on average according to the Government’s own figures of thecost of a new build when you add all the other costs of infrastructure and services that a developer has to pick up it can add $50000 $60000 or even $70000 to the cost of a new house. That gets added straight on to the price tag of a new house and that is a huge barrier for the New Zealand homebuyer and particularly the first-home buyer.One approach that the New Zealand Initiative has done a lot of work on is spreading that cost over the lifetime of the assets. One way to do this in the New Zealand context would be to pay for that infrastructure and those services by bonds by taking advantage of the low cost of borrowing for local government and then using a targeted rate to pay that back over the next 30 to 50 years. That would not reduce the cost but it would at least spread it. The Government could have considered what a number of overseas jurisdictions do and that is use development levies or contributions to incentivise the kind of development that you want—for example more intensification more brownfield development instead of sprawl—but no the Government showed no interest in that. It could have chosen a productivity approach by getting together with industry and the private sector to look at how infrastructure and services for new urban development could be done in a more efficient way and make cost savings that would ultimately be passed on to the homebuyer. A lot of new urban developments are employing more sophisticated process management of the process of laying down broadband and the three waters and electricity and roads and footpaths and lighting—all the infrastructure that goes into new subdivisions. They are doing that and they are saving a lot of money. If the Government worked with the private sector to template that kind of approach then it could have delivered real cost savings instead of this paper tiger.All we are seeing is Nick Smith and his cronies in the National Cabinet pretending to do something about housing affordability just like they pretended that taking the tariffs off varnish and nails andGib board in the Budget last week would save $3500 for the first-home buyer with no thinking about how they would prevent that windfall from being pocketed by builders and developers in an overheated market. Just like the Government’s lame Auckland Housing Accord which will struggle to do any more than what the market is already delivering in terms of new development this bill is a disappointment. Like we did at the first reading Labour will vote for this bill but with serious reservations.Hon NICKY WAGNER (Minister of Customs): I am very pleased to be able to take a call on the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) in its second reading. This is a bill that is about better more effective and more efficient local government and it amends the Local Government Act 2002 to give effect to the second phase of the Government’s reform of local government. It is all about providing councils with tools to give local authorities the ability to provide better services to their communities and it focuses particularly on improving housing affordability through the changes made to development contributions. Local government just like central government needs to be able to deliver better services to New Zealanders through tight fiscal times and this bill and its reforms are part of National’s programme for building a more competitive and productive economy and for delivering better public services.It was very interesting listening to the member Phil Twyford talk about the bill. He obviously does not understand the detail. I want to make it very very clear that all infrastructural costs of a new development for housing must be paid by the developer. That is in terms of the roads the sewers the water etc. etc. including parks reserves and community centres. The only extra facilities that cannot be put on those development contributions are those that are also used by existing residents. In other words we are sharing it fairly across the whole community.National does not want future generations to be unable to afford to buy their own homes nor do we want local authorities to be unable to invest in the infrastructure necessary to make our communities grow. It is so important then that development contributions are fair and no higher than they need to be and I think everyone agrees with that. Some councils have had specific projects that have required ongoing development contributions for bigger projects and so we put a transitional clause into this bill to allow them to continue to collect those contributions for things that have already been built or that are currently under construction.We have also changed section 200 of the Act. Clause 54 amends the section to clarify that territorial authorities cannot charge development contributions for infrastructure that has already been provided for and funded by the Crown. In other words if the Government pays for it the ratepayer does not have to pay for it and that seems ultimately fair to me. The bill also requires better and more transparent planning for the costs of infrastructure and we noticed that these huge infrastructure programmes like those for water sewage—those sorts of things—really put the pressure on rates. So this bill specifies that the council must have a strategy that says that the most likely scenario—Denis O’Rourke: They have always had those. This is not new.Hon NICKY WAGNER: —for the management of the infrastructure assets’ indicative estimates and projected for capital and operating expenditure. Some councils may have done this but what we are looking for is a consistency across the councils to make sure it is very transparent for ratepayers. These estimates will be linked with their long-term plans over 10 years to start with and then for 5 years as it is further out.At the request of the local government sector this bill extends the local boards model that has been used in Auckland. It is a model where the local boards share the governance with the councils’ governing body. It is something a little bit like community boards which people are familiar with across the country. But these local boards are statutory bodies. They have mandated responsibilities and cannot be sidelined by the council which often happens with community boards.Ratepayers are very keen for their councils to deliver services efficiently and well. This bill will encourage greater collaboration and shared services between local authorities and it will provide local authorities with a range of really practical ways to achieve efficiencies of scale without necessarily having to amalgamate. The bill also focuses on better consultation decision making and planning. It provides councils with more flexibility and clarity about how and when to consult. It allows that consultation process to be easier and simpler and it also specifies that they have to use plain English documents which I think will please a lot of ratepayers. It also allows councils to use new modern technologies and techniques to consult with the public and hopefully that will keep the price of consultation down.The final goal of this legislation and of all National’s local government changes is to provide better services and to keep rates affordable. Rate rises are getting under control. The average rate rise in 2012 was 3.1 percent and it has been coming down year after year under the National Government since the high peak of 8.62 percent in 2007 under Labour. I think that is good news for all New Zealanders.MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti):Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker.Tēnātātou katoa. I am honoured to take a call on the second reading of the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3). I was not a member of the Local Government and Environment Committee but I did read with interest the select committee report that came back and was presented to the House. Just by way of clarification the bill that we are debating tonight makes various reforms to the Local Government Act including amending the process by which regional councils maytransfer responsibilities to territorial authorities expanding the ability to have local boards as part of any reorganisation of local government by the Local Government Commission and by allowing the Local Government Commission to impose council-controlled organisations during the process of amalgamation. The purpose also includes reforming the consultation requirements for councils restricting the ability of councils to charge development contributions and finally enabling territorial authorities to enter into development agreements which are legally enforceable contracts with developers.It is on the fourth point reforming the consultation requirements for councils that I would like to make my contribution. Labour clearly believes in local democracy and the right of communities to have a say on major decisions affecting them. We believe that local decisions are best made locally. We are absolutely committed to close and collaborative working relationships with our local government agencies to ensure they are empowered and resourced to meet the needs of their communities. Consultation at the local level is a right for all New Zealanders. But in recent times as a very recent member of this House I have witnessed in my own electorate of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti in my own home town of Hawke’s Bay local democracy being sidelined severely in pursuit of economic development. We are of course talking about theRuataniwha Water Storage scheme. People throughout the Hawke’s Bay have absolutely felt sidelined in terms of their views on this proposal. I have seen some really questionable actions by our Hawke’s Bay Regional Council and for me that particular incident is still leaving quite a bitter taste particularly as a ratepayer myself around how poor processes can lead to poor decision-making.In that situation in today’s time I guess the question of the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council appointing its chief executive at the time to manage the project removed the ability to be objective when a proposal was sent to our governors our Hawke’s Bay Regional Council. So from day one when we are talking about this bill and ensuring that local democracy-making abilities are protected here is an example that I am sharing with this House where I have seen anything but local democracy. People throughout the Hawke’s Bay particularly Fish and Game and other NGOs including iwi have fought to get their voices heard around the decision of theRuataniwha Dam scheme and I have been at those meetings. Coming back to this bill again for me it highlights that when we are talking about strengthening consultation requirements for councils I am left with this kind of scepticism in me because we have had plenty of examples where that has not occurred at the local level.But let us look at the positive side. In this bill we are trying to strengthen and hold local governments to account particularly local authorities to ensure the voices of our ratepayers our general public out there are heard when we are talking about major infrastructure. When I read the select committee report I noted that under the title “Special consultative procedure” the bill removes the mandatory requirement for councils to use the special consultative procedure on significant decisions such as the establishment of council-controlled organisations or the disposal of regional parks. There probably is not a member in this House who has not enjoyed the facilities of local parks or local swimming pools. We have all benefited in one way or another or our children or our grandchildren have—whatever the case may be. So I am concerned to hear that this bill removes that. I am concerned for our people in the sense that the bill removes that. It includes little guidance on what decisions are significant so I pick up what was said in the select committee about when the special consultative procedure should be used.Although some local authorities may be more innovative in their public consultation the bill removes the certainty that councils will consult widely and well on significant decisions particularly as good practice guidance has yet to be developed by theGovernment. Yet again it goes towards the heart of whether when we talk about improved consultation when we talk about protecting local democracy we are seeing this in this bill.The other part that I found quite interesting when reading the select committee report was around the narrow definition of community infrastructure. I do believe that there were quite a few submitters to the select committee who put up strong opposition to that part and talked about the limited community facilities. But for me what came through in this part of the report was the fact that a lot of the councils will be left holding the cost of keeping some of these infrastructural facilities open and given the rate burden that a lot of our people are facing now I am concerned that more costs are going to be put on to ratepayers to keep open our local swimming pools to keep open our local community halls—our libraries even. It gives me concern that the bill will force some of that cost back on to the ratepayers and like the submitters clearly demonstrated that is an added burden in what are already trying times.I do also want to note that one of the submitters was from the Christchurch City Council and they went to the heart of the extra cost that they would be left with with this bill passing. There is a revenue shortfall for Christchurch City Council of some $32.2 million over 10 years. This is on a city council already facing a huge dilemma with the earthquakes and the rebuild. For this bill to have that consequence on an already strapped and challenged council I think is one of those unintended consequences that need to be brought to the attention of this House in debating this bill.I take on board my colleague PhilTwyford’s comments that the heart of this bill is around unlocking potential in terms of housing development but clearly from our side it does not go far enough. When you see a change in Government come 20 September you will see a Labour-led Government that will absolutely commit to housing throughout New Zealand restock our social housing and ensure that we put first home owners first. Kia ora.DENISE ROCHE (Green): I rise to take the first call for the Greens on the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) in the second reading of this bill. I have to say I am a bit perturbed by the fact that the Local Government and Environment Committee is currently hearing submissions in the South Island and so it is left to people like me to pick up the slack if you like. My colleague Eugenie Sage will probably comment on this in the second call that we have.New Zealanders expect councillors to provide good-quality infrastructure good water supply drainage sewerage roading and community facilities. Development contributions provide capital to fund investment in infrastructure to help meet the needs of a growing population. Development contributions ensure that new ratepayers pay their share of the costs of putting in new infrastructure to service them rather than existing ratepayers paying for it.Auckland Council is expecting substantial population growth and is planning major investment in infrastructure to support this. The council anticipates that over the next 10 years the city will grow by approximately 270000 new residents which is about 58 percent of New Zealand’s population growth. Auckland Council plans to collect about $2.1 billion in development contributions over the next 10 years if the status quo remains and the council plans to spend $480 million of those contributions on community facilities such as libraries swimming pools sports facilities and other public amenities to help provide the quality of life and amenities that people expect in our largest city which we want to be the world’s most liveable city. This bill has a major impact on the council’s ability to do this because of its very narrow definition of community infrastructure and its prohibition on development contributions being used to fund libraries and swimming pools in particular. Many submitters opposed this newamended definition and asked for their current provisions to remain. Auckland Council said that without development contribution funding for these community facilities they would not be built or rates would have to rise by 8.5 percent.Auckland Council’s development contribution policy has been standardised across the region and it was a major piece of work after the forced amalgamation. It was developed after extensive consultation with developers and the community and it was praised even by some submitters on this bill. Yet with these changes to development contributions this bill creates considerable uncertainty about whether Auckland Council and other councils will be able to fund community facilities without increasing rates or whether they will be able to provide adequate community infrastructure in growth areas.The introduction of an objection process is also likely to cost councils and reduce development contribution revenue still further. I am referring specifically to the Auckland Council submission I know but it was a very important one because it has been the test case. Auckland Council said that the objection process was likely to cost about $1 million in additional staff and legal costs and other expert resources with a potential loss of development contribution revenue of $3 million to $4 million each year which means $40 million over 10 years. And who benefits from this? Mostly it is subdividers and property developers.The other problem that this bill will compound is how to fund the replacement of ageing community facilities. Local government provides or supports the overwhelming majority of recreation and sports opportunities available to communities. The New Zealand Recreation Association in its submission estimated that local government owns $7 billion worth of recreation and sports assets and invests $800 million a year in operational costs for these facilities. The association noted that a significant number of recreational and aquatic facilities are coming to the end of their useful life. Sport New Zealand said that about 40 percent of our indoor courts are over 40 years old and 35 percent of Auckland swimming pools are over 45 years old as well. Many swimming pools are ageing. In Auckland we need another 10 to 12 swimming pools over the next 20 years. In my own community of Waiheke we have been relying on a 30-year-old primary school pool as our only public facility. Our local board has been advancing this quite well I have to say but will we be able to access council funds to build one and will any other community be able to access funds for something like this? That is another matter. This bill will make them unaffordable. It will deprive communities of basic recreational amenities.There was a very strong submission during the select committee process from Public Libraries of New Zealand which opposed changing the definition of community infrastructure and I quote from its submission. It said: “Larger new developments significantly increase demand for local libraries and other community services. Young families migrants young people and older New Zealanders—the very people to be found in many new developments—rely on public libraries to connect with their communities the wider world and increasingly the many services they rely on from central and local government.” It is not fair for local residents to face increased rates or user charges for library services to access information that should be free but that is what this bill risks. Think about what libraries are now. They are community hubs. They are modern comfortable areas where the public can read and learn where kids and adults can access the internet and where activities happen that consolidate our communities and bring us together.This month is New Zealand Music Month by the way and at my local library there are performances every weekend from local musicians. We are showcasing the Waiheke choir CantoIsola this Saturday as well.Grant Robertson: What time?DENISE ROCHE: My daughter is in that choir by the way. We risk depriving new communities in the new developments that are being pushed through by this Government with the housing accord. We risk depriving them of the tools to build community health well-being and cohesiveness. If we do not do that what we have are ghettos.We oppose this bill because we still remain concerned about the push for amalgamation of competent councils and rolling out the local board model for other regions not just Auckland. We have to question why we need to continue to force amalgamations. Is it to remove pesky democratic processes and reduce the effectiveness of regional councils to monitor and protect our air water and land from degradation? After all that is why the elected Canterbury councillors were sacked by this Government 4 years ago.As a super-city survivor myself and a former Waiheke Local Board member I speak from experience about the erosion of local democracy as a result of forced amalgamation of local and regional councils. Before amalgamation in Auckland we had a regional council that acted as a safeguard for us. Where I live we had several cases where the city council several times issued resource consents to the most out-of-scale and environmentally degrading developments. We were saved by the regional council taking action. It included an 80000 cubic metre clean fill that the council put through a consent for saying that it was just earthworks. Regional councils are our checks and balances. More than 3 years into amalgamation we see that development continues and our regional council our check and balance has been lost. And guess what! With that amalgamation there came no cost savings whatsoever. What happened was that we were forced to undergo a system of taxation with no representation when we had seven council-controlled organisations foisted upon us. We do not think this is a democratic process that should be rolled out anywhere else in Aotearoa New Zealand. We will be opposing this bill.Hon PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei): I rise to support the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) in its second reading. This is the second phase of National’s Better Local Government reforms. It forms part of that and it will give local authorities the tools to provide better services to local communities.It is probably timely to remind the Green member Denise Roche that in fact the regional councils she speaks so fondly of were not utilised by her and her lobby groups as a check and balance; they were utilised as a way of stopping stuff happening. For the extreme environmental movement if you cannot stop something slowing it down is the next best thing and that is what it uses the processes for. It is interesting to note that that extreme environmental group they call the Green Party has alongside Labour used every opportunity to stop what this Government has put forward to improve housing affordability.When we said we needed to open up new land for housing they opposed it on the basis that cities would get larger so cities could not move out. When we said that we would change the Local Government Act the Building Act and the Resource Management Act rules so that there would be denser housing—in other words building up—we found that the Labour Party and the Green Party opposed that. So if you cannot grow a city out and you cannot grow a city up that means that there is nowhere to go. That is why the Labour Party members this weekend when they talk to all their ethnic groups—the Indian community the Chinese community the Samoan community the South Pacific community—they will be telling them that they can no longer come to New Zealand because Labour’s solution to housing affordability is to stop immigration stop those people coming into New Zealand.This is another bill where we are introducing measures to improve housing affordability and that is the ability of councils to make the person who builds a new house pay development fees for the library that is going to be built 10 kilometres down the road or the swimming pool down the road. What we are arguing is that that should be funded through the general rate take or other mechanisms.Denis O’Rourke: Driving rates up. You want to put rates up.Hon PHIL HEATLEY: The difficulty for the new member of New Zealand First is that you cannot oppose everything that we work hard to bring to this House to address housing affordability. You cannot just stop people having children. You cannot stop families coming from countries overseas or even New Zealand families returning. You cannot do all that social engineering in order to drive house prices down. Actually you have got to build more houses—houses going up or houses on sections or redeveloping land that has been used for building or commercial purposes previously.I support this Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3). It is part of the answer; it is not a silver bullet. It is part of a suite of changes that we are making to improve housing affordability and I will certainly be voting for it.DENIS O'ROURKE (NZ First): It has always been clear to me that this National Government hates local government. It always seeks to diminish it. It always seeks to micro-control it. It always seeks to castrate local democracy in decision making. It thinks it knows best and that local councils need to be told how to deliver facilities and services. In fact councils already do long-term planning have fair development contributions and do not need to be told how to suck eggs by this Government.The worst part of this utterly misguided Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3) is the new and totally unnecessary provision about development contributions. This is retrograde legislation that will worsen local government performance not improve it. The changes will reduce costs for developers but will increase costs for ratepayers. National has clearly been influenced by developers who will no doubt make donations to the National Party. But National spits on the needs and rights of local communities to make their own decisions about what is fair and appropriate and who pays for what.The reason these provisions are misguided and unnecessary is that they will not help to substantially reduce the cost of new homes. That is supposed to be why the limits on development contributions are being introduced although the last speech I heard from Mr Heatley hardly justified that at all. In fact the reason is to help National’s developer mates to make more money.Local Government New Zealand figures show that development contributions comprise an average of only 4 percent of the cost of a new home. These new provisions will reduce development contributions by only 10 percent at the most. Overall the effect of these changes is to reduce house costs by a pathetic 0.4 percent on average—big deal.The truth is that these provisions show that National is utterly bereft of ideas about how to solve the housing crisis which it has spent the last 5 years doing next to nothing about. This bill is all it has to offer along with a pathetic $3500 per home reduction in duties on building materials. These things are not just drops in the bucket; they are drops in the ocean. These measures are a poor excuse for a real housing policy. What is needed in this country is a comprehensive long-term housing plan as set out in New Zealand First’s housing policy.In his speech introducing the bill Maurice Williamson spoke about the principles in relation to development contributions. He showed how badly National has got this wrong. This is what he said: “The range of infrastructure for which development contributions can be charged will be narrowed. This narrowing reflects the principle thatdevelopers should pay only for the infrastructure that is required by the development whereas communities pay for the infrastructure that will benefit the whole community.” What absolute nonsense that is. The true principle is that development contributions must provide a fair proportion of all facilities the whole community needs which they have sought from their councils. So these new provisions are useless ineffective and utterly misconceived and are based on totally the wrong principles.Another so-called principle is the one in new section 197AB(c) inserted by clause 48 which says: “cost allocations used to establish development contributions should be determined according to and be proportional to the persons who will benefit from the assets to be provided (including the community as a whole) as well as those who create the need for those assets:”. What absolute nonsense that statement is. How could it possibly be proportionate both to the persons who benefit and to the community as a whole? It is an utterly illogical and self-defeating statement. It shows just how badly this bill has been thought out.Another principle is in new section 197AB(d)(i) also inserted by clause 48 which requires development contributions to be used for the activities for which they were collected. This effectively requires hypothecation putting all contributions into special accounts to be used only when by some unknown mechanism they can be spent. That is not only unnecessary but an absolute bureaucratic nightmare to administer and is very very badly thought out.These changes on development contributions deliver no new benefits unless of course you regard 0.4 percent on an average house to qualify as a benefit—so really there are no real benefits at all—but they are bad news for ratepayers because they will ensure that rates go up and go up fast. That is not what the people in this country are looking forward to. Rates are high enough already. This Government has in the past railed against rates increases and now it is putting them up with this legislation. Well let me give the Government a message—Paul Goldsmith: Well spend less.DENIS O'ROURKE: —and especially that member who just interjected—there is no free lunch. If development contributions go down then believe me there is no other thing than for rates to go up.Paul Goldsmith: Well spend less.DENIS O'ROURKE: Spend less? Spend less? I will come to that. I will come to that in just a moment.In Christchurch the additional cost from this bill will be $32.2 million over 10 years. That is the council’s own estimate and of course that has to be found in rates. That is why the rates will have to go up and go up significantly. That is in a city that is already stressed in the provision of infrastructure and a council that is already struggling and struggling greatly in dealing with its costs for the reasons we all know. But that is not all.These changes will also drive down both the scope and range of community facilities provided by councils as demanded by their communities. That is the answer that I give to that member Paul Goldsmith who just interjected. He says “Spend less.” Well it is not that easy. The fact is that communities do not want to have the scope and range of community facilities reduced; they want them improved. The proper way to do that is a fair proportion to be met through development contributions. This bill will not deliver that but more than that it also drives down the quality of those facilities. In fact the truth is that if this bill passes and is implemented and I hope it will be repealed if it does pass then many such facilities will not be built at all.The bill limits the use of development contributions to only community halls playgrounds and toilets. That is pathetic. There is a long list of other things that shouldbe included: community libraries; kids’ swimming pools; adults’ training pools; gyms and fitness facilities; local parks area sports fields and facilities; facilities for the elderly; reserves for conservation drainage and retention; and similar purposes. All these are necessities to build communities—not just housing ghettos.Furthermore there is the effect of development contributions in driving capacity increases not just for water sewage drains and local roads for new developments but also for arterial roads as capacity demands increase for them including bridges and traffic control infrastructure also major sewage and drainage collectors and pumps public transport facilities and services and the list goes on. The limit in the legislation is ludicrous. Not only is that short list ludicrous but the effect is disastrous for local government causing rates to increase unfair and ineffective development contributions regimes to be implemented and a reduction in the scope range and quality of local facilities while delivering no real reduction in the cost of new homes at all.PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): It is my pleasure to speak in favour of this bill the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3). I think we need to see this bill in its broader context which is around improving housing affordability. None of the solutions to dealing with the high cost of housing particularly in Auckland is easy. They all require hard work and discipline. They require disciplined spending by the Government which keeps interest rates lower for longer; special housing areas which are difficult and opposed by the other side of the House; and reducing the cost of building materials.This aspect that we are dealing with in this bill is about getting some discipline around the development contributions in local government. From members on the other side of the House we constantly hear wailing about housing prices but they oppose all our solutions. It is interesting to see that they are doing the same thing again here today and I lament that. This is a good bill. It is a small part of a broader solution to housing affordability and on that basis I commend it to the House.Debate interrupted.VotingCorrection—Appropriation (2014/15 Estimates) BillBARBARA STEWART (NZ First): I seek leave of the House to correct a vote that was incorrectly cast for the last appropriations amendment.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Could you say which amendment that is please.BARBARA STEWART: It was in the name of David Cunliffe.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I see. It was the amendment to the second reading of the Budget debate. And you are referring to a New Zealand First vote?BARBARA STEWART: Yes.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there anyone opposed to that course of action? There appears not. Can we have the number?Barbara Stewart: The number is 7 in favour.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Seven in favour. The record will show that. [Interruption] Do you want me to put the question? I will give you the correct numbers of the voting on the amendment proposed by David Cunliffe. The Noes are 64; the Ayes are 57.Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3)Second ReadingDebate resumed.POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Thank you very much Mr Deputy Speaker for giving me the opportunity to speak for as long as I am permitted to on this Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 3). I just want to commend my colleague from New Zealand First Denis O’Rourke for his impassioned speech. Who would think that we could get quite so passionate about local government? This bill certainly goes to the heart of my expertise around communities and I am very glad to be able to speak on it tonight.I want to talk firstly about the development contributions part of this bill which is obviously very significant and has some significant implications for Canterbury of course. What I am concerned about is the risk that these costs will be passed—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The time has come for the House to adjourn.Debate interrupted.The House adjourned at 6 p.m.